7 Deadly Sins of Financial Management (Infographic) Minding the books while trying to gather insights from fiscal data is difficult. Update to modern technology. Cloud computing offers answers.
By Jeff Epstein Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Financial management is the beating heart of every single business. Money pumps in, money pumps out, and it's critical to ensure you're following the right regimen to maintain the health of the organization. As most businesses grow, however, their customer base and supply chain evolve and become more complex. Minding the books while trying to gather insights from financial data becomes increasingly difficult.
Too many companies -- focused on developing products and fending off the competition -- ignore the requirements of healthy operations and instead rely on a financial system that encourages the worst possible habits. These organizations end up committing one or more of the following "seven deadly sins of financial management," resulting in a variety of devastating afflictions, such as poor decision-making, low productivity and a lack of competitiveness.
By letting go of antiquated financial systems and moving to a modern, cloud-based financial management system that's integrated with other operational systems, a company can centralize business data and ensure access to correct, up-to-the-minute information. By selecting a financial system that offers enterprise social collaboration, a company can reduce email, increase productivity and allow for collaboration between the front and back offices.
The ideal system should automate daily financial processes and eliminates reliance on spreadsheets. This will streamline the workflow and reduce the possibility of errors. This should automate expense tracking, linking those entries to client projects to improve billing accuracy and minimize revenue leakage. Today's latest cloud-based financial systems offer the ability to centralize and aggregate data across far-flung enterprises, making it possible to automate and streamline revenue management to minimize compliance risk.
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