You know the old saying “work smarter, not harder?” Turns out that’s easier said than done. How can your finance team transform the way it works and add strategic value to your organization? How can you shift your focus from menial tasks to tactical execution, and ultimately from tactical to strategic activities? In most companies, financial reporting consumes an inordinate amount of time and energy.

Your business needs actionable insights from your Oracle ERP data to respond to volatile market conditions and outpace your competition. But generating custom reports requires deep technical knowledge and the process is often managed by IT. The process can often take weeks, if not months, and, in many cases, the report or dashboard is limited to a single use case and applicable only to a single business unit or user – often only the requester.

Financial statements tell an important story, but they rarely tell the entire story. It often requires a sharp eye and a healthy measure of experience to elicit meaningful information from the numbers. Even people with keen financial acumen will have questions, and they can easily overlook important realities that lay buried somewhere within the details. For those with less experience reading financial reports, this task is far more difficult.

Stories are a fundamental component of effective human communication. According to a study conducted by Stanford University professor Chip Heath, 63% of people are likely to remember a story shared as part of a presentation. He also found that speakers who merely present facts and figures only achieve a 5% recall rate among their audience. Stories convey meaning and context in ways that facts and figures alone cannot.

Analytics and data visualizations have the power to elevate a software product, making it a powerful tool that helps each user fulfill their mission more effectively. To stand apart from the competition, today’s software applications need to deliver a lot more than just transaction processing. They must also provide insights that help drive better decisions, alert users to matters that require their attention, and deliver up-to-the-minute information about the things that matter most.

In the past, most software applications were all about “data processing.” In the parlance of old-school management information systems, that meant an almost exclusive focus on keeping accurate transactional records alongside any master data necessary to complete that mission. Transaction processing is important, of course, but in today’s world, applications are expected to deliver a lot more than that.

Every financial professional understands that the numbers matter a great deal when it comes to reporting financial results. Accuracy, consistency, and timeliness are important. Those same professionals also know that there’s substantive meaning behind those numbers and that it’s important to tell the stories that lend additional depth and context to the raw financial statements.

Switching to a modern ERP software system affords many benefits, including increased efficiency, improved accuracy, and better control over your company’s finances. It is also an excellent opportunity to revisit many of the business processes that sit outside of your core ERP system. As you set out to improve your financial and operational procedures, you have an opportunity to rethink the way you perform tax planning, transfer pricing, budgeting, reporting, and analytics.