AcctTwo Blog

Raising capital is one of the hardest things a founder can do and it will consume a significant amount of your time. 

Given what we are experiencing with COVID-19, it is even more challenging. Interestingly, today “the biggest change lies in not the money itself, but the appetite for uncertainty. Most investors are going to be more cautious currently, which will require some form of uncertainty premium as a part of the terms. One way to ensure that you can raise money confidently in this time is to get intimately familiar with cash flow on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis.” 

To quote Wayne’s World, “We're not worthy!”, is how most startups feel when reporting to investors, or potential investors, with their outdated Excel sheets riddled with manual errors. You started your startup on the core belief that your product or service is game changing, and you want the world to know it. But the minute you get in front of an investor you start to second guess yourself and your numbers.

Effective financial reporting empowers companies to operate flexibly, strategically, and confidently. More commonly, however, reporting is a cumbersome process with minimal benefits. Despite spending ample time and resources pouring through data, companies learn little to propel themselves forward.

The specific pain points that limit the potential of financial reporting are unique to every organization, but they can all be traced to common problems. By focusing on those, it's possible for any company to transform reporting into a true asset. Follow these four strategies to learn more in less time:

Some people call this an age of innovation. Others call it an age of disruption. No matter what your perspective is, deep change is the constant.

A recent survey of more than 800 UK businesses revealed that 2/3 believe innovation is crucial for survival. That makes sense at a time when small startups are unsettling entire industries and chipping into the market share of companies generations-old.

Data is a priority for every organization these days. That could mean a full-blown big data initiative designed to capture all available data and analyze it as deeply as possible. Or it could mean a more modest effort simply aimed at organizing and leveraging data effectively. Either way, experience and expertise with data is invaluable.

With that in mind, recently released figures from the employment website Glassdoor make a lot of sense. Consider these eye-opening stats:

If you roll your eyes a little when you hear the phrase "Big Data," you're hardly alone. For around a decade now we have heard endlessly about the vast potential of a data-driven future. And everything from restaurant service to automotive safety was supposed to improve once analytics were applied. The key to unlocking anything and everything was promised. Unfortunately, it hasn't arrived yet.

Data is the currency of the future. The organizations that make the most of the information flooding into their offices gain a distinct competitive advantage and lay the foundation for sustained success.

The challenge, however, is that data has no value unless it's tracked, stored, managed, and analyzed carefully. And while most companies have more than enough data to work with, few have the resources necessary to leverage it successfully.

That forces ambitious companies to make a difficult choice – add expensive new staff and technology to the ranks, or risk losing out on the next big opportunity. In order to resolve this catch-22 scenario, consider a third possibility.

In layman's terms, an in-memory database is simply a repository of data that does not rely on disk storage. Instead, the data is stored in the main memory, closer to where the actual processing takes place.

This is not a new technology. However, where an in-memory database may have been an optional consideration in the past, it’s now considered essential for enterprises that manage a lot of data and rely on complex analytics. But smaller companies and nonprofits now have access to a lot of data as well, and if they want to remain agile, they need to be able to analyze that data in real-time.

The proliferation of automation and digitization technologies over recent years has been a boon for all. By replacing manual, paper-based processes with machine intelligence and robotic capabilities, enterprises of all sizes and across all industries have achieved an even more impressive ROI than many expected.

It’s the first day of the month, the finance and accounting teams are reconciling balance sheet accounts, recognizing revenue, accruing expenses, and recording financial transactions. Everybody is busy working against the clock to have the financial statements ready on time. Then a request from the senior management team arrives. They want a series of sales reports so they can decide when to launch the new product line.

This is a situation where a Business Intelligence solution would’ve been very handy. But let’s start with the basics.