White Papers

3 New Approaches for the Data Driven Chief Financial Officer An Aberdeen study found that 64% of business managers have seen their decision-making time shrink over the last year. In another study, Aberdeen found that 28% of business managers said they needed data to make decisions within an hour of a business event; another 42% needed information within a day. That doesn't provide much time for finance to supplement the decision-making process with supporting analysis. Decision-making processes have relied, and should rely, on fact-based, data-driven management information. Historically, executives would depend on monthly financial reports and a plethora of other off-line operational reports originating from outside the finance function to monitor the health of the business. Financial reports and other real-time operational data are often lagging indicators of performance. These metrics, although perhaps lacking precision, may have been sufficiently effective in the past; however, they are less so now because they lag the current cadence of information dissemination and business volatility today. Instantaneous and deeper financial insight is required more than it ever has at any point in history to respond to these challenges. What is required is an analytical approach that enables management to monitor and measure the development of the important strategic drivers and make decisions with confidence. In this whitepaper, we will explore how organizations are transitioning from a periodic, ad hoc reporting paradigm to real-time reporting. The shortening of the reporting cycle and challenges of keeping up Traditional financial reporting focuses attention on results over varying periods of time. The annual financial statements are the universal

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