Solution Brief
Streamline and modernize the entire financial planning process with analytics
The issue
The pace of regulatory change coupled with the explosive growth of available financial and operational data has made legacy accounting solutions incapable of delivering critical insight into the cost, profitability and financial planning analysis that organizations need for operational excellence.
As a result, CFOs and FPA leaders are assuming a leading role in driving more agile, continuous and companywide planning. According to Gartner, “By 2025 50% of FPA leaders will have enterprise wide data strategy as a key responsibility.”
Financial planning software is at the forefront of modernization efforts. Most organizations still rely on traditional accounting systems to answer questions like: Who are our most and least profitable customers? What are our most profitable products or services? Are we offering the right product mix to the right customers? Are our resources allocated effectively?
Traditional accounting systems were designed primarily to fulfill external reporting requirements – not strategic planning. Therefore, these systems are incapable of delivering intelligence about business processes, cost flows and cost drivers that have a profound effect on an organization’s bottom-line performance.
The challenge
Reliance on traditional accounting systems.
Traditional systems cannot deliver intelligence about business processes, cost flows and cost drivers.
SAS goes beyond the limits of legacy accounting systems by providing a transparent, rules-driven modeling environment designed for strategic financial planning.
Lack of fact-based data.
Organizations may have a “gut feel” that production or operational costs are too high in a given area but lack fact-based data to benchmark those processes across their business or industry sector.
The SAS Viya analytic platform centralizes financial and operational data to deliver advanced analytics and KPI dashboards for a better understanding of your performance results.
Inaccurate cost allocations.
Traditional cost systems do not track nonstandard costs – such as excessive engineering, quality, bid expense, rework, marketing programs or sales incentives – for accurate allocation to the product or customer driving the costs.
SAS tracks detailed cost flows including reciprocal cost allocation and unlimited cost-pooling for support of any allocation methodology. We also deliver analysis and reporting on processes, activities, capacity, costs and utility in order to drive improved strategic and operational decision-making.
(Productivity gains of 15% to 30%; Reduce data cycle time by up to 50%; Reduce costs through process improvements )
Our approach
Organizations are looking beyond traditional accounting systems for ways to accurately allocate costs and resources while offering the right product mix to the right customers for the maximum benefit to their bottom line.
Perform on-demand consolidations that include automatic currency conversion, intercompany eliminations, ownership adjustments and allocations to close the books faster.
Balance risk and profitability down to the customer and relationship level to make confident decisions about pricing, product mix, resource allocation and budgets.
Understand available resources and schedules to predict the resource implications of changes in output demand and improve supply planning.
Make more accurate marketing and operational decisions that lead to improved profits and a positive ROI.
Drill down into any product, customer or service area to identify the costs associated with underlying business processes.
“We made the transition to performance control, whereas in the past the focus was on financial control. SAS Cost and Profitability Management (part of SAS Intelligent Performance Management) was the right tool to make this possible.” Dutch Telecoms Company
SAS difference
SAS Intelligent Performance Management delivers unmatched financial intelligence that simplifies the management of planning, forecasting and budgeting scenarios while meeting the demands for timeliness, accuracy and regulatory compliance. The solution offers robust data integration, flexible model creation for highly accurate forecasting, best-in-class reporting, analytical visualization and exploration capabilities.
Scalability
- Benchmarks show that SAS patented AI/ML models allow users to create millions of high-quality forecasts across all different types of data sets 30 times faster than alternative solutions.
Accuracy
- Organizations can achieve unparalleled forecast accuracy at all levels of the hierarchy.
Automation
- Patented model creation and selection using AI/ML techniques do not require a statistician, which results in fewer overrides and greater trust and productivity in the demand planning process.