What Successful Companies are Turning to in 2021

As we reflect on the unexpected chaos that 2020 presented, we also look ahead at ways of adapting to be better prepared for whatever is coming our way next. One of the biggest lessons learned is that you can't have enough data, but more importantly, the granular insights derived from your data that show you where to act. We talked to the experts at Phocas Software to outline the top 3 Acumatica BI trends to help you achieve your goals and mitigate losses when the unexpected occurs in 2021 and beyond.

Trend #1 - Integrating Budgeting and Forecasting

To keep pace with the rapidly changing marketing conditions, we are seeing a shift to integrating budgeting and forecasting with BI to inform the company strategy better. In 2021, businesses are adopting software tools to simplify the budgeting process and make it more collaborative, so the budgets are more integral to decision-making. 

Robust BI capabilities like those built into Phocas makes the budgets and forecasts "live." That means re-forecasting and adjusting for new variables is more straightforward and less of a heavy lift. And Phocas creates visibility for department managers and other stakeholders so they can easily monitor impacts and outcomes, and adjust quickly. Your decision makers will be able to re-forecast on demand, and even run rolling forecasts.

Trend #2 - Real-time Data Free From Siloes

Companies that integrate Phocas BI with their Acumatica ERP are continually up to date. Managers and decision makers have access to KPIs in real time, so they can see the impact of decisions and actions to help them stay on track towards goals.

With company-wide analytics, collaboration and transparency improves conversations and decision-making across the business. For example, financial numbers are no longer the sole domain of the accounting team, but can be shared easily, and with user-permissions across each department. Where there is widespread access to financial performance data, stakeholders are able to investigate patterns and find answers quickly.

In a recent article for example, McKinsey & Co. wrote that it was crucial to monitor and attempt to predict shifts in consumer behavior.  It said that companies that take "thoughtful and swift action can build the resilience needed to weather the storm." To increase the likelihood of becoming the resilients, companies need to create conditions that allow them to make stronger decisions across the business. By taking actions early–such as investing in company-wide business intelligence that is easy to use and adopt across an organization–companies in every sector will be able to identify opportunities and move the business forward. 

Trend #3 - Visualization is Key

Data is great, but it's not as helpful as insights. With Phocas Software, your numbers-heavy financial data is presented in contextualized visualizations. You'll see complexities with a simplicity that makes it easy to spot correlations, causes, and other actionable insights in the data. You'll know where and how much adjustment you'll need to make when you use what-if modeling.

The ability to spot trends in the data equates to the ability to act on the information. Until you know what's happening, and why it's happening, you won't know what levers to pull to avoid a bad situation. And if you're relying on Excel and Acumatica reporting alone, these types of insights are nearly impossible to get to quickly, which drives successful companies to seek out an integrated Acumatica data analytics software like Phocas to solve this problem.

With Phocas Software, it's easy to see it all. You can drill into data to follow a hypothesis as to a root cause, or slice and dice data to do in-depth analysis in just a few clicks. And because Phocas is combining data from your various sources, you get the ability to manipulate connected data in a way Excel never will.

Phocas Software is an Acumatica-certified and customer-validated solution, and for more than 20 years, has advanced the business intelligence and data analytics capabilities of over 1,700 companies and 20,000 plus users.

If you’d like to get business-changing insights from the Acumatica data at your fingertips, contact the Acumatica experts at Phocas Software today to request your 30-minute demo.