How Multidimensional Financial Analysis Creates a Data-Driven Culture

Business insights can change how you operate, to hit financial goals and support strategy. They can also broaden your view of what to create, for greater value to the customer. That’s why business intelligence solutions that deliver real-time, contextual analytics are so essential for today’s evolving CFO role, as it expands beyond financial figures to answer questions like:

• Where can we cut supplier expenses without impacting product performance?
• How much more revenue will we gain from this new channel?
• How much is this product driving customer expansion?

Multidimensional analysis and reporting enable informed and decisive leadership, with 360° visibility and actionable insights into business financial and operations activity. It adds clarity and broad context, so leaders can intelligently navigate the business towards the future.

Financial Figures Reveal Only Part of the Business Story

Financial statements are valued by investors and creditors, to understand how well management can generate profit and optimize cash. Statements help them assess the potential risk or opportunity. But statement guidance for internal stakeholders is less insightful. Financial figures don’t give line leaders important feedback into how well operations performed or the likelihood of hitting next period’s targets. Similarly, financial statements don’t provide proof to the CFO and the executive team of how well operations can support strategy and deliver value to the customer.

Rich Insights into business performance reside deep in the data. The challenge is unlocking it. 

Multidimensional Analysis Answers the “How and Why”

Multidimensional analysis is a means to measure and analyze a business in the same fashion in which it grows and operates: multidimensionally. It yields business visibility from all angles — deep into a business unit or a specific transaction and through a process like order-to-cash or across the entire value chain. It enables visibility by time, past versus present and by external influences like customers, suppliers, partners and market. Slicing and dicing of data leads you on a path of real-time data discovery to answer a specific question, uncover the unknown, guide decisions and formulate strategy. 

Technology is key to converting business data and aggregate financials into actionable insights. It starts with a solution like an ERP that consolidates financials with operations data, to centrally manage accounting, sales, CRM, inventory, ecommerce and more, from one system. This ensures transactions are recorded as they occur, and automatically ripple throughout the system for real-time views and reporting by all affected units. OLAP, or online analytical processing, makes data more manageable and accessible, for quick and efficient analysis and reporting. 

Applying dimensions, or segments, to the chart of accounts is another way to enhance understanding of day-to-day activity while streamlining the general ledger. “Dimensions” are tags used to group or filter data by organization details — location, subsidiary, division — or by revenue drivers — customer, product, channel. More dimensions translate into deeper discovery and insights. 

With multidimensional reporting, you can link a transaction record to aggregate total as well analyze the process between the endpoints. In other words, you can centrally view and manage both performance outcomes and processes. 

The Business Application is Unlimited

Multidimensional analysis provides rich contextual insights to answer questions like:

Explain a financial statement figure: Why is COGS trending high?

Quantify a revenue driver: How much is our loyal customer buying the new product?

Eliminate inefficiency: Where can we streamline order-to-cash?

Look for cost savings: Should we relocate to where labor costs are more affordable?

Track a breakdown in execution: Why is sales not performing to plan?

Explore an opportunity: How much revenue might we gain from a new partnership?

Learn from success: Why is this subsidiary consistently more profitable than the rest?

Plan for innovation: How do we create differentiated value for the customer? 

Insights can lead to definitive answers. It can surface new questions, which may lead you down a new path. That’s the value of multidimensional analysis: It can lead you where you need to view, if you ask the right question and are open to the unexpected. 

Decision-making is Faster and Smarter

While perfect knowledge is unattainable, real-time contextual insights can provide the clarity and confidence for leaders to make data-supported decisions when it matters — to leverage an opportunity, avoid a risk or prepare for what’s next. No need to wait on the financial close cycle, or for an analyst to download, merge and calculate data from different sources. Ad hoc reporting, by analysts and decision-makers, provides the agility to pivot in dynamic markets. 

One integrated platform view with multidimensional analysis helps answer the “how and why,” so leaders can intelligently navigate the business towards the future. 

It Promotes a Data Culture

Multidimensional reporting can render value for every role, where data is part of every decision and process. An AR analyst could analyze and report on key customer payment activity, to identify and address a potential risk. A purchasing manager could discover which suppliers are more reliable and when it’s advantageous to switch orders for high-priority or rush orders. 

Every business unit can be transformed by the guidance, continuous measurement and accountability that comes from multidimensional analysis and reporting.