You Know What’s Really Scary?

Everything has a before and an after. Everything.

You, the reader, now have a before and after in relation to reading this post. That’s called bringing the reader into the story. 

Don’t be scared, though.

Or maybe you should be…  be very scared.

Because while the end result of your company’s digital transformation will hopefully feature a beautiful utopia of streamlined financial processes - the after, if you will - everything leading up to that fabulous state may be more akin to a horror movie.

Think we’re being overly dramatic for seasonal effect? Maybe, but still...come join us on this analogy. If you dare, that is...

Presenting: Financial Processing as a Horror Tropes List

The Bad Guy is Already in the House

Hang on a second, the person on the other end of this phone call I definitely should not have answered sure knows an awful lot about what I’m doing right now, and exactly where I am in the house. Hmm, lemme think, it’s pretty rare for me to answer a live phone call so maybe I’m just rusty on how phone calls work now, either that or this guy is phenomenal at guessing behavioral patterns…… or the person is INSIDE MY HOUSE, AND IF THIS IS A DOORDASHER I AM DEFINITELY UNDER TIPPING, I CAN TELL YOU THAT?!?!

You know what’s even scarier? Those not-too-long-ago days of relying on homegrown solutions as an alternative to address a specified function not handled by off-the-shelf options or stretching the limitations of already inadequate legacy systems through a patchwork maze of customizations. You’re not alone because you’ve become beholden to those outdated answers to your company’s most important internal processes and trapped in creations of your own making. The person on the other end of your line? Probably one of the institutional knowledge resources you’ve had to keep around to help maintain and piece together updates of this now dated technology.

When the Villain Won’t Die

You’ve done your part and then some. You’ve taken care of the bad person who has been scaring all the townsfolk, with a shot to the head from your firearm. For good measure though, that’s followed by a swift swing of a saber - which happened to be in arm’s reach - to the gut, only to also be followed by two pokes right in his heart with a trident you found laying around. But just to be completely sure, you follow that bit of abuse with a karate chop which sends the baddie flying back through a window on the top floor of an 18-story building, plummeting to his death. Or so you thought. As you peer out that window framed by the remains of shattered glass only to see the guy slowly rise to his feet, you can’t help but think, “You cannot be serious!?”

In our ongoing age of multiple acquisitions, mergers and global conglomerates, the machinations involved in binding and producing a single source of financial truth out of formerly individual entities can often feel like a never-ending and never-pleasant activity, over and over again. Maybe, though, you just haven’t found the right solution to streamline and simplify things.

Characters Splitting Up to Go Look for Other Characters

Don’t those people who think splintering off into smaller groups, or even individually, to accomplish tasks in the middle of dark, spooky forests or dark, spooky mansions or, heck, dark, spooky anything ever watch scary movies themselves? If they did, they’d know splitting up is the last thing they should do when teaming up to work together would be the better choice to achieve success.

So it goes with a business trying to operate a cohesive financial operation using siloed processes and controls. Such an ecosystem is called upon to communicate critical financial data and status across the organization. Not only that, but these systems need to sync up to gather important details that’ll inform overall growth and long-term success decision-making. In such a fractured state, it’s a wonder any valued information gets communicated at all, to be honest. 

Of course, there were traditionally valid reasons for such separation, including compliance needs, oversight, detailed audit tracking and controls. Yet, modern technology has made such needs moot. The reality is integrated systems - or, better yet, integrated activities within a single platform - form the logical path to success.

Using an Ouija Board to Conjure Evil

Sitting around on the floor in a circle with a group of friends on a casual Thursday night in the suburbs, just chilling. You know, chilling and just casually moving the planchette over the letters of an aged, wooden ouija board, the one you guys stumbled across earlier in the day at the boarded-up ancient burial site. Just doing it to see what happens, but, c’mon, it’s really to summon the ultimate form of evil.

Now, imagine if you will, being part of an accounting team, cubicles gathered together in a circle because you’re going on several weeks of this. This being the countless hours rolling into days, days rolling into weeks working through Excel spreadsheets. Sheets that require compilation from master spreadsheets with no less than 56 individual tabs, one for each entity, spanning the width of three alphabets. And at the end of all that manual data entry and sorting, what you are most likely to have is a nightmare of cascading errors, endless checking and double-checking, possibly tedious workarounds and still more errors. Yes, spreadsheets and manual entry - a true nightmare.

The Jump Scare

Who doesn’t love a good jump scare - those catch-your-breath moments where the music, mood and lulled momentum all combine to scare the bejeezus out of you for a fleeting second?

Your auditors, that’s who. They love being steady and calm. They love being lulled into so much consistency and continuity they almost drift off to sleep. That’s a good thing. A jump scare? Not so much. Don’t give them a reason to jump out of their seats at the risk of a restatement. A worst-case result of unattended internal controls and outdated transaction, accounting or regulatory rules and the systems processing them.

Luckily all this stuff was in the ‘before’ phase for your company, so you’re good now. 

Or is it???   

Contact us today to learn how RecVue’s order-to-cash solutions can help you snap out of those bad dreams you’ve been having and accelerate your organization’s digital transformation.