Empower Ambition: The 4 Imperatives for Financial Management

For our clients, these recommendations were not new. They have had these capabilities for years. With our cloud-based, multi-tenant platform, financial management empowers their visions and grows with their ambitions.

McKinsey’s 2020 research found organizations of all sizes trying to consolidate data from disparate systems because they lacked visibility from a single source. Frequent data entry errors or incomplete information made the resulting insights of questionable use. Decision-making was not always data-driven.

The study also revealed that finance departments that implemented basic automation saw efficiency improvements from 15% to 35%. McKinsey projected that as businesses embrace advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), more complex activities will be automated.

We Do More Than Transactional Activities

Debits and credits don’t disappear with Xledger, but they no longer require human intervention. Xledger combines AI and ML to automate invoicing, bank reconciliations, data entry, and month-end processing. Robotic process automation (RPA) frees staff to perform more value-added tasks. Automated workflows can tackle even complex processes when combined with advanced technologies.

By automating data-entry activities, Xledger reduces errors that plague most organizations. An Experian survey found that 95% of businesses saw data errors undermine their performance. Xledger’s OCR capabilities eliminate errors when moving data from paper to digital. With automated workflows, data is collected, converted, and delivered without error.

Xledger offers tools to manage transactional activities such as payments, deposits, and cash flow. All financial information is available through a customizable dashboard, whether it is in single or multiple currencies. With Xledger’s automated capabilities, businesses can have visibility down to definable dimensions.

Einar Pederson knows something about inefficiencies. As the CFO of 60 decibels, Einar found his team struggling to keep up with monthly closings. Once the company moved to Xledger, month-end processes were streamlined.

“There is no doubt that Xledger has streamlined our closing and financial reporting process. We close monthly on day 5, something which would not have been remotely achievable with Xero.”

Our cloud-based solution automates more than transactions. It automates bank reconciliation, issues invoices, generates expense reports and displays consolidated information for accurate real-time visibility. With Xledger, organizations are in control of how automated their processes are.

Xledger delivers financial data from across an enterprise to achieve more accurate financial planning — and in less time. Our platform is already delivering the “second-wave” automation that is McKinsey’s first imperative.

We Have a Proven Data Strategy

Data is multiplying, and no one knows that better than a Chief Financial Officer. For many CFOs, financial information is not in one place. Financial data is in the core accounting system, but sales have its own order entry solution. Procurement keeps its records in a spreadsheet. Bringing all that data together in a reasonable time frame is impossible.

Melanie Crooks experienced the data nightmare firsthand as the Financial Director for the Church of England’s Birmingham diocese. Before Xledger, the diocese’s financial data used a ‘spaghetti of spreadsheets” with a dated on-premise accounting solution. Visibility across its 150 parsonages was lacking and poor data availability made decision-making difficult.

With Xledger, Crooks had a single source of truth that delivered “timely and accurate information to make key decisions within the business. What was taking us days is now just a press of a button. We now have powerful analysis and visibility of what’s happening within our organization in real-time.”

For businesses with Xledger, the platform is the data management strategy. All information going in and out of the system adheres to Xledgers data standards to ensure a reliable data source for financial management. That includes data coming from the following modules:

• Asset Management
• Orders and Billing
• Job Costing
• Project Accounting
• Time and Expense Tracking
• Donor, Member, and Funding Management
• Procurement and Inventory

Designed for the cloud, Xledger maintains data integrity while making it accessible on-premise, at home, or in transit.

We understand the importance of consistent data. If needed, Xledger can provide integration services through APIs to ensure data quality across the enterprise.  We agree with McKinsey’s second imperative — Companies need a master data strategy that consolidates, simplifies, and controls information, and finance departments are uniquely positioned to provide that strategy.

We Provide Better Insights

McKinsey’s research found that businesses need clearer and richer insights faster. That comes as no surprise. Without technology, organizations have to collect, standardize, analyze, and present information manually — again and again. With Xledger’s cloud solution, clients use pre-defined and configurable reports in standardized templates to share insights. The American Soybean Association found Xledger’s reporting capabilities especially useful.

The efficiency and accuracy at our fingertips have been a game-changer. When you have a Board of Directors who are meeting in Washington D.C. with governing committee members and they ask for information — we can send it back to them immediately while they’re still in the meeting.

While reports are great for sharing information, data visualization makes data more impactful and easier to comprehend. Xledger provides customizable dashboards that let people see data the way they want. Dashboards display data in functional blocks based on user roles. For example, project managers could view project accounting data to help them determine if they are within budget. Letting users configure their dashboards allows them to personalize the tool to meet their needs.

Xledger offers FlexScreens, which lets users request, view, and manipulate data through easy-to-use tools. Just drag data from one location and drop it in another. Apply more filters to reduce the dataset size. When ready, export the information in an available format.

Automated business intelligence tools can highlight unrecognized trends. Using AI and ML technologies, Xledger delivers unique business insights that inform decision-makers. The tools can help answer performance questions or identify which regions have the most sales. Drilling down to any level from the dashboard makes for a data-rich experience.

With Xledger’s integrated modules, financial officers can deliver visual content quickly. The insights use real-time data for the most comprehensive information for decision-makers. Today’s Xledger addresses McKinsey’s fourth imperative which is to deliver richer insights faster.

We Empower Ambition

Our clients do not need to reimagine their financial management model. They already can deliver on McKinsey’s imperatives of automation, data management, and business insights. They have a resource to empower their ambitions. Take a moment to learn about how our clients are achieving their ambitions.

Heal More Children

Take CURE International. Their ambition is to double the surgical capacity of their hospitals in five years. Today, they are the largest provider of pediatric intervention surgeries, operating in 29 developing countries, but there are so many children needing their services. Before Xledger, they had a cumbersome system. Business data would arrive at the US headquarters 45 to 60 days late. Limited bandwidth in some areas made it even more difficult to communicate.

With Xledger in place, CURE can transmit data in real-time even in locations with limited bandwidth. From their Pennsylvania headquarters, they can view business data for hospitals across the globe. Our cloud-based platform gave CURE the tools to improve operations so they can achieve their ambition. As CFO Mark Knecht said, “Xledger enabled us to heal more children.”

No More Paper

Eline Flacke, CFO of Corporater, a software development house for a Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Solution, wanted to modernize and simplify operations. Her one criterion was to never see paper again. Eline’s existing system was manual and struggled to keep pace with the growing company. With Xledger’s help, Eline realized her ambition.

“When choosing Xledger we went from an almost 100% manual system to a system that is as automated as it can get. Now we are on a cloud-based standard solution, and always have the latest updated version, without spending time or resources on it internally.”

Simplify Complexity

Arise AB manages wind farms from exploration through creation to long-term management. The Arise Group consists of 30 companies and plans to expand. Financial management of 30 plus companies spread across northern Europe requires an enterprise-wide financial platform that is flexible and accessible.

According to controller Sofie Karlsson, Xledger’s ability to gather information at a group level saves the company time. Being able to drill down to individual companies from a dashboard visual enables faster decision-making. Given the multiple countries of operation, Arise finds Xledger’s ability to handle exchange rates and complex fixed assets a value add.

Empower Your Ambitions

Every company has ambitions. Ours is to make sure you achieve yours. Whether it is completing month-end three days faster or better utilization of donor dollars, Xledger is passionate about helping you achieve your ambitions. We are focused on delivering outstanding solutions using the latest technology to ensure that our clients are always a decade ahead of “future imperatives.”

We invite you to join us.