
As a cloud based consultant I have alway been able to work from anywhere so “Stay at Home” is not an issue. Whilst more and more software is available online, or via a VPN link, there are not many accounting systems that are truly cloud, and even fewer that are native to Salesforce. As an independent FinancialForce consultant I’m lucky to use the Salesforce platform that is constantly being upgraded and developed, as is FinancialForce. When I started as an independent consultant I badged my company “Declarative Solutions” – no code here. Now, six years on, the range of declarative Salesforce tools is massively expanded and every Salesforce release brings more fun tools to play with!
In my experience very few internal management accounts teams are aware of the degree of automation and sophistication that can be implemented for accounting systems. Spreadsheets still rule the day, as a database, as an analysis tool and as part of the operational process to produce reports. However some more enlightened finance teams simply use reports and dashboards native to Salesforce. Whilst a period end process is still required, some reports really can be real time. Imagine turning up for a board meeting with no paper, just system reports available to all board members. This really is happening now. And guess what – need the report at home? No problem as it’s a cloud based system.
A recent push from Salesforce and FinancialForce is the use of “Einstein Analytics” – a fancy name for a sophisticated reporting tool. FinancialForce are investing a lot in this area as it solves many of the accounting reporting challenges. With Einstein you can aggregate, slice and dice, dynamically filter and also drill down to source transactions. There are a variety of ways of presenting data to suit different data sets and user requirements. And it’s a pretty sexy looking UI too. This is all available in near real time from any web browser including mobiles.
About fifteen years ago as an early client I said that FinancialForce is the future of accounting. Both Salesforce and FinancialForce have improved massively since then, so I think the statement stands. In these difficult times it certainly helps to have a sophisticated “use anywhere” accounting system, easy to adapt and change to whatever challenges come next.
Lockdown – no problem.