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Learn how savvy finance professionals in software, SaaS and cloud computing companies overcome today's toughest financial management challenges.

• Learn why real-time visibility is so critical for software companies – and how you can get the visibility you need.

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Why real-time visibility is so critical for software companies.

The world of software, SaaS and cloud computing companies is highly competitive, collaborative and distributed. Software companies need real-time business visibility, but traditional financial management and accounting solutions can't connect people and data from different locations or handle the sophisticated and real-time informational needs of the software industry.

To get the actionable information they need, finance organizations are often forced to augment their systems and processes with spreadsheets or costly add-on reporting solutions. This further slows the flow of information because:

• Managing data is a labor-intensive, error-prone, manual process
• Data is offline and often stale
• Distributing consistent, timely data to all stakeholders is challenging

Traditional financial management solutions – a long, winding road to nowhere.

Decision-makers in software, SaaS and cloud computing companies need the most relevant, up-to-date information possible to manage their businesses more effectively as well as plan and forecast more accurately. Unfortunately, many of today's financial management solutions can't deliver.

1. Delays - The CEO needs the latest consolidated financials. The best finance can do is offer reports that are already weeks old – or reports based on today's numbers that will be available next week.

2. Inconsistency – After distributing reports via email several times, the CFO, CEO, COO and the board of directors now have five different versions of the same report – each with different versions of the truth.

3. Security Risk – Security is compromised when someone accidentally emails confidential reports to a vendor instead of the board of directors.

4. Errors – TO create reports, the finance staff hast o download data from one or more financial systems and then aggregate, manipulate and format the data in a spreadsheet, providing ample opportunities for errors and reducing finance productivity.

5. Reduced Productivity – Because processes that incorporate spreadsheets can't be automated, finance staff has to work overtime to create, format and distribute reports – and they have to do it over and over again. This wastes staff time at up to $120,000/year per employee.

6. Audit Costs – Auditors determine that because finance processes include spreadsheets, they require closer scrutiny – at a cost of $200 / hour. And that's before they find the inevitable errors.

7. Compliance Risk – Manually created spreadsheets increase the risk of fraud and Sarbanes-Oxley non-compliance. Auditors examine everything again at an additional $200/hr.

8. Software Costs – Controller gets a $100,000 invoice for add-on data warehousing and reporting software – plus an HR request for $100,000/year for IT staff to manage them.

9. Complexity – New add-on data warehousing and reporting software requires assistance from an IT staff member to implement and maintain, as well as to create necessary reports, adding IT costs for every report.

10. GAAP Issues – Data in add-on data warehousing and reporting solutions or spreadsheets diverges from GAPP financials, increasing the risk of making decisions based on data that is different from the financial system of record.

90% of all spreadsheets with more than 150 rows contain errors.* Find out how to eliminate the need for spreadsheets and get the real-time visibility you need in the next section.

*Freeman, D. (1996). How to Make Spreadsheets Error-Proof. Journal of Accountancy. 181(5), 75-77.

Hitting the road with real-time visibility.

The cloud gives you a clear view of what's happening now – and what lies ahead.

True real-time visibility gives software, SaaS and cloud computing companies the ability to quickly recognize and respond to changing business conditions. Cloud-based solutions – like Google Docs, Salesforce CRM and Intacct Financial Management – are the ideal way to obtain these benefits because:

• All data is available on demand – in real time – in the cloud
• Improve agility by giving internal and external stakeholders the information they need to make better business decisions – instantly
• Enable secure, real-time access to financial information 24x7 from any internet-connected, standard browser
• "The improvement Intacct offers us visibility and automation makes it possible for us to improve the way we run the entire company; but they also improve our effectiveness." – CFO, OpSource
• All stakeholders have access to the same, consistent set of data – a single version of the truth
• Keep information consistent and secure; no version-control challenges
• Maintain management alignment in real time
• Enable better planning and forecasting with easy access to historical data and trends
• "[With Intacct] we now have a single, central source for all our business data. We can slice it any way we need – by business unit, by region or any other way the management team needs to get an accurate picture of the business." – Director of Finance, iQmetrix
• The cloud enables real-time visibility – and real-time business intelligence
• Help identify operational efficiencies and business risk for better insight into business operations
• Enable proactive revenue management with real-time revenue, deferred revenue and renewal stream data
• Allow proactive cash flow management with real-time data about current and projected cash inflows and outflows
• Customizable reports, dashboards and KPIs convey objectives and give decision-makers instant performance feedback vs. plan, spanning mobile workforces and global operations
• Personalize dashboards and provide executives and employees with the exact information they need to excel at their jobs
• Publish financial and operational KPIs and leverage Intacct's built-in performance management to compare performance against plan, against benchmarks or against other divisions or locations
• Create reports and metrics tailored to the needs of your business, freeing you from system constraints
• "Our reporting, compliance and overall efficiency improved significantly. Using Intacct, we established better internal audit controls as well as improved our security. It has made a major impact." – Controller, Odyssey Thera

How Intacct delivers on the promise of real-time visibility for Software companies.

As the only cloud computing-based financial applications specifically designed for software, SaaS and cloud computing companies, Intacct is the shortcut to real-time visibility.

• View Traffic – Built-in real-time revenue management provides instant visibility into recognized revenue, deferred revenue and renewal streams.
• Customize - A flexible and extensible General Ledger adapts to your company's specific needs – such as measuring customer, project and product line profitability or tracking licenses vs. subscription vs. renewal revenue.
• Preferences – Web-based Dashboards can be tailored to roles (e.g. CFO, Controller) and scenarios (e.g. real time, period end, go-forward planning) for higher relevancy.
• Calculate – Real-time financial consolidation and currency conversion for multi-entity and global software companies delivers an up-to-the-second global view of your business with the ability to drill into local details.
• 2D / 3D View – Multi-dimensional financial and operational reporting gives you better insight into your business without the need to invest in data warehouses or add-on reporting tools. Plus, you drastically reduce the need for spreadsheets.
• Status Update – Reports and KPIs support real-time decision-making and lead to a more responsive business (e.g. real-time visibility into cash balances and flows, highly granular profitability analysis and more).

"[With Intacct] we're able to more quickly create the reports management needs to make important business decisions. Instead of exporting data and fumbling around in spreadsheets, we simply press a button to run the report we need." – Controller, Acceller

The net worth.

In today's competitive environment, fast isn't fast enough. Software companies need to make decisions in real time. With a proven blend of cloud computing delivery, superior reporting and business intelligence, and enhanced productivity and collaboration capabilities, Intacct is ideal for achieving the real-time visibility every software company needs to survive. What's more, it's the only cloud-based financial management system specifically designed for software, SaaS and cloud computing companies. And it's the preferred financial applications of the AICPA.

• Stakeholders can get anytime, anywhere access to the same information, improving agility, productivity and management alignment.
• Customizable reports and role-based Dashboards and KPIs enable you to make better, more informed decisions, improve process efficiency – which could save $200,000 / year alone – and achieve results faster.
• Intacct removes spreadsheets and add-on reporting solutions from workflows, enabling Finance organizations to automate processes, enjoy dramatic productivity gains and reduce overhead by $120,000 / year or more – essentially as much as one full-time employee's salary.

Get the ROI facts. Learn how ASP Global Services saved over $100,000.

Additional Resources on the Web:

• Intacct Insight Product Brief
• OpSource Case Study
• Intacct Insight Web Page
• Intacct for Software and SaaS Companies

About CFO Insights

CFO Insights is a leading online resource delivering all the information savvy finance professionals in software, SaaS and cloud computing companies need to know. Get insight into how software CFOs like you are overcoming today’s toughest financial management challenges.

Streamline your quote-to-cash process

Save time and money now. Leverage cloud computing-based CRM and Financial Management systems to connect Sales and Finance.

Every year, software, SaaS, and cloud computing businesses lose millions because their financial systems aren't integrated with their CRM applications. Finance organizations have to manually re-enter and verify customer, order and pricing information already captured by sales in the CRM system—which costs you dearly in terms of lost productivity, data entry errors, revenue leakage, and downstream invoice dispute resolution. Additionally, since Sales doesn't have access to information in the finance system, you waste time with one-off responses to Sales inquiries about invoice, payment and collections status.

Fortunately, there's a solution to address these challenges, streamline quote-to-cash and connect Sales and Finance: Intacct. This unique financial management and accounting system seamlessly connects to leading CRM systems like salesforce.com.

The true cost of Sales and Finance silos.

When sales and finance data exist in disconnected silos:

1. Sales and finance may end up using different SKUs and pricing, leading to inaccurate orders, fulfillment and invoicing.

2. Inaccurate or inconsistent customer contact information creates order booking and invoicing problems.

3. Sales must manually prepare contracts, reducing their productivity.

4. Contracts may include non-standard or incomplete terms, leading to inaccurate orders, invoices and revenue leakage.

5. Manually re-entering order information into a financial system reduces productivity and introduces errors that can complicate downstream fulfillment, invoicing and collections.

6. Limited visibility into renewal opportunities prior to the actual renewal date reduces upsell opportunities and impacts customer retention.

7. Customer contact information in the CRM system may not match the information in the financial system, leading to duplicate customer accounts and an incomplete view of the customer relationship.

8. Finance must manually create invoices, which can delay billing—especially in recurring or renewal situations—increasing errors, and reducing productivity.

9. Without any visibility into billing and collections data, salespeople continue to take orders from delinquent customers, adding bad debt to the balance sheet.

10. Finance must deliver order, invoice and payment status updates to Sales via email or phone, increasing the burden on finance and taking time away from strategic initiatives.

11. Invoice errors increase customer frustration and delay collections.

12. Calculating revenue recognition manually means entering data into complex spreadsheets, which introduces errors, reduces productivity, complicates revenue forecasting and makes restatements more likely.

Streamlined Quote-to-Cash with Intacct

When sales and finance systems and data are tightly integrated:

1. Information is automatically synchronized so sales and finance have end-to-end visibility for a complete, consistent, real time view of the customer.

2. Automated order management, billing, revenue recognition, and renewals ensure accuracy while boosting productivity.

3. Sales has real-time access to customer data, order data and renewal opportunities; Finance spends less time supporting sales requests.

4. Increased accuracy and timeliness reduces errors, eliminates revenue leakage and increases customer satisfaction.

5. Revenue recognition is automated, eliminating complex spreadsheets and delivering real-time visibility into recognized and deferred revenue.

Protect your CRM investment while bringing sales and finance closer together.

You don't have to rip out and replace your CRM system to get the benefits of a seamless, streamlined quote-to-cash process. In the next section, we'll examine how deploying Intacct together with Salesforce CRM satisfies sales and finance, without sacrificing your CRM investment.

Keep the CRM system Sales loves and reduce your risk.

With Intacct, you get the benefits you want, faster.

The last thing successful companies need is to upset the sales process. When Salesforce or any other leading CRM system is deeply entrenched in a sales organization, the easiest—and best—way to streamline the quote-to-cash process is to find a best-of-breed financial management and accounting solution that works with it. Fortunately, Intacct makes this easy, allowing salespeople to continue using the tools they know and love—and keep their focus on growing the business. But Sales isn't the only team with skin in the game. What about Finance? In many cases, the finance team is either stretching the limits of a solution like Quickbooks, or looking for a financial system designed for the needs of software, SaaS and cloud computing companies, not generic financial applications from Microsoft, Sage, Lawson or Oracle. Intacct satisfies Sales and Finance by enabling several key benefits for software, SaaS and cloud computing companies:

1. Increased productivity and accuracy through automation Customer Testimonials:

“We're able to more quickly create the reports management needs to make important business decisions. Instead of exporting data and fumbling around in spreadsheets, we simply press a button to run the report we need.”—Controller, Acceller

“With Intacct we save dozens of hours a month, which used to be spent integrating financial information from each branch.”—Senior Vice President, Check Advance, Inc.

“The improvement Intacct offers us in visibility and automation makes it possible for us to improve the way we run the entire company; but they also improve our efficiency. We believe we'll be able to grow much larger with the same finance staff we have in place and avoid hiring two to three full time people over the next 18 to 24 months, so the hard dollar ROI is very compelling.”—Vice President Finance, OpSource

2. Reduced revenue leakage. Customer Testimonials:

“Intacct impressed us with its ability to efficiently track our recurring revenues and manage deferred revenues from maintenance and service contracts. Intacct offers a broad financial solution set that provides flexible, on-the-fly financial reporting and dashboards that will improve visibility into our financials.”—nCircle

“Intacct is a robust financial management system with all the modules we need, including advanced revenue recognition.”—VP of Finance, JasperSoft

3. Faster period-end closing. Customer Testimonials:

“It used to take us as much as two days to put together our company-wide financial reports. With Intacct Global Consolidations we can run a consolidation and have our reports available in a matter of minutes. This frees up my time to focus on managing our finances and helps our executive team to analyze the results faster to improve decision making.”—Vovici

“Intacct provides all the functionality a growing company like OpSource needs to efficiently manage our global financials. Our close and consolidation process across our four entities now takes only days versus weeks.”—CFO, OpSource

4. Lower cost and risk of integration. Customer Testimonials:

“The integration between Intacct and Salesforce CRM has really helped our company with accurate reporting and providing greater visibility and communication between our various departments in the company. As the Staff Accountant handling all the AR functions, the quick and easy transfer of information from Salesforce CRM to Intacct and back really makes my job easier.”—Big Machines

“We have been using Intacct MAX for Salesforce CRM for two years and it is working extremely well for us. Having an integrated lead-to-cash process has eliminated the time-consuming manual data-entry, lack of visibility and insufficient reporting capabilities of our previous accounting application.”—Controller, decipher

5. Better reporting and visibility. Customer Testimonials:

“Intacct has enabled immediate updates of information that previously would have taken days to access. As a result, we are making business decisions more quickly and accurately than ever before.”—Senior Vice President, Check Advance, Inc.

The net worth.

Software, SaaS and cloud computing companies that already enjoy the accessibility, security, affordability, robustness and flexibility of cloud computing-based business applications like Salesforce CRM will be happy to know that they can streamline their quote-to-cash processes with Intacct's equally agile, cloud-based financial management and accounting applications. By deploying Intacct and Salesforce CRM together, CFOs and other finance executives gain end-to-end real-time visibility of their companies' financial outlooks. Intacct also increases productivity, reduces costs, helps close the books faster and dries up revenue leakage—all through automation. Learn more.

Get the ROI facts. Read more than 50+ reviews on salesforce.com's AppExchange.

Additional Resources on the Web:

“Faster Quote to Cash, Speedier Customer Response, More Informed Decision Making.”—an IDTech White Paper