Today, there’s a lot more to building a better finance function for your business than simply looking after the books. There’s a growing list of challenges for senior finance executives, including assessing business risks, reducing costs, ensuring compliance, talent management and succession planning (to name a few). Addressing these challenges using spreadsheets and manual processes doesn’t cut it anymore.
"Spreadsheets bog down processes in many different ways that have a noticeable impact on how long it takes to get work done," explains Robert Kugel, senior vice president and research director at Ventana Research. "They're fast [and] easy to set up, but when they're used in collaborative, repetitive enterprise processes, they become time wasters."
When Ventana asked finance professionals if they were aware there are better alternatives to Excel for performing critical finance functions, only 49% said "yes." The remaining half was divided between "don't know" with 32%, and "no" with 19%.
"They haven't looked up from their spreadsheets to see if there are better ways," said Kugel.
According to the Association for Financial Professionals, “Traditional on-premises FP&A systems are not being utilized. The reasons are a lack of flexibility and too much dependence on the IT department. Many practitioners still use Excel for the majority of their duties and upload results of the Excel analytics into FP&A systems.”
On the upside, there have been many recent developments in the FP&A systems market. “Many companies that have implemented modern FP&A systems have been able to transform their FP&A processes into more flexible and dynamic ones,” explains the Association for Financial Professionals.
Limelight is leading the finance transformation.
Limelight is a single, flexible solution that forward-thinking finance teams are adopting to address the growing list of challenges and expectations they face as finance teams evolve from backroom accountants to boardroom advisors.
It’s a single app with an Excel-like experience that integrates seamlessly with financial databases and reduces the need for spreadsheets and IT departments. While it is a single app, it opens up endless possibilities for the Office of Finance and other departments within the organization – from finance, HR, to sales and marketing, to supply chain – to plan better, faster and further than they would with spreadsheets. It gives companies the power to plan for any area of their business, enables collaboration and informed decision-making to improve business performance.
Continuous, customer-driven innovation means Limelight’s features, use cases and versatility are always expanding, all to help customers be more successful and accomplish their departmental and business goals.
Limelight customers are expanding the use of the application for:
- HR Planning
- Project Planning
- Capex Planning
- Board Reports
- Customer Analytics
- Request for Proposal
“When we set out to create the best financial performance management app that interfaces with the leading databases that companies use today, we knew it needed to be flexible. It addresses a growing demand for a single app for many different planning purposes, from budgeting and forecasting to workforce planning, to creating board reports. With Limelight, the possibilities are endless,” says Limelight's CEO, Inder Seth.
See how Limelight, a single database front-end, will empower all types of planning across your entire organization. Book a demo.
