Written by Nils R. | Jan 19, 2022 8:00:00 AM
How can
Financial Dashboard
s Drive Faster and Better Decisions? As CFOs increasingly become key advisors in the Monthly Reporting Process, they must rely on modern self-service corporate performance management (CPM) and business intelligence (BI) tools. Using interactive Financial Dashboards like the Profitability Benchmarking Dashboard template shown below enables them and users from the board and executive teams to experience near real time profitability metrics that help drive faster and better decisions.
Who uses
Profitability Benchmarking Dashboard
s and What are Some Key Analytical Features? In today’s fast-paced business environment, CFOs are under high pressure to supply end users like board members and leaders with timely and concise Financial Dashboards. Companies use key features like the ones below to support their users with effective analysis that helps drive optimal performance for subsidiaries:
- Year-to-date (YTD) profit metric tables with the chosen business unit benchmarked against the average of all business units
- Charts comparing Year-to-Date (YTD) Actual and Budgets for the chosen business unit with the average of all units
- Period, company and other filters that dynamically drive the dashboard
The Profitability Benchmarking Dashboard template can be used as a key element of the Monthly Reporting process: [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2560"]
Example of a Profitability Benchmarking Dashboard to Streamline the Monthly Reporting Process[/caption] The Profitability Benchmarking Dashboard is a ready-to-use Financial Dashboard from the
Solver Marketplace.
A Brief Description of the
Profitability Benchmarking Dashboard
Template Financial Dashboards like the one seen in the image above are interactive and parameter driven and typically contain sections with profitability KPIs displayed with charts and traffic lights indicators for budget variances. One of the important features that aid the user in the analysis process is the ability to on the fly analyze and benchmark profitability performance of any business unit against a chosen set of subsidiaries. Profitability Benchmarking Dashboards are often used in conjunction with revenue and expense dashboards, consolidated and individual profit and loss reports, and budget models.
Data Integration to Transaction Systems Most organizations these days want automated and streamlined
planning,
reporting and
analysis. However, many of the benefits described earlier rely on best of breed Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools and/or Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities as well as data marts or data warehouses that use pre-built integrations to the organization’s ERP system. Oftentimes, they also need integrations to other key data sources like CRM, subscription systems, payroll tools, etc. Modern, cloud-based ERPs like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance (D365 Finance), Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Sage Intacct, Acumatica, Netsuite and SAP have robust APIs which allow for dynamic integrations to CPM and BI tools that are fully automated and flexible to run on a schedule or on-demand.
Additional Resources to Aid with Research of Templates, CPM and BI Tools
- Templates from Solver that are pre-built and that work out-of-the-box using the Solver CPM cloud. Click here.
- Template examples: You find more than 500 CPM and BI Template examples here.
- Interactive Dashboard examples: Try Power BI dashboard templates from Solver here.
- Software evaluation and selection:
- Creating efficient processes:
