From Clutter to Clarity: Resolving Your Business’s Data Overwhelm

What are your options when your tech stack is bursting at the seams? You’re struggling to get visibility over what’s happening. You’re balancing multiple spreadsheets and you’re spending a lot of time consolidating data.    If you are trying to resolving your business's data overwhelm there are a number of options:   Spring cleans all the files, and all the data.  Merge duplicates and expunge old data, and trim down the data files.    Call in the professionals: Engage a professional cloud integrator to review your set up and advice of any efficiency opportunities.   Multi Entity Consolidation solution : I work with the Fathom team and they have a multi-entity financial reporting tool to help you compare and consolidate your organisations.   A new solution on the market that you may not have heard of is Translucent.io who I’ve recently started working with. It turns your existing single-entity accounting system into a multi-entity accounting solution. You connect your existing accounting software (Xero, QBO, etc.) and Translucent consolidates all your data to create a single financial system of record. Translucent Apps provide workflows for your muli-entity needs, such as searching for transactions at group level, creating consolidated reporting, managing intercompany transactions, live connecting your data to spreadsheets, and more apps being released every quarter.    While you may not have heard of Translucent before, it is likely that you heard of Dext, or Receipt Bank. The founder and good friend of mine, Michael Woods is the founder of Translucent.io and he’s built it as a tool he would have liked when running Receipt Bank.    A fourth option here is to migrate to an ERP solution. This is something you can potentially explore with a Cloud Integrator about or speak with a software consulting specialist. As you start to move into this area, you really want to engage an experienced specialist who can give you an unbiased assessment of your options to help you know what is possible, and suggest options to future proof your business.   Each option has a different price point, and it's important to understand the scoping, implementation, training, maintenance and ongoing costs involved. Likewise make an assessment of how many hours a solution will save you once implemented, and will it enable your business to scale.  You can get CPE for this and other episodes of the Cloud Stories podcast. Simply download the EarMarkCPE App, and answer a few questions correctly about this podcast, and they email you a certificate of CPE. Connect with Heather Smith https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathersmithau/  Accounting Apps newsletter https://heathersmithsmallbusiness.com/newsletter/