Let's Improve Business Intelligence In Accounting

At phase 4 of the T-Tech Maturity Journey, we address the reporting problem that is common amongst many accountancy practices in the modern workplace. The problem being, business intelligence in accounting. 

Native reporting systems aren’t good enough anymore, and many firms struggle with data and systems that don’t speak to one another. While some firms do have analytics dashboards in place, they are not always centralised. They only provide reports about specific internal data - sometimes from only one practice’s departments. Often, they neglect providing insight into customer data.

The Answer: Live Insights

In order to really become a part of your customers business, you need to be delivering live insights. Delivering a set of accounts to your customer is the basic first step of the journey to serving them well. The second, is gaining instant access to live dashboards of analytics across your practice and departments. From KYC, to expenses, and financials, this will put you in an even better position to serve your clients.

Initially you may be a bit daunted by the thought of sifting through pages of data and organising it into a presentable manner. Especially when you don’t have an overarching location of information. 

Luckily, it can be a lot simpler than that. Having a series of out of the box dashboards, based on the industry your customer is in, not only makes you a much more valuable extension of their company, but makes your services much “stickier”. Giving your customer real time data for decision making is useful – but taking this a step further by automating the analysis of the data will also improve your business intelligence in accounting. 

Not only will these insights have an impact when your staff are wanting customer analytics, but also when the board are analysing internal data too. Integrated with and supporting your core management applications, you will be able to see a multi-dimensional view of all activities across your practice in real time. This is good for so many things, especially reducing the time spent on data analysis between different applications.

Making smart, strategic decisions for the future with Power BI

There is an array of smart tools out there. You probably don’t realise that you already have all the tools you need available to you. If you’ve got this far on your maturity journey, you would have embraced the cloud and Office 365 at phase 1. At this fourth stage, we introduce Power BI, a practice intelligence tool offering smart insights and customisable dashboards, which does all the heavy lifting for you.

The business benefits and ROI are worth the investment:

• Easy to understand and actionable insights.
• Data is immediate, without the need for countless Excel spreadsheets.
• Consistent data across the business, making board level reporting stress free.
• Staff can spend time on analysing data from one application, rather than creating data from multiple, disparate applications.
• Makes a difference when each of your accountant’s or department’s customers have their own dashboard, because then the accountant becomes really important to the business.
• Builds a collaborative community amongst your teams.

Practice longevity lies in the ability to adapt

With all this in mind, understanding your data and learning to use your insights effectively, will act as a catalyst to growth and maturity and give you better business intelligence in accounting.

Consult with your customers to see how they are doing things currently. The systems you have access to and your cumulative knowledge, you are bound to have of businesses in a similar position. This will mean you are well positioned to create these services in a cost-effective way.

Transform your accounting for better business

It’s time to spot the opportunities, action smart decisions, and lay the building blocks to growth in this fourth phase. Place your business in the ultimate position to mature and excel with practice intelligence services. These services add a new analytics layer that works with the practice management applications you use every day so you can transform your performance without making a sacrifice.

Make business intelligence in accounting easier than ever — check out our practice intelligence services today.