RSMUS.comFinancial services firms and retail chains, while different in many ways, have something unique in common: complex ownership structures.
In financial services, firms may own multiple subsidiaries and operate numerous business units, particularly in the realm of private equity. Retail chains are similar, with a collection of stores and franchises that may also have outside owners involved.
In both cases, the fact that these businesses own all, most, or just part of multiple other businesses creates a complicated accounting situation. Consolidating the books across multiple entities becomes a time-consuming and cumbersome process. Errors and omissions are more likely, which creates extra work at best or financial disasters at worst.
More than just frustrating, however, these accounting obstacles could be a meaningful obstacle to growth for ambitious firms and chains. These businesses realize the risk of outgrowing their accounting capabilities. As a result, some expand at a slower rate or on a smaller scale than they could.
Sage Intacct breaks down those obstacles and unlocks growth by making partial ownership consolidations easier than ever. This cloud-based financial management platform elevates accounting and finance in countless ways—but how it handles complex consolidations is a standout feature of Sage Intacct, and one of the most game-changing tools for financial services and retail chains.
How Financial Services Uses Sage Intacct
No matter how many entities a financial services firm owns or what percentage of each entity they own, Sage Intacct will automatically merge the financial data into a single view and perform any calculations or conversions necessary. This work used to take hours of manual data entry. Now, Sage Intacct does it instantly and flawlessly. Here’s how that translates into growth:
- Prioritize Profitable Business Units: Seeing which business units are the most profitable, why, and to what extent takes minimal effort thanks to Sage Intacct. That makes it easy to divert resources from weak to strong business units in ways that support the firm’s momentum.
- Scale and Streamline Compliance: The more subsidiaries a firm has the more compliance obligations it must meet, which Sage Intacct simplifies by consolidating disparate financial data according to all regulations while creating a report and audit-trail confirming as much.
- Upgrade Decision-Making: Sage Intacct empowers any user to create powerful reports and analytics on their own, even when they incorporate data from multiple entities. Decision-makers are never without the numbers, metrics, insights, or visualizations they need to act in the best interest of the firm.
How Retail Chains Use Sage Intacct
Whether a retail chain is five stores or five hundred, Sage Intacct does the heavy lifting to integrate all financial data onto the platform where decision-makers have a detailed view into each store individually and the whole chain collectively. Instead of moving and managing data, people spend that time studying and strengthening performance. Some ways that Sage Intacct sparks retail growth include:
- Streamline Financial Management: Since Sage Intacct automates data collection and consolidation for the whole chain, leadership has an accurate and updated perspective on performance at all times. They know where sales are strong and weak, which stores consume more or less inventory, how costs compare between stores, and so much more that wasn’t easy to track before.
- Reduce Operating Costs: Retail chains no longer have to pay for redundant accounting resources (staff, software, etc.) at multiple stores since they can consolidate everyone and everything into Sage Intacct. Staffing, software, and other operating costs immediately go down—all while sales, revenue, and profits are going up.
- Grow With Business Intelligence: In the past, it could be hard for retail leaders to get the insights they wanted, when they wanted, and fully trust the numbers. Sage Intacct does the opposite, supplying quality reports and analytics to anyone, anytime, for any purpose so they feel confident making one choice over another.
Sage Intacct is the Key to Unlock Growth
One might assume that complicated and cumbersome consolidations are just par for the course in financial services or retail. But multi-entity and partial-ownership consolidations are a bigger enemy to growth than they seem—and a problem that’s easy to solve with Sage Intacct.
With this financial management platform, businesses have all the accounting and financial tools they need. And with the help of RSM, they have all the technical, logistical, and strategic support necessary to implement Sage Intacct successfully and unlock growth immediately.
Contact us for information or a software demonstration.
