How to Choose the Right FP&A Software for Your Business Needs

We begin to dream of numbers that haunt us every day. Once we discover software that saves us a lot of time, we will never think about going back to the old way of doing business that we did manually. Today, many types of FP&A software can make it easier for us, and we will help you with what you should pay attention to and which software is ideal for you.

Analyze your needs

Not every company is the same and they all have different needs according to their team and capacity. Try to analyze in detail the complete needs of your business, consult with your team and especially those who perform the financial part of the work, because this applies to them the most. Many different FP&A tools are capable of every type of financial processing that you will need. Accordingly, you should find the one that you specifically need so that you can focus as much as possible on the work of your company. It may depend on whether you only need budgeting and planning or maybe you need profitability modeling and optimization. Suppose your company has several branches, works in several locations or cooperates with others. In that case, you will most likely need a financial consolidation that helps you combine different financial data from different branches or offices. Try to map the key functionalities that you need and can’t do without, and accordingly, choose the right program for you. Also, consider the size of your company and the volume of work you have. This means that those companies that have a smaller volume of work do not require overly expensive software with countless options, unlike large ones that do. This will help you make sure that your business will grow and develop and that you will be in a situation where you can switch from more straightforward to much larger software that you will need. The choice is wide, and the needs can be such that you try to concretize them as much as possible.

Integration

Everything must be connected and easily accessible. It is often known that if we use FP&A software, we will need a connection with CRM and ERP systems. For example, when we manage inventory in the warehouse, FP&A must exchange data with the systems that manage that inventory. The integration also includes automation, which is extremely necessary for each of us to save time, and it will automatically update the budget and give us realistic projections. Reducing duplicate data will help you with a detailed and accurate review because you will no longer make mistakes by manually entering data. Connection with accounting software should enable you to have a detailed view of income, balance, and expenses, which will reduce the possibility of mistakes that would be made by manual entry. Integration with BI tools will bring you data analysis, where users can create complex reports and visualizations. Check compatibility with other tools you use and will continue to use. Try to predict what, in addition to software, you will also need from digital tools, and also check compatibility with them.

User interface

We don’t want to go into the software and find a board with control over the entire space station, where by pressing a button, we can create a disaster and destroy all our work. The interface must be adapted and as simple as possible so that our employees can use it without any problems. Easy navigation through the user interface allows us to easily access all the data we have entered and improve our efficiency and productivity. The user experience must be positive so that employees do not start to avoid using the software, which does not mean that it must be like a game, something too simple, but it must be pleasant and easy to use. A clearer display will make it easier to perform tasks and view all of them. Let’s keep this in mind when buying the next software, which is an important thing.

Test the software

Buying blindly cannot bring you good, and business is something where there is no room for risk. There are many free trial versions of financial software that we can try to check its functionality. And as far as we see that something is not according to our expectations, nothing obliges us to continue using that software. At any moment, we can buy another one because it is a lower cost to switch to another FP&A software than to try to stay on one in which we are repeatedly and mistakes happen again and again, and it creates even greater financial difficulties for us instead of profit. Let’s give the version that we are testing to our entire team so that they can all go through it and make sure that everything is in order and as it should be and that, of course, it answers them.

Request customer support

Our software will not help us much if we do not know how to use it together with our colleagues. We should check if the provider whose software we are interested in and which we plan to use has customer support that will be there for our employees or special types of training for that program. Mistakes can often happen, but that must not slow down our work because the company has to work, and if one branch of it stops, the others will go along with it. Our employees must be fully familiar with the operation of the software they use, so we should require or consider this when purchasing one of them.

Remember to check all the needs of your company and employees as well as adapt the software to them, test it, and train employees to be ready to use it. Follow these tips when finding your ally in the business world. The good thing is that you have a wide choice and this list, which we hope will help you in your selection.