Finance teams today are dealing with a greater volume of data than ever before. As businesses grow and scale, the breadth of their financial information expands exponentially. Legacy financial systems were not designed for this, and many finance teams still rely on spreadsheets, email attachments, and human consolidation of reports to misinterpret their data. But there is a better way.
Modern CFOs need to be fully informed to make smart decisions that block strategic vision. However, with too much data point and too many reporting avenues, it is tough to get a birds-eye view of your company’s financial reports are needing immediately action. This is where custom NetSuite dashboards can help.
The Problem with Spreadsheets and Generic Software Dashboards
Many finance teams today still depend on Excel spreadsheets as their primary financial reporting tool. While spreadsheets seem like an easy, flexible way to work with data, they come with plenty of risks and downsides, such as:
- Inaccurate data: With data needing to be entered and updated manually, it is easy for spreadsheets to contain incorrect or outdated information. Even the smallest error can snowball into bad business decisions.
- Lack of big picture view: Information becomes siloed onto multiple different spreadsheets and email files across a company, making it difficult for stakeholders to view all aspects of a business holistically.
- Lack of automation: Majority of the reporting work to update and consolidate spreadsheets falls on your accounting team. This takes away their time from using financial insights. Reporting should not be the highest value work your accounting team is doing.
Off-the-shelf software alternatives provide dashboards too. But they tend to be “one size fits all” and lack the specificity most finance teams need to monitor key metrics. It takes considerable consultant fees to customize canned dashboards for your specific business needs. And when your needs evolve, going through another round of costly customizations is required.
The Solution – Custom NetSuite Dashboards
With a custom, built-from-scratch NetSuite dashboard solution specifically tailored to your needs, your finance team can focus less on gathering and consolidating data, and more on planning, forecasting, and decision making. A well-designed NetSuite dashboard provides:
- Real-time data: NO more waiting until month or quarter end to view accurate reports. Key performance metrics can update in real-time as transactions occur.
- Consolidated view: Rather than toggling between multiple sources of financial data, everything your stakeholders need is in ONE place.
- Interactive analysis: Allow users to easily filter and segment by dimensions like locations, business units, customers, etc. to gain richer insights. Identify both high level trends AND granular opportunities.
- Automated refresh: Say goodbye to manual spreadsheet upkeep. NetSuite dashboards connect directly to your live data and update automatically without any copying or pasting.
- Role-based access: Display tailored datasets, KPIs, graphs and more for specific user personas from C-level execs to department managers.
Key Elements of High-Value Finance Dashboards
Not all dashboards are made equal. Simply throwing up a few grids and charts doesn’t necessarily add clarity. The most effective dashboards focus users’ attention on the RIGHT metrics personalized for their decision making, in an intuitive and visually appealing interface.
Here are some key elements to include:
- KPI overview: Allow executives to monitor the overall business health in real-time with highlight metrics like Revenue Growth % YoY, Operating Expenses Budget vs. Actual, and Gross Margin.
- Cash forecasting: Enable your FP&A team to model out future cash positions with rolling forecasts that combine historical averages along with actuals and pending payments.
- AP/AR tracking: Quickly see how much your business has in upcoming Accounts Payable vs Accounts Receivable to prevent late fees and improve DPO.
- Expense analysis: Empower department heads to analyze expenses by activities, subledger accounts and more to identify savings opportunities.
- Project / Job Profitability: For services firms, view real-time profit metrics for each ongoing project to course correct as needed.
The specific components will vary by business. The key is sitting down with stakeholders to understand what metrics require continuous monitoring vs. one-off analysis to build fully customized dashboards aligned to your decision making processes.
Why Choose SuiteRep for Your NetSuite Dashboard Implementation?
As a 5-star NetSuite customization firm, SuiteRep has an extensive track record delivering NetSuite dashboards that become a mission control center for finance teams. Our consultants take the time to understand your specific reporting needs, and bring industry-leading best practices to the design process.
A few reasons to choose SuiteRep:
- NetSuite Experts: Our team lives and breathes NetSuite. We optimize around the platform capabilities to provide analysis not possible in rigid traditional BI tools disconnected from your ERP.
- ROI-Focused: We work WITH your internal finance team and gather feedback from dashboard end users during builds to maximize adoption and value capture from your investment.
- Ongoing Optimization: With our NetSuite managed services, we become trusted advisors that help expand and improve your custom dashboards over time to continue driving decisions.
If you too dread your monthly reporting routines and want to turn financials into a competitive advantage for your growing company, let’s explore if a custom NetSuite dashboard solution is the right fit!
Keep an eye for more latest news & updates on Teckjb!
About the Author
