Seven out of ten finance executives have reevaluated how their teams and technologies handle critical accounting processes in a distributed, post-COVID work environment. That’s among the key findings of an independent research study released today by Fluence Technologies, the only provider of purpose-built financial consolidation, close and reporting software for mid-market businesses.

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The Roadmap to Modern Mid-Market Finance summarizes findings from in-depth interviews with finance executives of North American companies spanning industries including manufacturing, mining and energy. The results show that overcoming long-standing challenges with legacy tools and processes has become a universal top priority among mid-market CFOs, chief accounting officers and VPs of finance and accounting.

“Fluence’s research brings to light some of the most important financial close management issues we hear about from our mid-market clients, plenty of whom are just as complex as their enterprise counterparts,” said Kaz Takemura, FP&A technology practice lead at BDO Lixar. “A key challenge they face is that most if not all other financial close solutions are really focused on large enterprises - often involving big budgets, steep learning curves and long implementation cycles.”

Additional insights on the challenges, priorities and aspirations of today’s finance leaders surveyed include:

• 88% see modern software tools as critical for recruiting and retaining finance staff
• 95% prefer agile, light-weight solutions over rigid legacy systems
• 100% want to automate the financial close process, but only 21% have done it

“In addition to providing efficiency gains and enhancing data accuracy, a faster, more automated close process can improve both finance department and company performance,” said Robert Kugel, senior vice president and research director at Ventana Research. “Trusted, timely and transparent financials provide a clear picture of business performance today and lay the foundation for finance-informed strategic decisions that shape the future of an organization.”

“Automating the close process has been a finance priority since I started in the financial software space over 20 years ago, but today it’s not only for the sake of speed, data accuracy and transparency,” said Michael Morrison, chief executive officer at Fluence Technologies. “Just as no accountant wants to spend their days copying and pasting numbers between spreadsheets, no CFO wants the added burden of employee burnout or turnover from doing mundane work that modern software solutions can do for them.”

“Apart from the cost of recruiting and retraining, employee turnover is limiting the capacity of today’s finance teams to fulfill their role as a trusted, strategic driver of business decisions,” Morrison added.

The full report, which also explores finance leaders’ take on the most poorly-handled functions in existing platforms and their progress on improving data quality, is available at fluencetech.com.

About Fluence Technologies - www.fluencetech.com

Fluence is the only purpose-built financial consolidation, close and reporting software for mid-market businesses. Our customers go live in weeks, close their books in days and report intelligence in real time. We deliver game-changing efficiency gains and trusted, timely numbers to over 800 customers so they get the time, control and confidence they deserve. Fluence is out-of-the-box, no-coding software with a full Excel interface for immediate adoption and quick time to value, all in a truly finance-owned solution. Welcome to Fluence...we close early.

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