In a previous analysis, McKinsey & Company highlighted a startling revelation: managers at Fortune 500 companies collectively "waste more than 500,000 days a year on ineffective decision-making". While the statistic was reported back in 2019, it continues to remain an alarming reality. This inefficiency predominantly arises from a reliance on instinct rather than harnessing the available data at hand.

Contrary to popular belief, the issue isn't the absence of data. In fact, there's been an unprecedented surge in the generation and collection of data. However, the crux lies in the difficulty, until recently, of connecting crucial decision-makers to buried insights within this data—especially financial data. Even though there is a lot of financial data out there, it is still hard to get relevant, real-time financial insights because the data is spread out, disconnected, and hard to access and understand. Traditional budgeting and FP&A processes, while essential, prove insufficiently agile in keeping pace with today's rapidly evolving business landscape.

The silver lining emerges through recent advancements in cash flow automation, revolutionizing the accessibility of real-time financial insights crucial for sound decision-making.

Inherent Impediments of Legacy Applications

While some parts of the business, especially sales and marketing, have adopted cloud-native and connected technology, the true digitization of finance has only just begun. Most teams continue to rely on disconnected and often legacy tools and point solutions to mostly gather and consolidate data and automate narrowly defined workflows. The fact is that many of these legacy systems and tools are obsolete in the age of agile business because they can’t keep pace in areas critical to the modern organization, such as:

• Security: Aging legacy systems often cease to be supported, increasing their risk of breach.
• Maintenance: They require updating and patching by IT staff who are increasingly unfamiliar with them.
• Compatibility: They rarely connect or integrate with older systems or newer technologies.
• Company perception: To employees and customers alike, they feel outdated and cumbersome.
• Data management: Most significantly, they are unable to combine and analyze the enormous amount of data that every department, employee, channel, transaction, device, and customer in your organization generates across distributed systems. The result is a disconnected, incomplete picture of what’s really going on at any given time.

According to Deloitte, this means that “organizations that use outmoded technology are often limited in addressing critical business needs as well as seizing opportunities for future growth.”

Infinite Possibilities of Digital Cash Flow Performance Platforms

When labor-intensive, spreadsheet-based finance processes are converted to automated, AI-driven cash flow performance platforms, the old impediments to smart decision-making are removed and replaced with the following:

• Holistic cash view: Decision-makers have the latest information from every possible source integrated into one complete view of your organization’s cash position. With this clear and shared view, it’s easier to make the right decision at the right time.
• Cost-effective data analysis: The AI embedded in emerging cash flow platforms can rapidly analyze every available piece of data without the need for additional human resources or the protracted time it would take them to manually sort through such vast information.
• Instant and dynamic visibility instead of forecasts: Based on real-time information about customer demographics, past transactions, current trends, and external factors, the cash flow performance platform eliminates the time it takes to create accurate cash flow forecasts and provides a longer view into the future.
• Collaborative environment: Armed with better information and fuller predictions, staff are free to collaborate on decisions that further your business objectives.

Ultimate Game Changer

With over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data generated per day, it’s increasingly difficult for organizations to operate—much less succeed—without new technologies capable of immediately plowing through such data or connecting it to those who desperately need it to make sound business decisions.

Tesorio’s cash flow performance platform can lead you into a better future of cash flow. Speak to a cash flow expert today.