The grand dream of technological innovation is that people are supposed to have more ways to get things done and free up their time. However, finance teams now have more technology (from a BI tool to a cloud based ERP solution to a FP&A solution & more) and data to manage, with more people involved from top to bottom. Unfortunately, they lack the tools (or knowledge of their tools) to deal with it all. So, companies turn to CIOs and their IT team who now must build the reports, create integrations and workarounds, and manage data that finance should be able to leverage themselves.
The job of leveraging data from their cloud-based ERP solution, making sure it’s clean and secure, is all-consuming, and can have the side-effect of building resentment for the processes and people requesting them. So, how do we take the load off the IT person or team to manage everything? Sage Intacct may be that solution.
Why is the IT Team so Involved in Accounting?
The CIO oversees the entire system. The company has so many separate pieces of software to grab reports, financial records, inventory data, etc. from that something is bound to be missed or compromised. The accounting team requires custom solutions and workarounds in Excel to get what they need done while other teams need their data. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to set those up for themselves, since tech is not their specialty – it’s IT’s.
Integrating their systems could help but it will consume too many licenses to get every software piece working in harmony and reports to everyone that needs them. Ultimately, for many organizations, getting information from the team requires regular hands-on support from IT. Workflows get bottlenecked by that dependency, bogging down the CIO when they could be helping the company the way they were hired to do.
Creating IT-Free Accessibility
A cohesive, accessible system can make life better for the CIO, their team, and every department that needs accounting data. With an affordable, modern, cloud based ERP solution that brings systems together, your entire workflow is streamlined while providing everyone secure access. What’s more, Sage Intacct is incredibly user-friendly, making it easy for anyone to jump in, customize dashboards for their role, and get the data they need (without IT’s constant oversight!).
Less Licensing Expense
Finance teams would prefer to deliver their own reports to different departments, board members, etc., but no organization wants to buy 150-200 user licenses just to distribute reports, though. Alternatively, finance then relies on third-party solutions or technical workarounds to create and distribute reports. Unfortunately, that is time-consuming for accounting, as they jump in and out of different software components. It ultimately adds to the CIO’s to-do list, managing said workarounds or integrations and building report templates. Plus, licensing various third-party applications can get expensive.
Since Sage Intacct provides excellent out of the box reporting, and an Employee User Pack is an economical way to give more of the team access without investing in full licenses, IT can take a step back. You don’t have to invest in a full-priced user license for everyone who just needs to access their department’s data and push out a report to management. Companies can have full users (for those that need it) and a bundle of limited-access licenses in the accounting department that give different users access to specific functionality, like better reporting and the ability to build their own reports.
One Solution for Multiple Needs
A disconnected software sprawl can bog down your reporting processes when you need information fast. Maybe you have questions about Excel/ODBC workflows or concerns with certain document management platforms, or different departments using different solutions. When the ecosystem is a burden, no one looks forward to using it, it’s a struggle to get what you need, and IT is consistently involved in keeping everything running. Clearly your processes and data are too fragmented.
You don’t need your CIO and their team to spend the bulk of their time managing multiple different reporting tools! According to a survey from Deloitte, most (43%) believe it likely that by 2030 “ERP systems will be interconnected across companies”, keeping various parts of a business working together. IT doesn’t need to be the guide as Sage Intacct aligns your technology demands either by grabbing and storing data itself or by seamlessly integrating specialized reporting applications to a central spot.
Easy Data Extraction
We once had a client say, “I don’t want my team becoming permanent report plumbers.” Ad hoc Excel workarounds or custom SQL/ODBC-style access for pulling data gets difficult. Traditionally, accounting teams rely heavily on IT support to create those connections or workarounds so that data keeps flowing. That bogs down IT, slows down accounting and data analysis, which slows down decision making.
Gartner believes 15% of a businesses everyday decisions are going to be autonomously made using Agentic AI, and we can already see how AI-powered automation is saving time by grabbing data from one source and bringing it to a central database. IT teams are always happy to hear that Sage Intacct has a built-in connector that can be configured for where data needs to go and how often it can be refreshed. Automatically. It’s a “set-up-once-and-leave-it” situation that saves the IT department headaches and significant time.
Report Maintenance
When IT needs to manage external scripting, validations, and other customizations to keep reporting streamlined, that means more oversight from the CIO. For example, NetSuite gives users minimal control over certain account strings and combinations in the Chart of Accounts, with little flexibility for editing. This means that NetSuite users often require outside workarounds created by the IT team to make it work ideally for their organization or industry.
The dimensional structure within Sage Intacct not only provides a lot more flexibility for reporting and CoA management, but it’s also much better at enforcing valid combinations, all handled in-system. Like in other areas of the reporting process, IT doesn’t need to get hands on as often.
Sage Intacct is Saving Time & Money
Legacy ERP systems are often held together by time-consuming workarounds, a dedicated IT department, and a likely overloaded CIO at the helm. That can cause friction: with the system, of course, but more troubling, between departments. When IT is rolling their eyes at every email request coming in, that’s only going to lead to inter-office issues. Thankfully, that’s now avoidable.
While it’s no longer necessary to maintain a business that way, many companies struggle to change their processes. However, forecasts from IDC predict that “modular, API-driven solutions” are going to become the norm by 2027, providing hope for the CIOs and IT teams still struggling. The CIO can be driving a business forward, staying up to date on the leading security, providing cybersecurity training options, cloud management, and handling the many many other things they alone have the skillset to look after. They shouldn’t have to be relied on to create reports, clean data, share touch points, manage departmental conflicts, etc. when a flexible cloud-based ERP solution like Sage Intacct is giving other departments the ability to do all of that themselves.
You’ll know you’re successful when your ERP is building a bridge between finance and IT, instead of IT being the foundation holding everyone up. Sage Intacct can be that bridge, keeping your teams happier and healthier in the long run. If you’re interested in learning more and exploring it as a fit for your operations, reach out to the team and we’ll talk.
