dashboards

Article Dean Dorton

Dashboards don’t seem all that impressive at first. Decision makers are used to relying on a quick and easy rundown of performance metrics to guide what they do, so what makes dashboards any different?

For one, they update themselves instead of requiring an accountant or IT person on the back end to change the numbers as new data becomes available. Dashboards also update in real-time so that decision makers always have the latest figures to reference. Compared to past forms of performance tracking, dashboards involve a lot less input while delivering a much greater output.

That’s apparent in the speed and simplicity of dashboards. But it’s better exemplified by the amazing insights that dashboards supply and the significant impact they have on organizations. The humble dashboard looks unassuming at first…but there’s gold inside if you know where to look.

How dashboards drive decision making

More than just a performance tracker or reference tool, the best dashboards are thoughtfully designed to streamline decision making, improve objective analysis, and uncover the “right” choice much more often than before.

That happens first by allowing users to customize their dashboard to see the metrics most relevant to their objectives. The numbers that need to be top of mind stay top of mind. The ability to incorporate charts, graphs, and other visualizations presents the data in the most insightful and informative format possible. And by collecting all that information in one condensed location that can be digested at a glance, dashboards intuitively incorporate strong data into every decision making process. Whatever someone wants or needs to know is available now, not later.

Again, having good information on hand doesn’t seem like such a revolutionary capability. But imagine if confusion, errors, and uncertainty were removed from the decision making process and replaced with clarity, confidence, and (most importantly) intended outcomes. It would transform an organization’s fortunes and rewrite what’s possible. Dashboards turn data into gold by turning multiple options into one obvious choice. What could be a bigger asset in business?

Sage Intacct: A new standard for dashboards

Like other financial management platforms, Sage Intacct offers dashboard tools, but they stand out in a few important ways.

They are easy to create, change, and customize. Users need no technical expertise to build and update their own dashboards – a process that takes just minutes. The refreshing user-friendliness of the tool helps get more people onboard with using dashboards while enhancing what they can do with them. Likewise, those dashboards are easy to access at will and reference in an instant – there’s no obstacle to using them. Finally, Sage Intacct’s dimensional accounting capabilities take performance reporting to the next level by letting users easily slice and dice financial data to see new things. The dashboards are both more accessible than the alternatives and more advanced too.

See for yourself. Schedule a demo with Dean Dorton.

Philip Massey
Software Services Director
pmassey@ddaftech.com • 919.796.5408

Article Dean Dorton

The Covid-19 pandemic challenged every assumption in healthcare. Systems that were supposed to be redundant and resilient were pushed to the breaking point and beyond. Problems that seem unthinkable became realities, one after another after another. No matter how the pandemic affected a healthcare provider, all of them think differently in the wake of it.

We can expect swift and sweeping changes as a result. Preventing a repeat of recent events will be the industry’s top priority. Every facet of healthcare will respond to this mandate in their own way, but none will ignore it. Continuing with the status quo represents too great a risk.

What will the new normal look like? Expect outsourcing to play a much greater role, especially in healthcare accounting and finance.

Why Outsourcing Make the Most Sense
Without receiving much notice, healthcare accounting teams were some of the hardest hit during the pandemic. They had to deal with a financial crisis that appeared out of nowhere while adapting to sudden remote work requirements and unpredictable staff shortages. Arguably, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

Most teams adapted admirably and kept their organizations afloat through unprecedented difficulties. Nonetheless, it’s clear that most teams aren’t equipped for the next pandemic in terms of staff, technology, visibility, or expertise. Complicating matters even more, adding these missing pieces requires time, money, and other resources that are in short supply right now.

Outsourcing offers a shortcut between what healthcare accounting teams have and what they need. Outsourcing partners can introduce cloud-based accounting systems that facilitate remote work. They can step up to handle routine accounting obligations whenever necessary or deliver specialized financial insights on demand. They can also free up the in-house accounting team to focus on urgent objectives or long-term initiatives.

The new normal calls for healthcare accounting teams to be agile, informed, and robust. Building out those capabilities in-house involves a huge cost and a complicated, time-intensive effort. But not with outsourcing. Any healthcare accounting team plus the right outsourcing partner equals an elite unit prepared for whatever the future holds, good, bad, or unexpected.

Healthcare Accounting After Outsourcing
The greatest argument for outsourcing, especially under the present circumstances, is that it insulates accounting teams from uncertainty. Teams have whatever resources they need to keep the financial situation stable in the midst of chaos. They run on technology that makes powerful capabilities and the entirety of financial data available from anywhere. And they have a partner to consult with on the most complicated and critical financial questions of the day.

A tidal wave of change was already headed towards the healthcare industry before the pandemic started. Outsourcing increasingly looks like the best – even only – way to say ahead of this transformation. Prepare for the new normal sooner rather than later by contacting Dean Dorton.

Justin Hubbard, CPA, CGMA | Accounting and Financial Outsourcing Director
jhubbard@deandorton.com
859.425.7604

Article Dean Dorton

The biotech industry is booming. Projections suggest it will reach a $2.44 trillion market valuation by 2028 after growing at a CAGR of 15.83% for the next seven years straight. Forces driving the rapid expansion of biotech include supportive government policies, excited investors, new products, and rising demand – and they show no signs of changing in the near future.

Growth looks all but assured for any biotech company with a viable product or service and a competent business plan. But growth can be positive and negative. Companies that expand quickly and easily often leave themselves unprepared for running a bigger company with broader regulatory requirements, a larger product line, additional revenue streams, and a diverse market footprint. Biotech companies are often victims of their own success – phenomenal startups that grow into unsustainable enterprises – because they don’t scale their accounting and financial capabilities along with the rest of the company.

Running a robust accounting department depends on people and processes, of course, but it ultimately comes down to technology. Relying on under-powered or outdated software (often the product in place since day one of the company) puts a hard limit on what accountants can accomplish – and how much companies can grow. For fast-growing biotech companies, upgrading accounting software should happen sooner rather than later, and cloud financial management should be the only option.

Benefits of Cloud Financial Management in Biotech
There’s a reason why 75% of the life sciences companies studied by Gartner adopted cloud-first strategies in recent years: They see clear and compelling benefits to the cloud. Those include:

  • IT maintenance and security handled by cloud providers
  • Remote access to data and tools from anywhere.
  • Endless data storage and computing power available on demand
  • Redundancy and backups in the event of disaster

That list goes on. However, it’s more important to understand the overarching benefit of cloud financial management for biotech: stabilizing growth. Companies on an upward trajectory often encounter unexpected obstacles, especially in a heavily-regulated industry like biotech. As such, they don’t need accounting software to meet their needs; they need software that exceeds their needs and rises to occasions they don’t anticipate. To put it differently, they need software for today as well as tomorrow. Cloud financial management uniquely fits the bill.

The right product can handle the most complicated and consequential accounting challenges facing promising biotech companies. Everything from complying with revenue recognition standards to evaluating M&A opportunities becomes more streamlined. Likewise, critical processes involved in research and development or budgeting and planning run more efficiently and cost effectively thanks to the right cloud-based product.

Sage Intacct is a cloud-native financial management platform that offers the extensive accounting capabilities required of mature (or maturing) biotech companies. Beyond that, Sage Intacct delivers a superior cloud experience designed to enhance speed, accessibility, resilience, communication, collaboration, and so much more. Calling Sage Intacct accounting software doesn’t do it justice because it functions more like a complete business tool for biotech companies, facilitating growth at any speed or scale.

To demo Sage Intacct, contact a team at the intersection of accounting, technology, and biotech industry growth, contact us.

Article Dean Dorton

This blog is the June Edition of our CFO Minute: A Sage Intacct ERP Series.

THE DAY THE DASHBOARDS STOOD STILL— Integrations between systems are important- but they become even more crucial if your day-to-day tasks include taking on the looming responsibility of manually rekeying in data from system to system. Sound familiar?

When modern businesses face rapid growth, their reporting data becomes more complex. Their workload becomes more intense, and they suddenly need more answers at a faster rate.

Growing companies need accurate data to keep their teams working in the present. But with so many options available, it can be difficult to prioritize what they need to stay on top of their company’s performance. Here are key highlights of what Sage Intacct’s innovative dashboards are able to bring to the table for businesses of any industry, of any size:

Real-time Visibility

Businesses, regardless if they are big or small, multi-entity or one location, need visibility – but not the visibility that means waiting weeks for answers. They need visibility into their metrics right now.

With the cloud, it’s possible for every company out there to see their data in real time, to drive their business at the speed of change, no matter how simple or complex.

Fast and Accurate Reporting

Growing companies need accurate reporting without having to re-enter data, write scripts or export their reports into Excel. They need to quickly gain insight into their performance.

They don’t need a system where they have to wait until the month-end to make critical company decisions with aging data. With the cloud, they don’t have to.

Sage Intacct, a cloud-based best-in-class financial management solution, has the tools that growing companies need to scale growth:

– Real-time Visibility on One Screen: Sage Intacct’s dashboard feature allows you to quickly drag and drop options to customize your view into your company’s performance. With graphs, charts and customized lists, the finance team and executives are able to sharpen their decision-making. Dashboards showcase only the metrics you need right now, with the option to change those metrics as your business changes in the future.

– Integrations: Unlike Netsuite and some legacy programs, Sage Intacct integrates well with many other best-in-class software solutions like SalesForce, ADP, and Paychex. This means your company can focus on growth –  not on trying to modify the way you do everything to accommodate your new software.

-Strong reporting customizations: With over 150 reporting options to start, teams can generate and deliver the latest financial and operations data more quickly and accurately, via email or the cloud, with more relevant data, and no waiting until month-end to see into your company’s progress.

Sage Intacct’s unique tagging feature allows you and your teams the capability to drill all the way down to the source transaction level for a more comprehensive view into your performance.

Sage Intacct’s Dashboards offers what growing companies need to work in the present and light a fire under growth.

Let Dean Dorton help you choose a financial management system that fits you, to help scale your teams and your business.

Sage Intacct’s Reports & Dashboards Data Sheet

Article Dean Dorton

6 Ways Cloud Financial Management Adds More Time Back to Your Day and Boosts ROI

The clock is ticking, deadlines are looming, and your finance team is stressing. There is so much to do, from month-end closing to revenue recognition to producing reports for the board. If only you had more time… 

Luckily, you have something better extra hours in the day. You have best-in-class cloud financial management software from Sage Intacct so you not only work faster, but with greater accuracy and efficiency, and in a strategic way to help you grow your business. With time-saving cloud accounting technology, you can: 

1. Automate core financial processes. If you have multiple entities, you can consolidate financials with the push of a button, automate currency conversions, and get consolidated financial statements without waiting for month-end. And you increase efficiency at month-end by closing the sub-ledgers that are ready while leaving others open as needed. Other processes are equally efficient, such as subscription billing; revenue recognition; and tracking projects, customers, and vendors.

2. Get automatic updates and quarterly releases that are touch-free for you—no business disruption and no costly upgrade projects. You can also eliminate hardware costs and time-consuming IT management from your cost of ownership.

3. Click on easy, intuitive financial dashboards to get a quick overview of your operational and financial performance, past and present. You can see key metrics from almost any perspective—business driver, entity, product, geography, channel, and more. With dashboards, you’ll never have to manually pull a report from a certain time period again.

4. Enjoy real-time visibility across the finance team. Everyone in your department has easy access to key reports, so you don’t have to waste time getting details from the CFO. And when you have new questions, it’s easy to click your way to a new custom report, dashboard, or visualization. Now it’s simpler than ever to get fast answers and make confident decisions.

5. Eliminate spreadsheets and the agony of manual entry. If your growing company is still relying on QuickBooks, chances are you are using spreadsheets as workarounds for things like tracking customer subscriptions, managing revenue recognition, or generating ad-hoc reports. Soon your staff is bogged down in manual tasks instead of focusing on value-add projects that promote growth. If you’re ready to be free from spreadsheets and other manual processes and focus on business viability, growth, and profitability, you need Sage Intacct.

6. Shrink your chart of accounts with dimensions. Sage Intacct’s dimensions capability offers an entirely new way to track and report on financial and operational data while simplifying your chart of accounts. Instead of building out a complicated, unmanageable set of codes, you only need to set up your primary account codes. And tagging with dimensions, instead of assigning transactions to hard-coded individual accounts, enables you to add business context to your data easily. With this flexible financial foundation, you gain quick access to the insights that speed decision-making and help drive growth.

Save even more time with the pros at Dean Dorton

Transforming your finance department into a time-saving powerhouse of efficiency and automation takes careful planning. The accounting technology experts at Dean Dorton will support you every step of the way, teaching you what you need to know so you can avoid repeating the same issues that cost you valuable time. Don’t wait another second—contact us for a free consultation today!

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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