Blog: ERP

Navigating a Turbulent Economy with Dynamics 365 Finance Insights

May 8, 2023 - by Synoptek

A recent survey by Deloitte painted a rather grim picture of the global economic outlook for 2023. Geopolitical tensions and looming fears of a possible recession have made navigating the turbulent economy a Herculean task. In this economic slowdown era, high inflation and ballooning interest rates are only making matters worse. Read on to learn how Finance Insights in Dynamics 365 Finance can help you steer economic challenges and sustain your competitive position.

Synoptek Named as a Major Contender in MS Dynamics 365 Services PEAK Matrix Assessment 2023

The Challenges Facing CFOs

Driving growth in the face of rising operational costs is a perennial challenge for CFOs. So is identifying new customer segments, capitalizing on revenue streams, and forging new partnerships. As they drive efforts towards cost management and financial performance, they come face-to-face with several challenges, including:

  1. Responding to economic fluctuations: CFOs who can successfully respond to economic fluctuations are the ones to drive growth and profits. But maintaining efficiency while ensuring business agility doesn’t come easy. With every downturn causing companies to deviate from their growth path, CFOs must have the tools and processes in place to adapt quickly to new opportunities and requirements.
  2. Maintaining cash flows: In the ideal world, every business has cash flowing in continuously. But in the real world, this is far from the truth. Relying on the wrong data, conducting inaccurate forecasting, and siloed departments are issues lurking around every corner that make maintaining cash flows a widespread challenge.
  3. Identifying investment areas: As the business landscape gets increasingly volatile, CFOs must be well-equipped to improve forecasting accuracy and identify the right investment areas. Aligning the company’s operating and financial models is critical to capture and analyze the correct drivers of business performance. Understanding if the investment reduces cost, increases returns, and minimizes risk, no matter how critical, isn’t always straightforward.
  4. Improving financial performance: Given the unpredictability of the global market, measuring and improving financial performance is another common challenge. CFOs need to constantly take strategic steps to uncover issues and identify areas where tactical improvements can be made.
  5. Curbing the skills gap: The skills gap is constantly widening. According to a survey by Gartner, hiring and retaining staff is the most difficult task facing CFOs in the coming year. Against the backdrop of continued inflation and remarkably high macroeconomic uncertainty, curbing the skills gap while optimizing costs is no easy task.

How Finance Insights Help

Data holds tremendous power and potential for CFOs drowning in the sea of modern-day challenges. With so much data available, finance leaders can use this data to make timely and accurate decisions across every aspect of the business. Dynamics 365 Finance offers a range of exceptional Finance Insights to help overcome all the challenges facing today’s CFOs:

  • Bridge data silos: Advanced data analytics in the form of Finance Insights can enable CFOs to overcome the problem of siloed and scattered data. Bringing data from across the organization to a centralized location improves visibility and traceability. This, in turn, helps CFOs make financial decisions backed by relevant, updated, complete, and accurate data.
  • Make accurate budgeting decisions: Using Dynamics 365 Finance Insights, CFOs can streamline the complicated task of budgeting and avoid making decisions on guesswork. AI-powered insights can help decision-makers mine years of data and enable better budgeting decisions. They can create clear and accurate budgets that are driven by a deeper understanding of data and drive better business outcomes.
  • Get visibility into payments: Dynamics 365 Finance Insights leverages the power of machine learning to throw much-needed light into customer payments. When combined with historical customer data analysis, accounts receivable departments can predict if (and when) customers will make payments. This makes the collections process more proactive while allowing decision-makers to take data-driven action.
  • Forecast cash flows: Dynamics 365 Finance Insights also offers a great way to bridge the gap between business and financial processes. Access to real-time customer payments makes it easier for finance leaders to forecast cash flows and build intelligent budget proposals. With the right insights, they can better understand customer payments. They can also utilize “what-if” scenarios to take automatic actions based on the historical analysis of each customer.
  • Automate risk management: Dynamics 365 Finance comes built-in with several AI and machine learning capabilities that can help reshape corporate financial management. By making routine and error-prone tasks more efficient, focused, and accurate, CFOs can automate the process of risk management. Such automation can enable them to respond to evolving market volatility and thwart risks before they impact efficiency or profitability.

Make Sense of the Chaos with Microsoft Finance Insights

The modern CFO has an ever-growing list of headwinds to circumvent. From attracting and retaining talent to dealing with ever-increasing costs, navigating the ongoing turbulence to improving financial performance, and more. Handling these challenges requires them to exploit the power of data and unlock the opportunities it can deliver.

Microsoft Finance Insights, available in Dynamics 365 Finance, delivers configurable and extensible solutions to help CFOs intelligently manage their finances. Leveraging advanced machine learning capabilities, Dynamics 365 Finance Insights enables financial leaders to predict cash flows, speed up budgeting, and respond quickly to anticipated business challenges.

Make sense of the chaos today with Dynamics 365 Finance!

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