Cloud technology

Article Dean Dorton

2019 Success Recipe: 5 Ingredients to Prep Your Finance Team for Scalability

The end of the year is an excellent time for companies to get prepped to grow their business in 2019. The finance team, too, must be able to support their company’s ability to scale. Doing so requires finance to have easy visibility into real-time metrics, get information from multiple sources, keep their chart of accounts manageable—and have the flexibility and security to scale with confidence.

As the new year is right around the corner, your organization may be considering new financial management systems that can scale with the company’s projected growth. For example, a cloud-based system like Sage Intacct has all the ingredients that CFOs, controllers, and the rest of the finance team need to meet the increasing demands of a growing company:

Dashboards help you get reliable, timely metrics in front of the board of directors and provide the context and details needed to align on key decisions. For instance, performance cards, which are summaries pulled from account groups, are far more than groups of financial accounts. They can also summarize operational information, such as the number of employees or billable hours. Account groups can also be calculations, like revenue per billable hour and can be filtered just to show a particular location, department, or other dimensions. And charts and reports help show and explain financials to the board. Each visualization tells a big-picture story, while still allowing finance to drill into the report and transactional details behind the chart.

Best-of-breed integration with multiple systems. Cloud financial management software was built to “talk” to your other best-in-class systems with automated two-way, system-to-system communication. Web services API eliminates the need for business logic, and you have the flexibility to tailor your connections to your specific workflow processes. What’s more, you can connect the software to with any application you have—from proprietary custom applications or popular business systems like Salesforce CRM. This seamless integration serves as a foundation for adding new applications as you grow.

Dimensions to minimize the chart of accounts. Most financial solutions use a hard-coded structure for your chart of accounts. Say you want to track 3 locations, 5 departments, and 5 projects—you’d need 75 account code combinations. Plus, you’d end up with a complicated, unmanageable set of codes. Want to add a new location or department? You might be forced to add hundreds of additional accounts. Cloud financial management software lets you keep it simple with dimensions—all you have to do is set up your primary account codes. Dimensions also offer a new way to track and report on financial and operational data. You get quick access to insights that speed decision-making and help drive growth.

Reporting Flexibility. A cloud-based accounting infrastructure provides greater flexibility to your finance team. Whether you have staff working offsite, operate in multiple locations and entities, or have team members on the road, mobility and remote access are a requirement for efficiency and productivity. The ability to share data—anytime, anywhere—greatly improves your efficiency by providing real-time insight so you can take smarter action sooner. With the mobility capabilities of cloud computing, your internal and external stakeholders have full access to metrics, approvals, and financial reports—regardless of location.

Security. Major cloud providers have made extensive investments in deploying superior technology, processes, and initiatives to achieve extremely high levels of data security. Your company can benefit from levels of privacy and security that far exceed what on-premises solutions offer. That’s because cloud providers of financial management software can support millions of users to create more secure environments that incorporate the latest standards and controls for physical access.

Ready to scale and grow in 2019?

Cloud financial management software from Sage Intacct has the features, flexibility, and security—in other words, all the ingredients—that finance needs to scale the business into 2019 and beyond. The business technology experts from Massey Consulting can help; contact us for a free consultation today.

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Article Dean Dorton

From initiating funding to product and project management, biotech companies require a unique strategy to gather funding, and flexibility to accommodate fast expansion. If today’s biotech companies want to stay successful, they need to scale growth and still manage to assert control over time and resources.

They can begin to do that with these 5 accounting tips:

1. Apply Project Accounting to Track Costs

For commercializing biotech research, having deep insight into project costs helps keep your projects lean and profitable, satisfies funders and allows for continued research, and innovation down the road.

Growing beyond Quickbooks to adopt a more responsive and project-minded financial management solution can provide real-time visibility and deep insights on project metrics with reporting dashboards.

2. Ensure traceability with automated batch/lot tracking

Traceability in your batches and lots mitigates risk for business continuity and safety and assures investors.

Adopt a system with more automation and integrations, to further eliminate the risks generated from paper-based system errors, and to streamline departmental efficiency.

3. Support reporting, forecasts, and budgeting with collaborative systems

Forecasting and budgeting can protect funding and drive growth. Biotech companies that collaborate see their funding stretch further and have more control over where that funding goes.

From clarifying policies to resolving exceptions, when teams put their heads together with a strong cloud-based financial management solution that supports collaboration, their company can move more quickly to new funding rounds and get the most out of their current support.

4. Streamline business processes

Biotech companies that automate and streamline their processes are better able to keep administration costs lean for faster-paced growth when they can ensure information accuracy and compliance.

A best-in-class financial management solution can automate mundane tasks that inflate labor hours and potential for error.

5. Use technology to its fullest to scale business

When companies work from the cloud for their accounting, they can leverage data availability and accuracy to support growth beyond the capability of outdated, on-premises software.

For your biotech business to remain agile, using systems that reduce personnel and IT costs, improve security, boost collaboration and improve accuracy can help them scale their business as quickly as growth happens.

Sage Intacct, a strong cloud-based financial management solution, offers strong integration and collaboration options right into the transaction, real-time visibility on metrics from reporting dashboards, and offers traceability in the details for powerful risk management.

We want to help you drive your biotech company’s success with the right tools to fit your changing needs.

Is your biotech company facing these pain points?

Article Dean Dorton

Essential Financial Management Practices of Biotech Companies – A 5-Part Series

Article 5 – Prepare to Scale with Cloud Technology

The growth trajectory for biotech companies is unique – years of research followed by fast expansion with the success of a product.  Cloud technology is well-suited to scale quickly to meet those changing needs.

Positioned for success today and beyond

Technology played a huge role at the end of the 20th Century and has been accelerating innovation in the 21st Century.  Perhaps the most under-appreciated aspects of today’s technology are how easy it is to use.  Consider how much technology and useful applications reside on your smartphone and within your home.

But what about the workplace?  Is there a technology gap in your biotech organization?  Often cutting-edge technology is used in research and development while, in sharp contrast, archaic manual processes, outdated legacy systems, and spreadsheets are used in the accounting department.  What’s wrong with this picture?

Sage Intacct describes the benefit of their solution this way, “tomorrow’s innovative technology to make your today easier.”  The best result of technology addresses complex problems in a simple but effective way.

However, it’s not enough to simply address today’s problems.  As CFO, you know you need to be planning for the future. Any investment in a financial accounting solution should result in the automation of repetitive processes to increase productivity but also free up your time to prepare for future challenges.

Modern cloud architecture to scale with your growing Biotech business

The word “agile” is not a corporate-speak buzzword for Biotech CFOs – it is a way of life.  As you manage the financials from one funding milestone to the next, you must move quickly, and forecast confidently and correctly.

Inaccurate or delayed financial information threatens the success of the business.  You know this more acutely than anyone else in the organization.

“The reason I recommend Sage Intacct is that it immediately gives Biotech CFOs real-time financial information, but more importantly, a means by which to automate processes that are a waste of the CFO’s time,” explains Philip Massey, CPA and founder of Massey Consulting.  “Last century a best practice was to ‘delegate more.’ Today, best practices urge company leaders to ‘automate more.’ It’s amazing how much changes for the better when a CFO is able to automate even one workflow. As their technology partner, we look to automate as many processes as possible, which gives back precious time allowing CFOs to do more strategic work.”

Functional agility with minimal disruption

The reason businesses are flocking to SaaS models are many;  anytime, anywhere access; higher ROI, lower TCO, a shift from variable OPEX to fixed CAPEX – but also the ease at which SaaS financial accounting can be implemented.  As a noted in an article on the Tech-Savvy CFO, “solutions can be configured and re-configured with clicks, not code, and software can easily ingrate with other best-in-class business systems.”  

The net result:  you are empowered with modern technology, the best accounting features, real-time reporting, and state-of-the-art dashboards with little, if any, disruption and without a hefty investment in personnel or IT costs.

When the time comes to expand, merge, and/or move from a funded model to a revenue model, the configurability of Sage Intacct makes it easy to add new users, new business units, and new software modules.  Again it comes back to the SaaS delivery model which allows you to manage sudden increases in users and transactions, without having to worry about upgrading servers or network infrastructure.

Choose wisely – why Sage Intacct is the experts’ choice

“Biotech CFOs, CPAs and auditors sit up and take notice when I point out that Sage Intact is the only AICPA-endorsed solution for cloud financials,” notes Massey.  That endorsement, combined with the deep functionality that allows Biotech organizations to streamline complex accounting and finance processes.

Given that everyone in the organization wants to see projects completed with a minimum of funding diverted for administrative operations, Sage Intacct’s track record of documented rapid payback and meaningful ROI makes it an attractive option. “Sage Intacct is committed to customer success and they track and report on customer ROI,” said Massey.  “The published statistic is that Sage Intacct customers enjoy, on average, a return on investments of over 250 percent. With the average payback period just under six months. At Massey Consulting we understand that these results may vary. We work with Biotech CFOs and based on their specific situation calculate what they can expect. It’s remarkable just how quickly Sage Intacct pays for itself.”

Massey notes that it’s hard to overstate the positive impact Sage Intacct has for Biotech leadership.  “They have greater visibility, faster analyses, and real-time reporting for smarter business decisions.”

Sage Intacct can also make an impressive boast when it comes to customer satisfaction.  Third-party surveys show Sage Intacct out-performing the other leading brands (both on-premises and Cloud) in overall customer satisfaction.  

“Another area where Sage Intacct outshines the competition is in ease-of-use,” concludes Massey.  “If a solution is not easy to use it delays ROI, frustrates end users, and chews up time. The design of the software makes it easy to learn and users are quickly proficient, leveraging the solution at an optimal level.”

This concludes “Prepare to scale with cloud technology,” part 5 of the Essential Financial Management Practices of Biotech Companies series.  

Click on the links below to read other parts of the Essential Financial Management Practices of Biotech Companies series:

Part 1: Track Costs with Project Accounting

Part 2: Automate Batch/Lot Tracking to Ensure Traceability

Part 3: Support Flexible Reporting, Forecasts, and Budgeting

Part 4: Streamline Business Processes

Article Dean Dorton

As a nonprofit, you have many stakeholders who require accurate information on budget, grants, outcomes, and more – and their requests usually come with a need to have the information now. If this causes chaos and either a rejection of the request or hours of manual work on spreadsheets, your accounting system is outdated.

It’s time to closely examine new solutions and new technology. Cloud applications have matured. Feature sets are robust. Reporting and dashboard capabilities are impressive in their flexibility and accessibility. And, the benefits of cloud technology are such that your system requirements should include “cloud-based” at the top of the list.

5 Ways Nonprofits Benefit from the Cloud

Here are five benefits that we’ve seen nonprofits enjoy when replacing entry level or legacy on-premise solutions with Intacct:

1. Empowerment of Department Heads and Executive Team

Imagine being able to respond to reporting requests with a few clicks. Better yet, imagine delivering a real-time dashboard to various program managers, department heads, your executive team and even the board that display the particular data, budgets, expenses, funding allocations and comparisons to prior years.
With Intacct, they have the information they need to fine tune programs, assess program financials and outcomes, and zero in on the data they need to further the mission, serve constituents, and win more grant awards.

2. Ability to Track Funds, Cross Fiscal Year Reporting

With Intacct’s flexible chart of accounts and dimensional reporting, managing, tracking, and reporting on funds is easy – whether the funding period is a few months or extending over multiple fiscal years. There is no need to once again resort to spreadsheets, you are able to generate reports directly from the system. In fact is so easy, colleagues can access reports on their own if need be.
Every stakeholder can have the ability to quickly analyze assigned grants, funds, budgets, expenses and cash flows – regardless of the duration of the funding. With better reporting on existing funds, more time can be spent going after additional sources of funding. Armed with Intacct, you’ll have the history, data, and pattern of compliance and good stewardship.

3. Faster, More Accurate Reporting

Accurate reporting is the primary responsibility of Nonprofit accounting. It is the foundation for transparency and accountability. Intacct has helped hundreds of nonprofits automate their reporting for faster period-end closings, cross-fiscal year funding, budget management, and program analysis.

Intacct Dimensions allows you to slice and dice data to accommodate special requests from colleagues, executive management and the board. You don’t need to fire up Excel and create yet another spreadsheet. This is perhaps the most compelling reason to replace your accounting system with cloud-based Intacct – the ability to generate a staggering variety of reports directly from the system (complete with detail documentation).

4. Budget-friendly, Subscription-based Pricing

Since Intacct is paid for via subscription, the cost of the software is accounted for month by month. Many nonprofits prefer this subscription-based pricing to traditional on-premise one time licensing fees. There is an initial implementation fee with Intacct, but following your implementation, it’s a simple monthly fee based on the number of users you want accessing the system.

Most of the time, there is a significant cost savings for nonprofits moving to the cloud. With the cloud, organizations can dramatically reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by eliminating hardware costs and reducing software and IT costs. With cloud computing, nonprofits also get the benefit of reducing their technology risk with enterprise-class security, backups, and disaster recovery – at a much lower cost than doing it yourself.

5. Anytime, Anywhere Secure Access

Snow day? No problem. Flooding? No problem. Regardless of what Mother Nature throws your way, while you might be prevented from getting to the office, you can still access Intacct. All you need is a browser, access to the Internet, and your user name and password.

While weather-related closures are (thankfully) rare, there is still a high cost in lost productivity. With anytime, anywhere secure access to Intacct you won’t have that problem. Under more normal circumstances like business-related travel, off site meetings, or the need to work from home, you have access to the system. Another advantage of cloud-based Intacct is that it doesn’t matter what kind of device you have – PC or Mac, tablet or laptop, you can get to the system directly without any intermediate interface.

We have looked at 5 ways nonprofits can benefit from the cloud – but there are many more.  With cloud technology making robust applications more affordable and easier to deploy, it’s time to take a serious look at what the cloud can do for your finance department and your organization.

Other Nonprofit resources from Massey Consulting:

White paper ’13 Questions Nonprofits Need to Ask When Buying a New Accounting System’