The interrelated issues of organizational complexity are becoming increasingly difficult for finance directors to handle. To drive success, they must efficiently execute essential activities and provide timely access to financial and operational outcomes to enable decision-making throughout the organization.
And now, all of a sudden, Finance teams must adapt and respond to COVID-19’s extraordinary surge in demand for remote operation. It is, therefore, more important than ever for them to improve financial process efficiency. However, in this challenging climate, having advanced collaboration and process management capabilities is critical.
The timely completion of important financial activities, such as the financial close, reporting, budgeting, planning, and forecasting, necessitates extensive cross-functional coordination. These initiatives need precise planning, monitoring, and implementation across several departments, as well as contributions and permissions from others. Finance executives need a sophisticated set of tools to keep these initiatives on track, including the following:
- Plan process stages, assign task owners and keep track of dependencies.
- Real-time visibility into the progress of the process and insight into bottlenecks.
- Confidence in the process’s security and integrity, as well as the implementation of job separation.
- Collaboration technologies that help teams communicate and work more efficiently.
- An interface for task management that is integrated with the financial operations it represents.
The Use of Legacy Tools Is Only a Part of the Solution
Spreadsheets, project management software, and fragmented finance and corporate performance management (CPM) systems are among the obsolete technologies used by finance teams for job management. While these techniques may work for smaller businesses, large, sophisticated organizations – which demand a more complete set of skills – will find it more difficult to keep cross-functional teams on the same page and streamline essential financial procedures. Managing task dependencies in a detached project management system or, to a lesser extent, spreadsheets is doable. However, these technologies make process management and monitoring difficult. To update statuses, employees of the accounting and finance teams must manually verify the progress of important activities and transfer data across systems. Meanwhile, users are compelled to refer to their work plans manually in one interface before acting on them in another. As a result, while seeking to acquire the insights needed to manage critical operations, finance leaders are hampered by these instruments.
Using these inadequate instruments is comparable to attempting to tighten a bolt with a pair of pliers for finance executives. The task will get done, but not as good as it could be – it will take a long time and a lot of effort.
With OneStream Task Manager, you can lead at lightning speed.
The XF MarketPlace’s OneStream Task Manager seamlessly solves these requirements, allowing Financial leaders to structure and manage workflow processes across functions and essential finance operations. For customers who are already familiar with the OneStream platform, Task Manager delivers a seamless interface and experience, as well as easy navigation across task workflows to bring users to forms, reports, and needed data. Individuals in charge of task execution can see what they need to do, track when they need to do it, and take action – all from the same platform and user interface. Lastly, Task Manager enables Finance executives to automate the financial closure, reporting, budgeting, planning, and forecasting, as well as other activities, to improve operational and financial performance. Here are some of Task Manager’s most useful features:
Visual Process Charts — Improve workflows with interactive charts that give managers real-time visibility into the status of important processes, tasks, due dates, and dependencies, as well as the ability to intervene when bottlenecks arise. Users may jump right from tasks to incomplete processes, reports, and dashboards.
Integrated Messaging — Use task-based alerts and messages inside the solution, as well as email notifications, to boost cooperation. Managers can send task-related communications to employees and get notifications when assignments are past due. Users can advance tasks as needed and receive notifications about approaching deadlines. Messages with the date and time stamps can be linked to certain activities.
Role and Task Security – With tasks/task groups linked to Workflows in OneStream, visibility into tasks based on ownership of task and given characteristics, and tight segregation of responsibilities, drive responsibility and assure segregation of duties.
With Task Manager, you can get things done faster.
Finance executives at sophisticated companies including Grupo Traxion, West Bend Mutual Insurance, and Solenis are using OneStream to automate their financial closure, reporting, budgeting, planning, and forecasting processes. OneStream’s Task Manager gives finance teams at these companies the freedom, control, and capacity to interact successfully, allowing them to focus on delivering performance and business value throughout their businesses.
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
