The office of finance is tasked with improving finance efficiencies and reducing costs while providing higher quality, higher value service to the business. In short, delivering more with less. However, without effective Record to Report (R2R) technology, finance organizations struggle with a lack of standardized processes, bottlenecks in their workflow, and poor visibility, further complicating the financial close process.

Improving Processes through Automation

To ensure we reach the end goal of ‘delivering more with less’ we need to turn to automation and, more critically, technology that manages the R2R process holistically, rather than in silos. As Gartner states, “When considering the automation and unification of critical financial processes, such as account reconciliations, compliance and financial close, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. These activities are highly dependent on each other and, when unified, create new insights and return on investment (ROI) savings.”

So, what should your R2R solution consist of?

Reconciliation: Ensures the integrity of financial statements, via automated enterprise account reconciliation, balance sheet certification and variance analysis

Intercompany: Automates intercompany transactions and balances to ensure data integrity across multiple ERPs, entities and through mergers/acquisitions

Journal Entry: Accelerates the Record to Report cycle by automating the journal entry management process including creation, validation, approval and posting

Close Management: Manages the entire Record to Report cycle end to end, from local to group financial close, including all the tasks, dependencies and issues

Compliance: Ensures corporate and regulatory compliance including SOX, HIPAA, FERC/NERC, security standards, sustainability projects and more

Financial and Disclosure Reporting: Allows full control and stronger visibility into your financial and disclosure reporting for both external audiences, such as the SEC, and internal audiences, such as your board of directors and executive team members

By leveraging full R2R technology, you can effectively manage the entire record to report process in one place, with one single view of all your relevant controls. R2R technology not only provides you with the means of collating all this data in a single view, but eliminates those white spaces between key control components and enables you to standardize across your business. Investing in the entire R2R process will allow you to deliver cost savings, reduce risks, improve visibility, promote a faster close and improve resource optimization across your organization.

For more information, please click on the banner below to download our eBook, “Enabling Financial Transformation through Technology.”

Written by: Kelli Shoevlin