Gary Govender, ALNET’s Head of Business Development. (Image: Supplied)
Modern financial management is about more than processing transactions and producing financial statements, it is about giving CFOs and business leaders timeous and reliable financial information. This is according to Sage Platinum Business Partner, ALNET Technologies.
“Business leaders in all sectors, but particularly the volatile supply chain and logistics sectors, that face myriad challenges need the right financial information at the right time. These markets are widely considered difficult sectors to trade in due to disruption, which has shifted from a temporary anomaly into a permanent state of normal,” says Gary Govender, ALNET’s Head of Business Development.
He adds that without access to such data there can be no hope of understanding profitability, managing costs, improving decision-making and supporting business growth plans. “Sage Intacct delivers power to C-suite executives and adds immense value to companies operating throughout the ever-changing supply chain environment,” he says.
According to Govender, logistics CFOs and finance teams often struggle to obtain a consolidated and reliable view of financial performance without extracting data from multiple systems with manually prepared reports. “Requirements include customer profitability, branch performance, operating expenditure, gross margins, outstanding debtor balances, cashflow forecasts and consolidated group results. This is where Sage Intacct comes into its own by providing configurable dashboards, financial reports and dimensional analysis that help bring this information together within the financial management environment.
“Rather than waiting for manually prepared spreadsheets at month end, management can access relevant financial information more efficiently and investigate performance at different levels of the business. This allows finance teams to spend less time compiling information and more time interpreting results, identifying trends and supporting operational and strategic decisions. The extent of real-time visibility depends on transaction processing, the availability of source data and the integration of relevant operational systems,” he says.
Govender expands on the complexity of the operational milieu for logistics and supply chain organisations due to the involvement of multiple branches, legal entities, service lines, customer contracts and operational systems. “As these businesses grow, their financial management requirements become increasingly demanding. Challenges include manual reconciliations, spreadsheet-dependent reporting, disconnected operational and financial systems, complex cost allocations and limited visibility into profitability at customer, contract or branch level.”
Govender says it is difficult to consolidate financial information across multiple entities while maintaining accurate, timely reporting at individual business-unit level. “Finance teams can spend a disproportionate amount of time gathering and reconciling information rather than analysing performance and supporting strategic decisions. The latter yields far more value to business outcomes. Sage Intacct helps address these challenges through cloud-based financial management, multi-entity capabilities, dimensional reporting and automation, enabling finance teams to move towards a more efficient and insight-driven operating model,” he notes.
Has your logistics company outgrown its existing accounting or ERP system? Govender confirms a clear indication of this is when the finance team increasingly relies on spreadsheets, manual workarounds and additional administrative resources simply to produce reliable management information. “This often happens as transaction volumes increase, new branches or legal entities are established, customer contracts become more complex or the organisation expands into new regions.”
He highlights other warning signs to include lengthy month-end closing processes, difficulty producing consolidated reports, limited visibility into customer profitability and an inability to obtain consistent financial information across the organisation without manually combining data from different systems.
Sage Intacct addresses all of these issues. The real value it delivers lies in how the following capabilities work together to give finance teams in this sector better control, visibility and scalability as their business grow. Benefits include:
- Multi-entity management and consolidation: Supports operations across multiple branches or companies, with consolidated financial reporting and visibility into individual entities.
- Dimensional reporting: Allows financial transactions to be analysed by customer, department, location, project or service line, and all without creating an unnecessarily complicated chart of accounts.
- Accounts payable and receivable: Helps finance teams manage supplier obligations, customer invoicing, outstanding balances and collections more effectively.
- Dashboards and reporting: Provides access to relevant financial information to monitor performance and enable better, more informed decision-making.
- Workflow approvals and controls: Supports structured approval processes and improved governance over financial transactions.
- Cash management: Provides greater visibility into cash transactions and liquidity management.
- Integration capabilities: Facilitates the exchange of financial information with relevant operational and third-party systems. This helps to reduce duplicate processing and disconnected information.
The all important question of understanding profitability beyond the traditional company level. Govender notes the significance of meaningful profitability reporting and adds that this depends on the appropriate configuration of dimensions and the consistent capture and allocation of relevant costs. “One of the key strengths of Sage Intacct is its dimensional accounting and reporting capability. Traditional accounting systems often require businesses to create increasingly complex charts of accounts or rely on spreadsheets to report performance across different parts of the organisation. Sage Intacct allows businesses to capture and analyse financial information using dimensions that reflect how they operate. In the logistics environment, this can include reporting by customer, branch, region, department, service line, project or contract, depending on its configuration and transaction data,” he notes.
Govender confirms that business leaders can analyse revenue and associated costs for a particular customer or service line, compare the performance of different branches or identify areas where costs are increasing disproportionately to revenue. “This provides a more meaningful understanding of profitability and enables business leaders to make better informed decisions around pricing, customer contracts, resource allocation and operational efficiency,” concludes Govender.