Data lies at the core of modern business, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are where data is most dominant. ERP software integrates data and business functions across various markets like finance, manufacturing, marketing, sales and others, which makes it an appealing prospect for potential cyber-attacks.

What threats do ERP systems face, and what can organisations do to defend themselves?

ERP systems have always been attractive targets for cybercriminals as they represent the business foundation for many large corporations, organising critical business processes, personal data and financial transactions. For cybercriminals, ERP represents an opportunity to acquire valuable information or potentially disrupt business operations. ERPs consist of abundant personal and financial data in the cybersecurity industry.

Today, businesses are progressing plans to migrate ERP systems to the cloud to enhance scalability and efficiency. This means these critical systems are moving from their traditional defensive security layers, creating new cyber attack opportunities and transforming the attack surface potential for organisations.

Cyber threats to ERP systems have become more sophisticated in recent years. Cybercriminals have gained access to ERP programming languages and protocols via cloud systems and have developed more advanced ways to target complex ERP systems. Similarly to other software solutions, ERP services are susceptible to vulnerabilities and require ongoing maintenance. Challenges, however, often limit organisations, such as intricate system architecture, multiple integrations and a lack of ERP security knowledge. The scale and complexity of securing the ERP environment for a large corporation can be overwhelming. These ERP systems contain multiple components, with complex business processes and interconnecting workflows and data systems.

This complexity can impact visibility in these applications, making it difficult to determine which vulnerabilities should be tackled first and effectively apply solutions to reduce security risk. These challenges can make it difficult for ERP customers to maintain pace with security vulnerabilities and secure configurations, which means many companies aren’t securing their ERP applications effectively.

A successful cyberattack on an ERP system can have severe consequences in terms of financial loss and reputational damage. There are direct costs associated with the cyber attack, and depending on the scale of the cyber incident, businesses can face regulatory fines and legal liabilities, particularly if personal data is compromised, as they must meet data protection regulations.

ERP systems are pivotal to business operations, and disruption can result in downtime, reduced productivity, and potentially missing opportunities. There is also the potential damage to a business’s reputation. Customers and stakeholders can lose trust in the company’s ability to protect sensitive information and provide secure services.

Evolving the ERP landscape to strengthen security

There has been a significant shift in the approach of CIOs and CISOs over the last few years. Businesses understand that they can no longer rely on traditional defensive measures to protect critical services. The business-critical application layer must provide protection, and companies focus on implementing strategies to safeguard ERP systems. There has been an accelerated emphasis on access controls and management, controlling access to ERP systems for those only who require it and monitoring usage more closely.

Secondly, ERP security has become more dependent on intelligence, with businesses actively measuring the application scene for new threats and potential vulnerabilities. Regular updates are necessary to tackle possible vulnerabilities, as cyber-attacks often appear on unpatched systems, so businesses are focusing on investment in security and code vulnerability solutions. Furthermore, companies are exploring ongoing threat monitoring that can connect with their security operations and harness AI to identify and take action on unusual activities in real time.

Aside from focusing on risk-driven technology plans, businesses should prioritise structured cybersecurity training for their employees, ensuring they understand the challenges and techniques typically used by cybercriminals to gain access to ERP systems. Continuous security tests should determine potential vulnerabilities and measure the strength of existing solutions. Working with ERP vendors and security professionals is essential to staying on top of the latest threats and most effective solutions. Applying a flexible approach to ERP security, combining the technology and human side of cybersecurity, is critical to effectively tackling the ongoing challenges in the ERP market.

Shifting finance to the cloud can create a range of benefits for businesses, but there are also potential challenges to overcome. CFOs interested in moving the finance aspect to the cloud should consider the benefits the move can bring, as well as the potential challenges. Cloud migration of software can reduce maintenance costs and enable further migration in the future. Migrating finance to SaaS can create greater cost savings in the long term and increase automation ability. SaaS, can, however, come with some challenges, such as increased security problems. 

The core benefits of moving finance to the cloud

Improved analytics – Cloud technology typically consists of more sophisticated analytics compared to on-premises software, and these analytical tools can help the finance team improve overall operations. Many companies that have shifted from legacy technologies to the cloud can offer a range of reporting and analytical tools, as well as the ability to customise reports and explore data with other analytical tools.

Enhanced Automation – Cloud technologies enable more automation of processes, saving employees significant time. Many finance businesses, for example, can automate purchase orders and send shipment updates to customers automatically. Automated services can improve overall customer service, compared to relying on people handling various manual tasks.

Reduced operational costs

Businesses are likely to experience reduced operational costs after moving finance to the cloud because cloud software requires less employee contribution. Integrated cloud services typically require less IT management. Employees can use cloud technologies to deliver specialised reports, reducing the pressure on IT teams. Furthermore, businesses with a well-structured cloud environment often save money on platform maintenance expenses. 

Improved decision-making

A cloud finance system can give finance teams more detailed insights into sales performance. Businesses equipped with modern tools can explore various segments which provide insights into sales and understand what is working or what requires attention. More granular data on sales can support businesses in making important purchasing and management decisions.

The challenges of moving finance to the cloud

CFOs and IT leaders must consider the challenges when migrating finance to the cloud.

Employee skills and training 

CFOs should remember that their employees will require additional training on new cloud systems. Finance and IT teams should collaborate to create a plan for upskilling their employees using existing systems affected by the transition to the cloud. CFOs and others associated with the cloud must consider the time and investment associated with new software training and create an appropriate plan in response. 

Employee caution and resistance While legacy services may not be as efficient, some finance professionals will be reluctant to adopt new technologies that impact their workflow. Businesses that have made the transition, often report a certain level of reluctance to technology changes. In some cases, the resistance to adopting cloud technologies has resulted in a complete restructuring of teams. Often in this situation, the result is a reduced, streamlined team capable of utilising the benefits of these new services.

Determining actual savings from the move

CFOs should explore the specific cost savings from moving to the cloud. Businesses often focus on believed cloud cost savings, but costs can escalate if a company fails to manage cloud operations effectively with efficient data management and security procedures. 

CFOs should collaborate with IT to determine the potential savings from moving to the cloud.

Establishing the business case for cloud

The CFO must partner with other senior leaders to determine the business case for moving finance to the cloud. Finance leaders and tech executives should collaborate to determine the most appropriate cloud service. While the finance team should lead the case for moving finance to the cloud, they will benefit by understanding the IT aspect of transitioning from existing systems. IT and Finance can work together to determine the opportunities for automation and develop metrics for understanding financial operations progress. 

Finance and IT working together may help gain support from other company leaders because each side will have the expertise that the other team lacks.

When discussing the value of cloud outsourcing with financing, IT leaders should highlight the benefits such as speed, reliability and security.

The division between IT and finance can be challenging in budget planning. While opinions differ within IT budget planning, they can escalate further when discussing the potential of outsourcing cloud hosting. In practice, many finance executives believe it’s cheaper to manage IT environments and resources in-house rather than outsourcing to public or private cloud providers, but this doesn’t factor in other elements like speed, reliability, and security. The benefits can be hard to determine, in terms of financial gain, but the competitive advantage cloud providers offer with secure and scalable infrastructure is valuable.

The risk of cybersecurity

When talking about the benefits of cloud outsourcing, safeguarding IT systems from the threat of cybercrime are a priority. The truth is that all companies face a potential risk of cyberattacks, and the costs can be significant. As of this year, the global average cost of each data breach exceeded $4 million, and according to the World Economic Forum, cyberattacks have increased by 125% since 2021.

The importance of reputation

Aside from the issues of damaging data and disruption to productivity and business activities, reputational harm is a concern. When sensitive customer data is exposed, businesses can experience significant harm to their reputation, which ultimately impacts their financial gains. Studies have shown that customers care deeply about data breaches and how organisations manage their information and security. The Ponemon Institute reported that 65% of data breach victims lost confidence in a business due to a data breach.

High security provided by cloud providers

As shown by studies, cyberattacks can result in substantial costs. Most businesses want the highest level of security, something that cloud providers can offer. Cloud providers invest significantly in high-level security systems and staffing to ensure their customers remain safe. Another benefit of on-premise services is the segmentation from user platforms. Outsourcing cloud hosting enables businesses to create safeguards as their users aren’t operating on the same network.

Significant investment is required for in-house hosting and will require maintenance and possible replacement in the future. The initial expense can be challenging for many companies to absorb, which leads to the benefit of cloud outsourcing. Rather than invest thousands in purchasing and maintaining in-house equipment, cloud outsourcing offers predictable costs for budgeting.

Cloud outsourcing supports businesses to compete effectively through added reliability, scalability and speed. Many cloud providers have invested time to ensure high uptime for their service, creating a higher level of reliability that makes a business more attractive to customers.

The ability of cloud providers to readily increase cloud capacity ensures businesses can remain agile and makes the process of growing more accessible and faster. Instead of investing time and money to acquire more systems, changes to cloud capacity can happen instantly.

The volume of data and storage capacity managed by cloud providers exceeds a typical company resource. Cloud providers also have quicker connection rates since they have the resources to afford better bandwidth and speeds. A faster connection means quicker speed-to-market for customers.

The benefits of cloud outsourcing may be challenging to quantify, but discussing the long-term benefits with finance leaders, including security, scalability, reliability and competitive advantage, are difficult to ignore.

Over the past decade, two significant shifts have occurred in businesses developing and launching digital technologies. The first change relates to the consumerisation of IT. In previous studies, Gartner stated that consumerisation represented one of the major trends likely to impact the IT industry in the coming years. After the demise of the dot.com era, IT budgets declined, and companies began focusing on larger consumer IT markets. This shift altered how technology entered the marketplace, including the finance industry. 

Rather than innovation entering businesses and passing on customers, the customer market would adopt new tech before enterprises. The second significant change has been the rise of digital talent in the workforce and the demand that the corporate technology experience matches the customer-based requirements. People are less reluctant to differentiate between corporate and personal technology or depend on challenging enterprise tools when consumer software is more flexible and effective. The rise of remote working has accelerated this shift, with workers looking to take more ownership of where and how they work.

Rising customer and employee expectations

All of these changes have accelerated the expectations of results from technology for both customers and employees. In society today, customers have very little tolerance for waiting or potential disruption. Customers expect transactions and related processes to be as simple and seamless as possible and are likely deterred by a service if this isn’t the case. With higher expectations for customer experience, flexibility and rapid deployment of new services are a significant part of a leading business.

The finance industry has been impacted by the rise of fintech companies which dedicate themselves to data and are free of legacy systems and the barrier attached to established banks. Utilising modern services and products related to cloud-native technologies, fintech companies have scaled without the high IT infrastructure and development costs often linked with traditional software development. 

The consistent performance of a cloud-native environment can only happen if the data on which everything is dependent is adequately protected. Any data breaches can result in massive disruption to service. For example, a ransomware attack on Travelex disrupted the business for months, resulting in customers having no access to foreign currency and eventually drove the company into administration. In the move to integrate cloud-native technologies and modern software, practical considerations about resilience and data protection often are pushed aside. For the finance industry, with many regulations and policies, disregarding data protection should not happen. Inadequate data can spell disaster for the digital transformation plans for many fintechs. According to the Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2022, about 90% of IT leaders within finance confessed to a protection gap between how much data they could lose after an outage and how often their data is stored.

With applications and data spread across physical, virtual and cloud environments, and given the sensitive nature of the financial information stored by fintech companies, infrastructure vulnerabilities and data breaches must be removed. The way IT supports our modern world has changed significantly. New cloud-native applications and microservices are reducing software development timeframes, enabling more innovation and focusing on meeting shifting customer demands. Implementing a data protection solution capable of working across these different environments is essential. With this, fintechs can ensure they can reactivate applications and protect their business and customers against cyber attacks.

As CFOs explore ways to tackle the impact of inflation on margins, self-service analytics will be essential in driving employee productivity, according to a Gartner report. 

In December 2021, Gartner surveyed 400 finance leaders and discovered that over 50% saw self-service data and analytics as an essential driver of employee productivity. At least one in four saw it as vital for increasing business speed and agility. Self-service data analytics refers to technology and processes that finance users leverage with minimal involvement from IT departments. 

Alex Bant, chief of research in Gartner Finance, explains that two out of three finance leaders have raised their prices in response to inflation. Finding ways to improve productivity and efficiency rather than passing on inflationary costs to customers can create a critical long-term competitive advantage.

Advanced data and analytics and AI technologies generating high value and where investment is forecast to rise to include self-service data analytics, automated machine learning, cloud analytics, big data analytics and predictive analytics. 

Predictive analytics predicts a series of outcomes overtime or the distribution of an outcome that could occur for a specific event, using techniques like driver-based forecasting, time-series forecasting and simulation. Predictive analytics is one of the most popular use cases for finance executives automating their forecasting processes.

Bant explains that over 90% of finance leaders have increased their digital ambitions for 2022, but the same proportion is concerned about whether this development can continue due to slower growth, higher rates and the added pressure on profitability. Investment into the digital area, even as growth declines with be vital in determining the successful businesses of the future.

Big data and predictive analytics are considered critical technologies for generating higher revenue through improving products or services. Machine Learning and cloud analytics were viewed as the best solutions to improve cost efficiency.

The upcoming Gartner CFO and Finance Executive Conference will provide insights on the issues facing CFOs on June the 6th. The conference will deliver actionable insights for CFOs and their teams to support them on their digital journey and understand what makes a team successful. The Gartner Finance practice supports finance leaders meet their top priorities and delivering on vital initiatives that spread across finance and generate business impact.

A hybrid multi-cloud approach is emerging as the preferred IT platform for implementing a business-focused strategy.

The priority of delivering a successful hybrid IT strategy is ensuring that it aligns with your business needs. This plan involves determining the most suitable on-premise systems and combining these with the most effective software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications available that meet the requirements of your organisation.

Adopting the best available SaaS technologies needn’t mean eliminating all non-cloud systems. Many businesses need these installed systems to support any plans for further innovation and digital transformation. Other challenging, resource-focused services may not be cloud-ready. These conditions require a hybrid approach, which enables cloud and non-cloud systems to work together so companies can operate various applications in non-cloud conditions while adopting cheaper and more efficient SaaS technology services.

Another vital consideration for creating the best hybrid multi-cloud strategy is ensuring the correct infrastructure model is applied when moving from legacy systems to a blend of SaaS-focused models.  

The costs associated with maintaining in-house systems must consider the operational costs of the buildings as well as the opportunity cost that comes with datacentre infrastructure. This is especially true when expanding a business or utilising new cloud technologies to accelerate transformation.

It’s important to take note of the possible inefficiencies that can occur with a data centre when factoring in these costs. Studies suggest that data centres can waste up to 90% of the energy used from the energy grid. Switching to a cloud-first datacentre model enables a business to take advantage of the economies of scale. It reduces a portion of that waste and can enable more efficient IT technology expenditures and allow for a quicker transition with the best available SaaS technologies.

Combining a hybrid IT strategy with a structured implementation plan allows infrastructure to be scaled, improves enterprise agility and enhances transformation by using a good mix of on-premise and SaaS technologies.

Innovative technologies have made financial processes more efficient, reduced the number of errors and transformed how customers view and interact with their money. In terms of product development, measuring customer habits can generate better decisions, and businesses can create structured plans based on real-time API metrics and data to respond effectively to any changes in the market.
With the integration of additional SaaS-based applications and other services by more financial businesses, the opportunity for risk continues to increase too. The importance of data quality and security will only rise in a world where cyber-attacks become more prevalent, and a lack of compliance can be significantly detrimental to an organisation. API technology provides opportunities to innovate in the financial industry, enabling organisations a competitive advantage.

Businesses today are established on data, while finance-related organisations are established on customer trust. If the security of a customer’s money or information is compromised, the trust with the business is lost. An organisation must have 100% security of the data used in developing and implementing an API tool that needs that data to function.

Open banking services have given customers greater control over their finances. People can move and manage their money with greater security from stricter regulations. Open banking platforms are accessible from many devices, making them a simple and popular option for many individuals. The customer experience has improved significantly through open banking and provided several benefits, such as more affordable payment options and smart banking services.

Finance businesses can provide customised products and customer service based on intelligent algorithms that can predict the needs and behaviours of their customers. Consequently, any transactional data quality is dependent on how this data is initially structured. With such a variety of data collected, this can become challenging for data cleansing. Data teams will spend more time applying potentially ‘faulty’ data for analysis. It’s likely that valuable information could be lost or not considered, resulting in the need for more efficient data preparation.

Utilising Real-Time Decision-Making

The instant message-based transaction generated from APIs benefits users at all levels. These systems generate quick, standardised information based on preselected details encoded into the API. This standard structure results in less uncertainty for individuals and a more efficient test design that enables professionals to explore data quality issues.

How Open Banking APIs influence data quality

Protecting outbound data

Poor data within the API will result in operational and transactional problems by impacting reporting quality, searches and analytics. Financial professionals or anyone in a customer-focused position may have to search for specific customer accounts and, in the process, find duplicated data for the same individual. Duplicated records in online financial systems can cause discrepancies and take up unnecessary space, resulting in time and costly implications for a business. In some cases, internal reports could be on incorrect data and potentially be damaging when making strategic decisions on products or other services based on inaccurate data.

API Security Considerations

Systems may be at higher risk of malfunctioning when poor data passes through an API. Quality checks must test against data structures and avoid any potential security breaches. While many cases of API security problems are unintentional, there are intentional cyber-attacks which can leave business systems inactive for long periods.

When APIs are exposed to external systems, it’s critical that security and data measures are in place and data professionals can manage all data types. Centralised services in the finance industry committed to data quality management must collaborate with the relevant regulatory and legislative groups to understand and manage these processes.

While defining the problem of data quality in open banking is relatively simple, the solution can be challenging and ignoring the issue can result in considerable problems for a business. The rapid development of technology has made it challenging for organisations to handle customer data. Technology is one of the least regulated markets, while finance and banking are the most heavily regulated industries, and data quality is critical to security.

Any customer data shared with third-party groups via an API will always pose a possible risk. If any of this information is inaccurate, the risk of exposure will rise further. Managing this risk involves having data quality solutions that ensure the customer data collected from open banking APIs are complete and correct.

Data quality assurance within finance must incorporate data governance measures and include a centre of data quality excellence. Establishing these frameworks and plans for data quality standards in open banking data ensures these problems can be solved.

How can finance leaders leverage analytics and cloud systems to improve their business functions?

Our workforce today is experiencing significant change. Technology and the rise of automotive products are transforming how processes are done and how senior leaders manage their business, particularly in the case of CFOs. In the last year, digital technology has accelerated the need for businesses to adapt their working models to remain flexible, smarter and efficient.

Businesses that enhance their focus on data and analytics to support their transformation are often considered more successful. Investing in these products, however, is only the beginning. There are several things financial leaders should consider to leverage the potential of analytics on the finance service.

Investing in cloud technology

Businesses are consumed in data but yet are still hungry for additional insights. The ability to utilise data insights can determine the success of a business, and while many leaders believe they are capable of leveraging data, studies suggest that those leading the way are experiencing a 7% higher revenue growth.

This process involves the following measures:

1. Real-time insights in data allow businesses to be proactive and explore what is happening through analysing trends and analytics.
2. Businesses will often interpret data in various ways. Cloud technology will allow finance leaders to measure data more flexibly and transparently. This will support overall decisions and ensure finance avoids any unnecessary or time-consuming efforts.
3. Being capable of benchmarking information is important for businesses to understand how they compare to others.

Businesses are looking towards the future and appreciate that investing in cloud and finance technology will ultimately benefit their organisation. For over 50% of businesses, the cloud has moved beyond an idea to a reality in terms of integrating cloud-focused HR tools. This represents a key force in transforming today’s workplace, enabling businesses to make smarter decisions. 

Create a clear plan

To enable growth, remain resilient and flexible, businesses need to ensure they have a clear strategy on how they can operate in the cloud. Consistent planning represents a key factor for exploring new growth options. An annual report is no longer sufficient. Applying tools like AI, ML and predictive analytics enable businesses to deploy reports and plans more effectively while reducing potential risk to their business.

Leverage the potential of collaborating data

Consolidating finance, HR and data in one place can create multiple benefits. It can lead to better outcomes while enabling each area to reach its own goals. Consolidating all information enables a business to think more holistically and ultimately make better decisions for the long term.

The success of a business will depend on whether your team has the necessary tools to be more efficient, flexible and operate securely. Being open and capable of collaborating are the new ways of working, and the cloud allows this in many ways. Not only will this lower time spent on manual tasks, but it also enables businesses to make real-time, data-driven plans to grow and attract the best talent.

Measuring results

For most, salary and benefits represent the biggest expense, meaning two major cost drivers are people related. Businesses often spend money on products and technology that fail to show ROI or direct benefits to employees. If employees aren’t satisfied, engagement will drop, and benefits to a company will be lost. This has become even more challenging as the pandemic has made it easier for people to move jobs.

With finance playing a critical part in business decisions, it must be capable of determining what data is needed and analysing it effectively to deliver the necessary actions. Measuring employee engagement and goals is one big step in talent retention.

Making the commitment

Cloud systems enable businesses to target specific talent and identify the skills and experience needed for the most vital roles. Not only will it improve finance functions, but it also enables HR teams to determine the best candidates, highlight potential engagement issues and identify what employees are looking for in a business.

Consolidating finance, HR and data in the cloud integrate valuable insights across your organisation, enabling teams a better understanding of their data, where there may be potential gaps and how to optimise particular areas to generate better and smarter results.

The Fintech industry has generated significant changes, disrupting many industries, particularly the financial sector. Fintech has created several benefits in finance, improving payments processing, insurance and money lending. The rise of fintech has provided a unique customer experience and enabled people to embrace the transition to fintech.

The majority of fintech customers tend to be choosing traditional financial institutions as there are several challenges that fintech needs to tackle to continue this technological revolution. Some of the main areas to focus on relating to trust, transparency, security and customer trends. 

Security and User Privacy

Across Europe, the use of financial technology increased by over 70% during 2020, supported by considerable investments into fintech. A rise like this comes with new challenges, one of which is developing new security concerns. Cybersecurity cases are rising, and unfortunately, fintech businesses are a prime target for cyberattacks. The fintech industry holds significant valuable information that needs to be protected.

Maintaining a grasp of new technology

According to a recent survey by Gartner, over 50% of financial services CIOs believe that most businesses will work with digital technology and that these channels will yield higher revenue and value. This statement emphasises the importance of fintech on the future of business performance.

Businesses that rely on traditional management systems will not keep the competitive edge needed to maintain momentum with the shift towards digital technologies. Many companies consider the transition to digital as a necessity rather than just being a good idea.

Emerging technologies such as cloud computing, AI, ML and big data offer several benefits for businesses looking to reduce overheads. They also provide the potential to improve the overall user experience. The move to these technologies, however, does come with initial costs and some risks.

AI provides a considerable competitive advantage by creating deeper insights into customer behaviours, enabling financial businesses to assign the right product to the right customer at the right time.

The Quality of Software

Finance businesses that apply the latest business technology create an advantage in the journey towards digital. The ability of new cloud technologies depends on flexibility and scalability. Having flexibility means cloud technology can enable systems to evolve alongside a business. Successful fintech businesses are dependent on reliable IT technology resources.

Industry Regulations

Regulatory compliance has become a challenge within the finance sector due mainly to the rise in regulatory fees attached to earnings and credit losses. There is a growing number of regulations that financial businesses must comply with, and compliance can present added pressures on resources.

The future of the fintech industry is relatively clear. Financial technology is going to have a significant influence on the finance industry. Developing a functional financial solution will require considering all of the challenges mentioned.

Businesses today are consumed by so much data, some face the challenge of accessing the information or lack the right tools to analyse their data.

The digital transformation of the finance industry has been happening for several years now. The potential to automate manual processes has enabled finance to transition from its conventional reporting processes to a more innovative forecasting and analytical model. While many businesses confirm they are applying analytics to their organisation in some shape or form, only 14% of finance businesses use large volumes of data available to generate valuable insights, according to the FSN Future of Analytics in Finance report.

Finance teams that have taken this approach to harness this information are better placed to forecast more accurately, create valuable scenarios and explore clear insights that support enhanced decision-making. The FSN report also suggested that 86% of analytics resources were not achieving the mark. The study believes that one of the main reasons for this is that many businesses are not utilising the value and insights from their data.

The survey found that ultimately it is the data that is holding many businesses back. Organisations are either overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data or are held back by the technology they are using to measure their information. According to the report, only 12% stated that they are suitably equipped to manage their data and have all the necessary resources to deliver clear, actionable insights.

The accelerated rise of new technologies available across the market has left many financial businesses struggling to maintain pace. This includes predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic process automation and more. While all of these technologies are valuable, creating success requires a holistic-based approach, and many still seem to be working towards this.

The survey indicated that over half of respondents were not capable of regularly adding new data sources to enhance business insights, and under half can make full use of non-financial data. When asked about the key features for analytical tools, many respondents placed AI and ML as top priorities, while at the bottom are some of the most important building blocks for creating an effective analytic system, including the ability to integrate multiple data sources.

The survey findings resonate with developments in the market. Many larger organisations struggle to deliver efficiency and agility in their reports, planning, budgeting and forecasting processes. This is often down to an over-reliance on spreadsheets and manual processes or using fragmented applications that a business may have outgrown or not capable of managing.

Innovative businesses are improving analytical insights by combining processes to deliver a singular system for financial results, budgets and forecasts. Businesses are taking further steps to integrate data processes into their analytics platforms on a more consistent basis. Accessing this type of information and combining it with financial data provides these businesses with clear views into key trends and indicators that enable decisions that can impact the future of a business.

Generating unified and efficient reporting combined with operational data requires the appropriate analytical systems and appropriately skilled talent. In our rapidly developing economy, having the necessary information systems capable of generating clear insights and analytics is not an option anymore but a vital part of surviving and succeeding for the future.