3 Ways tailored dashboards and analytics empower your entire company to accomplish more

Historically, analytics have been seen primarily (or almost entirely) as the domain of Finance. Finance departments determined not only how information was compiled and analyzed, but also what information was analyzed and sent to other units in the organization. This often led to bottlenecks, as disagreements over the validity of the data and preparing the data itself often sidetracked more important strategic discussions. The emergence of next-generation FP&A software means that no longer has to be the case.

The benefits of tailored dashboards and analytics expand beyond Finance

With a dedicated FP&A tool, self-service analytics capabilities and dashboards tailored to specific roles have made it easy for everyone at the company to participate in the decision-making process. Granular control over who sees what data, interactive visualizations, and integrations with other tools empower everyone to be more involved and engaged in value-adding activities across departments and roles. Here are three ways tailored dashboards and analytics can empower everyone at your company to do more:

1. Tailored dashboards and analytics enable better cross-company collaboration by integrating operational and financial data and projections

After implementing an FP&A solution, you can count on better collaboration within your organization.It allows roles like the Heads of Manufacturing, Sales, and Marketing to set up tailored dashboards of information they want to see without relying on finance teams to provide the data. This ensures the Finance department is no a bottleneck in collecting and processing data by automatically integrating financial systems like the ERP and nonfinancial systems like CRM, marketing automation, HR, for example to synchronize data in real-time and project the consequences of that data into the future.

2. Tailored dashboards and analytics give everyone granular control over what data they see and how they see it

When using analytics in a good FP&A solution, every person has the option to tailor their dashboards exactly as they see fit. People are not just looking at a premade template of their data, but have complete control over the metrics they see and how they see them They can edit the content and the format. They can even choose the styles of graphs, charts and bars that suit them. Users can tailor them to their specific personalities and tastes, which usually leads them to engage with the data more often. This helps generate company-wide insights and contributes to better strategic decision-making. Setting up a new graph in an FP&A tool is often very easy and doesn’t even require you to work with formulas.

3. Tailored dashboards and analytics allow your teams to focus on the data that matters

These days, with all the data that’s available to us, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed. FP&A tools have the ability to filter key data points for each stakeholder and present that to them. Instead of reviewing 50 spreadsheets to locate the data you should be looking at, they provide a personalized workspace tailored to your needs. This way, unrequired data is not clogging up your dashboard. You have the ability to add favorites to your navigation pane which are available to you at the click of a button. This gives the user the ability to look at the right information instead of all the information.

Conclusion

In the past, companies often spent half of their time updating and reconciling data, and the other half trying to understand the data provided by the finance team.  With the capabilities of integrated solutions, this does not have to be the case. FP&A platforms allow you to see the data you want in the format you want—whether that’s a data table, a data point, or a line graph. And you can analyze any date range you specify. It empowers users instead of keeping them dependent on the finance team. To recap, having tailored dashboards & analytics functionalities available to everyone in your company contributes to the following benefits:

• It encourages company-wide planning and makes data more digestible
• It provides powerful but intuitive data visualizations, making it easier to identify trends and insights
• The self-service capabilities are simple to use, even for users who aren’t technically proficient—encouraging everyone to participate in the decision-making process.

***

Ed note: Want to dive deeper into essential FP&A topics? Check out OnPlan’s most popular posts of all time here:

• SaaS profit margins: how to calculate them and what are the benchmarks?
• An Introductory guide to rolling forecasts 
• Sales forecasting in Excel: How to do It + free template download
• How to use a headcount planning model to determine your next office location
• Best practices for building a remote-first workforce planning model
• Bookings vs billings vs revenue: What’s the difference?
• What does the SaaS magic number mean for business growth?
• How CFOs can prepare for the Great Resignation