What are the benefits of self-BI for Financial Management Specialists?

4 min read

The introduction and use of self-BI software within specialist financial management teams has many benefits, both for the organisation and for each individual in the team.

Acquiring a basic command of one of the main tools available on the market (Power BI, Tableau, or Qlik) is relatively straightforward. It requires just a few days' training to produce the first visualisations of data cross-referencing or the first interactive dashboards.

As a matter of fact, you can already start after 3 days of specific training.

And if you're an Excel king, these self-BI tools can help you ascend to an even bigger throne.

But beware!

If you think artificial intelligence will be able to "do the job for you," you're making a big mistake. AI will save you time on repetitive tasks or help you identify trends. However, it will never replace your unique personal knowledge of the business or the experience you have acquired, thanks to which you can steer the AI in the right direction. We'll come back to this in more detail in another article.

Once you have acquired the basic knowledge, you can quickly apply it and extract your first strategic benefits.

Beforehand, you will need the assistance of the IT department on two levels:

1. Installing the software and creating an account (or even a service). A very simple operation.

2. Initial connections to internal data sources (accounting software, ERP, CRM, WMS, cash management software, budget management, etc.).

This is the part where technical expertise is required.

However, it should be noted that links to many data sources are now handled by the software itself.

Once you've taken these steps, what can you expect from using self-service business intelligence software as part of your finance department?

Here is a summary of the main individual and collective benefits.

All the benefits revolve around one central idea:

Produce rapidly and economically quantified information to accelerate and strengthen decision-making on a more relevant and solid basis.

This central benefit is at the heart of the added value of self-service business intelligence.

But how do you get it?

By acquiring these new capabilities, you can work with financial data at two levels, through which you can realise the ancillary benefits of the core value proposition:

Level 1
Exploring and analysing data in depth, quickly and autonomously.

Today's self-BI tools allow you to process your data without becoming a Data Scientist or a Data  Engineer.

The training equips you with the basic understanding to integrate and structure your data to make it 'processable' and conduct the required analyses.

What can I do in practice?

A Finance Director, for example, can enrich his or her vision of the company's financial performance in many ways:

• Carrying out additional ad hoc analyses that conventional financial management tools do not allow, such as cash flow analysis, cost analysis, budget management, financial risk analysis, investment performance review, revenue analysis, etc.

• Drilling down into the raw data on revenues, margins, costs, etc., where these functions are generally limited or fixed in traditional financial management software.

• Simulating different scenarios using the advanced predictive functions of current Self-BI solutions (automatic learning algorithms and predictive analysis), often lacking in the various financial management software packages.

These analyses are made possible by intuitive interfaces that reduce the learning curve, enable users to adapt quickly, and start generating information.

Level 2
Visualisation

In business intelligence, visualisation is defined as the visual translation of information contained in data (obtained at the end of the previous stage), most often in the form of graphs, diagrams, maps, tables, etc.

Whatever form visualisation takes, it has a single objective:

Make the information easier to understand for those with whom it is shared, thus speeding up decision-making.

Visualisation takes two distinct forms:

1. Static report: This will contain the essential results of an ad hoc or recurring analysis, organized visually to support the analyst's desired conclusion.

2. Dynamic dashboard: Built on the same logic as a report, the dynamic dashboard contains performance indicators that update automatically when new data becomes available. The underlying aim is to identify trends and anomalies more easily.

Whatever form the visualisation takes, another major advantage of self-BI lies in the tools' ability to maintain a constant link with the data sources.

Thanks to this, the information contained in the reports and tables can be constantly and automatically updated, greatly speeding up the availability of the information needed for decision-making.

What can I do in practice?

A management controller, for example, can develop a fraud detection dashboard by linking data from the ERP system where all financial transactions are recorded with historical data on commercial transactions carried out over the same period.

By establishing habitual behavioural models using the AI tools built into BI software and comparing historical data against these models, the Management Controller will be able to identify discrepancies that will highlight potential suspicious transactions.

A real case?

In the UK, the Business Services division of the NHS, which provides healthcare to nearly 70 million British citizens, was able to identify around £100 million (€1.17 million) in potential savings through the same kind of exercise as described for the Controller.

They achieved this result by identifying outliers in all medical prescriptions from dentists and pharmacists.

Level 3
Information sharing

Generating the right information for quality decision-making is one thing. To reach a decision, you need to be able to share the information with the stakeholders involved quickly and easily while ensuring compliance with the rules of governance and confidentiality.

Here again, today's self-BI tools make it easier to share information and reports, encouraging collaboration between departments and improving overall decision-making processes.

Level 4
Economic efficiency

Without a self-BI tool, producing customised reports and analyses can be costly and time-consuming.

Self-BI tools reduce the time and costs associated with generating reports and analysing data, freeing up resources for other strategic activities.

In a nutshell

Ultimately, self-service BI tools give finance managers greater control, flexibility, and speed in analysing and interpreting financial data, enabling them to make more informed and timely decisions.

QED.

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