How to Make the Chief Financial Officer’s Job Easier with NetSuite

The Chief Financial Officer

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is the head financial role in an organisation and is typically responsible for financial planning, tracking cash flow and analysing the company’s financial strengths and weaknesses. On top of this, CFOs have a significant input in other departments – whether assisting the CEO with forecasting and other strategic decisions or working alongside other senior managers, such as providing advice and determining financial feasibility of a new marketing campaign.

Naturally, this role is constantly evolving. A survey by NetSuite in 2021 shows that in small to medium sized businesses the CFO’s role goes beyond traditional responsibilities, incorporating tasks such as researching new opportunities and partnerships, finding talent, evaluating technology and ensuring their management team have access to relevant data.

What’s making the job difficult?

While it’s commendable and interesting to see how the CFO role has developed, this hasn’t been without its challenges. NetSuite’s survey identified these issues as the top 5 challenges that CFOs face:

1. Juggling too many responsibilities (51%)
2. Managing cash flow (43%)
3. Developing accurate financial scenarios (43%)
4. Producing timely, accurate reports (37%)
5. Implementing tech for finance (33%)

It’s no surprise that juggling too many responsibilities and implementing tech for finance are some of the biggest challenges. Concerns such as data and cyber security, managing system and data integration, filling talent needs and adopting new technology are often left for the CFO to deal with in small to medium sized companies, whereas large organisations typically have other senior staff specifically to manage them.

The other three biggest challenges directly relate to the typical responsibilities of a CFO. Often these challenges are exacerbated by cumbersome, pre-globalisation legacy accounting systems which require manual data entry and calculations. Not only do these systems restrict the CFO’s ability to produce timely, accurate reports, they lack forecasting and cashflow management functionality based on real-time data, casting doubts on their credibility.

NetSuite for the CFO

NetSuite is the most popular ERP system worldwide, used by over 28,000 businesses, for a reason. Put simply, it enables you to juggle your responsibilities efficiently without the fear of it being inaccurate. The cloud-based system allows the CFO to access real time financial, operational and sales data from any device with access to internet, giving a comprehensive view of the organisation or drilling down to subsidiaries. Furthermore, NetSuite guarantees that your system and financials are compliant with government regulations across multiple geographies and works seamlessly with foreign currency at the present exchange rate.

NetSuite’s core financials platform empowers the CFO to make quicker strategic decisions based on data they trust, made possible by automating all calculations and forecasts with real time data. The dashboard alone can be configured to show your KPIs, navigate to a subsidiary’s financials and drill down swiftly to the transaction level, compare income details for the same quarter last year without needing to wait days on a financial analyst, and much more. There’s no longer a need to pull in data from disconnected databases and spreadsheets, NetSuite becomes your unified source of all data. This is exceptionally beneficial for publishing accurate financial statements, applying for loans, or for any business going public.

The pandemic accelerated the evolution of the CFO role as uncertainties were at their highest ever, with one example being the monthly financial close turning into a daily scramble to prepare for the next virtual meeting. NetSuite’s financial functionality allowed CFOs to be efficient and agile as it automated their required reporting such as revenue forecasting and their continuous-close process. For many NetSuite users during the pandemic, this was the difference between staying afloat and drowning underneath a pile of spreadsheets.

The last system you’ll ever need

While this blog has discussed why NetSuite is a necessity for CFOs, it’s essential to justify why this is the last ERP system that your business will ever need. Here are just a few of the benefits:

• As an ERP system, it’s not just solely for those in finance. It streamlines all your departments by hosting any or all of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Professional Services Automation (PSA), Human Resources and Ecommerce data.
• Hosting NetSuite in the cloud ensures total scalability as it will grow with your company – perfect for fast growing organisations.
• NetSuite’s biannual updates are completed automatically without any need for downtime, ensuring you can continue working while having the latest technology. You can view the most recent updates here – A Review of the Top Ten New Feature Highlights.
• Working with a NetSuite partner such as Eureka Solutions who have unrivalled integration expertise with their Cloud Data Exchange tool, means your NetSuite system can be integrated with other key systems the business uses – for example, Salesforce for CRM, or EPOS Now for point of sale. This ensures real-time data accuracy across the business, whatever industry you’re in.

Ultimately, NetSuite empowers the CFO as it automates their core responsibilities using data they can trust. The ability to effortlessly drill down from a consolidated view of the business right down to the transaction level from one system provides the complete visibility that every fast growing organisation needs. Plus, the continuous upgrades and cloud-based infrastructure provides the scalability to future proof your business.

Eureka Solutions is a 5-star NetSuite Partner and was named NetSuite Partner with Outstanding Performance of the Year for the UK and Ireland in 2021, based on the success achieved for customers. They are also a leading Sage 200 Partner with one of the most technically proficient business solutions teams in the country, so are ideally placed to talk through your challenges with referenceable examples – contact Richard Christie, Business Systems Specialist, on 01355 581960 or richard.christie@eurekasolutions.co.uk.