Effectively managing your retail company’s finances is the backbone of any business and central to your company’s long-term health and sustainability. Rather than relying on outdated spreadsheets, siloed applications and complex workarounds, companies are upgrading to a modern cloud ERP system to manage everything from financial planning, business intelligence, inventory and order management, CRM and eCommerce. These core business management systems are able to not only perform essential finance functions, but also give a cohesive and actionable picture of the business’s finances at any given time. This is why natively integrated financial tracking software is an essential part of any retailer’s digital transformation.
In this blog, we identify the challenges that retail businesses face without proper oversight and control of financials, and the functionalities of NetSuite’s cloud financial tracking software that enables retailers to simplify, scale and automate the process of tracking business finances.
- You can also learn more about cloud ERP and retail with: The definitive guide to NetSuite for retail companies.
Keeping the data flowing
A cloud ERP solution enables all organisational data to flow across your business. Data flows from your retail channels to warehousing and procurement departments to keep products moving. Invoice and expense data flows to the finance department for intelligent reporting. Customer data flows into the marketing department to spur on deeper customer engagement initiatives. The movement of data ensures the appropriate people in your organisation always have up-to-the-minute visibility into financials but also sales, inventory and customers – across all channels. And it is this flow of data that brings significant benefits to retail businesses.
Streamlined procure-to-pay processes
Basic accounting functions – covering general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, tax, cash and payment management – are the backbone of every cloud ERP solution. Integrating the complete procure-to-pay process with purchasing workflows, policies, approvals, and audit trails provides accountability and visibility into all areas of the business’s finances. This allows the quick identification and resolution of any exorbitant costs as well as opportunities for savings. The automation of these processes also delivers significant time savings and eliminates those paper-based errors from manually handling purchasing, receiving and account payables.
For example, traditionally, once a purchase order is generated and before payments are authorised, the finance team would need to reach out to other departments to confirm that the services and goods were delivered as promised. This cross-checking and cross-departmental communications can consume a fair chunk of the finance team’s time. But with financial tracking software such as cloud ERP, the whole process accelerates. The native integration of receivables with accounts payable removes time-intensive manual intervention, freeing the finance department to work on more strategic financial processes and operations.
Order-to-cash processes
Order-to-cash starts with a customer’s interest in purchasing services or goods and ends with receiving and fulfilling orders placed by the customer. While the process varies, it generally follows the below:
- Order management
- Credit management
- Order fulfilment
- Order shipping
- Customer invoicing
- Accounts receivable
- Payments collection
- Reconciliation & reporting
When order-to-cash processes run smoothly, retailers can better forecast revenue and cash flow – but too often they don’t. Coordinating multiple internal departments and third parties creates many potential points of failure. In fact, when a business scales, the order-to-cash process is often the first area to be impacted by inefficient, manual order-to-cash processes, ultimately causing major revenue recognition and customer service issues.
NetSuite’s financial tracking software brings automation to the order-to-cash process, removing manual bottlenecks, reducing data errors and supporting the flow of information. Sales and customer service have visibility over inventory, so if supplies are low, they can make decisions to fulfil from other locations. Customer details such as addresses can be updated and made instantly available to all departments. Most importantly, all this shared data minimises traditional lags between order capture, fulfilment and invoicing.
Reporting and decision-making processes
Data has little value when it is spread out and fragmented across an organisation. If your financial data needs to be wrangled by spreadsheets in order to make sense, then you are missing out on a considerable competitive advantage. If you are using an add-on analytics tool you are likely facing similar problems or limited functionality.
NetSuite’s financial tracking software provides comprehensive system integration and solid reporting capabilities that brings all your data together to eliminate multiple versions of the truth. You get real-time insights into financial metrics including profitability ratios, inventory margins, liabilities, fixed assets, taxes and so much more. Through role-based dashboards each finance user has on-demand access to personalised insights tailored to them. Quantitative metrics and KPIs enable users to measure performance and evaluate the success or failure of business processes and activities. Ultimately, your retail business gains a 360-degree view of your finances and is able to address issues as they arise and capitalise on emerging opportunities.
It’s essential that your financial business management system supply financial tracking software features that enable retail businesses to understand the wider financial picture and also drill down to control expenditure and maintain viability, particularly in volatile markets.
More than just NetSuite experts
At Annexa, we provide industry-leading solutions customised to the NetSuite platform, including financial management. With our in-house integrations, extensions, partnerships and full-service capabilities, we deliver end-to-end solutions for our customers, and provide training and support to ensure the successful implementation of the NetSuite platform.
Annexa is a leading NetSuite partner with extensive experience designing and implementing comprehensive and customised business systems, including payroll solutions,financial management,warehouse managementandecommerce solutions. Contact us today to speak to an expert to learn whether we are the right NetSuite implementation partner for you.