Spreadsheets like Excel can be valuable to small businesses for tracking costs and organizing their finances. However, growing companies can find them to be time-consuming and cumbersome. Plus, there’s a strong chance of human error that can throw the information off entirely. Implementing ways to stay competitive and relevant is essential for long-term organizational growth. Finding a tool for automating budgeting helps companies maintain and grow their business in numerous ways. Today, we’ll highlight 7 benefits of automating this process.
Greater Reporting Insights
Accurate, real-time information feeds into informed decision-making. Spreadsheets eventually get mired down in the amount of data a thriving company generates. A solution that provides automated budgets can easily wrangle this data into absorbable metrics that tell a story.
This type of transparency gives companies a strong foundational base. Data guide decisions like expansion and resource allocation. Business leaders can then use this information to build data-driven, actionable initiatives that keep the company in the black.
Decreased Planning Time with Automating Budgeting
The saying “time is money” has never been as true as it is today. Everything moves more rapidly now than it did ten years ago and if your company isn’t faster than before, you’ll fall behind.
Automating budgeting cuts out literally hours of work.
- Integrate several sources of information and make calculations in seconds.
- Gain access to up-to-the-minute data instead of stale, outdated intel.
- Quickly compare performance against the plan and find holes and ways to improve.
Freeing up time spent on manual budgeting processes gives leaders more resources to spend on strategic planning and forecasting. Automation budgeting tools lend themselves to greater operational efficiency.
Fewer Errors
One of the biggest drawbacks, other than the time it takes, of a manual process is the possibility of human error. Entering the wrong number on the wrong line, or missing a number, can cause big issues with the data integrity. If the mistake isn’t found promptly the damage can grow.
Using an automated budgeting solution alleviates these issues and increases reporting accuracy. Setting automated tasks and using drag-and-drop functionality dramatically reduce the instances of erroneous input and calculations. The result? More predictive data to help the company make decisions.
Enhanced Productivity
Productivity is often the catalyst that makes a company thrive or falter. If you can decrease time spent on a business action while maintaining quality, it tightens up company performance. That goal is the concept behind adopting automated budgeting.
- Less time inputting information.
- Less time is spent running calculations and disseminating data.
- Better information equates to more informed, clear-cut decision-making.
- More time to spend on visionary actions that insulate the business from competitors and gain market share.
Automated budgeting tools don’t just increase leadership’s productivity. It makes the employees responsible for tracking and planning the budgets more efficient, too.
Easier Scalability with Automating Budgeting
As a company grows, many of its processes must change to keep pace. Automated budgetings help with that objective. By implementing a strong foundation of technology that simplifies efficient processes and returns accurate results, a business won’t get bogged down in manual, outdated ways of doing things.
Add to that the powerful, real-time insights an automated solution offers, and companies also lessen the chances of making a wrong move at a critical time.
Companies that incorporate automation into their budgeting processes can skip the “growing pains” often caused by scaling. This can keep them on track with their overall strategies without any hiccups.
More Proactive Agility
Spreadsheets are, for the most part, a static concept. Automated budgets are dynamic animals. By using them for continuous budgeting and planning, a company can increase its agility and take advantage of opportunities.
Automated budgeting tools allow you to:
- Build budget models in little time that can be the skeleton of your plan.
- Test multiple scenarios to pre-determine positive outcomes.
- Generate accurate business forecasts.
- Refine your budget based on market (and other) changes.
With the combination of decreasing the time spent on manual budgeting tasks and increasing the insight gleaned from company data, leaders are better armed with the ability to identify and jump on lucrative opportunities that grow their businesses.
A Better Employee Experience with Automating Budgeting
The previous benefits have been focused on the company’s big picture. Now let’s drill down into how an automated budgeting solution benefits company employees.
A big way to keep employees engaged and motivated is to give them the proper tools they need to do their jobs well. Tedious, time-consuming tasks are nobody’s idea of fun. Add to that the pressure of perfection (as is the case with spreadsheets) and manual budgeting processes can frustrate even the most loyal employee.
Automated budgeting tools give employees a way to get more done and deliver a higher standard of work. It also frees them up to work on other projects, keeping them active and engaged in their roles. Bear in mind, however, that companies should always properly train employees on new solutions to make the transition seamless.
Companies Can be More Productive and Responsive with Centage
We’ve looked at 7 of the many benefits of using an automated budgeting process. As a business grows, finding ways to accomplish more in less time is vital to its continued success. An automated budgeting tool offers just that. By decreasing manual work, you can track, measure, and use the insights from your data to drive more informed decisions.
Centage provides modern FP&A software solutions that empower Finance teams to lead the way to a stronger, more agile business. Our cloud platform, Planning Maestro, makes sophisticated budgeting, planning, and forecasting easy and accessible. Intuitive automation accelerates workflows and improves accuracy, enabling Finance leaders to deliver reliable information and meaningful insights at the speed of today’s business. For more information on how to modernize your FP&A process, view our product demonstration video, or call 800-366-5111.
