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Authored by : Tania Del Gobbo, EY Partner
A strategic mix of digital tools can empower Canadian businesses — and finance teams in particular — with the kind of agility the market currently demands.
How?
Drawing on the right digital and technological solutions empowers finance with richer, cleaner data and quicker insights to strengthen accounting, reporting and decision-making in an operating environment that’s evolving by the day. This holds considerable potential as finance continues evolving away from recordkeeping to leading as strategic advisors helping chart the future at the most senior levels of Canadian organizations.
Why is now the time for Canadian businesses to focus on digital capabilities?
Across industries, finance functions continue to rely heavily on manual processes. This approach is typically cumbersome and time consuming. Layer in today’s dynamic operating environment, and traditional methods become increasingly limiting, especially as stakeholder expectations and the pace of change evolve.
Stakeholder expectations and the pace of change itself are evolving. In Canada and around the world, economic and geopolitical forces are reshaping reality daily. Being agile requires businesses, regulators, institutional investors, shareholders and other decision-makers to rely on up-to-date information.
That’s also true for employees: people, finance and other parts of the business need reliable data to navigate today’s complicated operating environment. Digital technologies empower finance to eliminate manual adjustments and corrections and generate results more quickly than in the past. In fact, technology adoption is shifting us closer and closer to an accurate monthly close — ideally, en route to eventual real-time reporting capabilities based on an accurate daily close. This line of sight is invaluable in terms of making business decisions that build resilience and reinforce progress.
Emerging technologies need strong data foundations. Where AI and other emerging technologies are concerned, organizations must walk before they can run. Businesses that want to jump on new tech quickly to create efficiency, speed up work and generate value can only do so if they have already established strong foundational data.
For the finance function, this means ensuring that data integrity, accuracy and accessibility are prioritized, as these elements are crucial for effectively deploying AI-driven insights and automating financial processes. Anything less holds these businesses back from exploring the benefits that emerging technologies like AI, or advanced analytics, can provide.
This is particularly important as providers sunset legacy systems or limit support for outdated platforms that finance, and other functional groups rely on. Organizations need to stay ahead of modernization or risk falling further behind.
Data drives growth. Whether a business is trying to strengthen supply chains or explore expansion: data can help in finance and beyond.
What does that look like?
Think procurement. Analytical tools can help teams create more accurate estimates of procurement needs such as reordering and inventory management. This eliminates guesswork, improves efficiency and supports the bottom line — potentially freeing up cash to fuel business priorities.
Consider M&A: if due diligence uncovers that the acquiree fails to meet the parent company’s data requirements, businesses must invest significant time and resources in reconciling balances, cleaning records and isolating anomalies. This diminishes the potential synergies and operational efficiency between the organizations. Technology and digital solutions can help us maintain clean books in real time, so organizations can hit the ground running once a deal closes.
From better decisions and operations to stronger prospects and results: digital solutions create all kinds of possibilities for Canadian businesses. The real question is: how can you expand on that potential now?
A business-led, data-first approach to problem-solving and value creation
Maybe you’re struggling to reconcile large volumes of cash applications, identify anomalies in your data or automate repetitive processes. Whatever problem point you’re starting from, EY takes a business-led approach to addressing it. We ask key questions to understand your end-to-end finance processes. This groundwork takes place before we deploy any kind of digital solutions or technologies.
What does that include?
At EY, we ask:
What does your business need now? Our proprietary services help businesses across various industries seize the benefits of digital transformation.
EY Helix, our global analytics platform, serves as a powerful general ledger tool that enables us to analyze 100% of your company’s GL data. This capability uses proprietary algorithms to quickly aggregate thousands of entries into common booking patterns, which allows EY to swiftly and accurately pinpoint the root causes of your challenges and identify potential remedies.
The solution allows for investigation of recurring manual entries to quickly identify opportunities for automation, streamlining and resource consolidation. Furthermore, EY Helix can identify gaps relative to your industry peers by using GL data to analyze your company’s performance on key metrics, such as days to close, and compare these metrics to industry benchmarks.
Understanding specific performance gaps allows you to focus your improvement efforts on the most critical areas so you can effectively allocate resources.
The first step in deploying Helix or any digital solution is to conduct a thorough assessment of your business’s specific challenges and opportunities. This understanding is essential and varies from one company to another. By gaining insights into your unique needs and goals, we can customize the right combination of digital tools to drive positive outcomes. If your business requirements do not align with standard solutions, we can create tailored models to effectively address your distinct challenges.
Does your data allow us to get the real picture? In today’s economic and geopolitical landscape, organizations must have a deep understanding of their business to not only survive but thrive. EY digital solutions are designed to support this understanding.
Our Automated Intelligent Matching tool enables us to efficiently analyze large datasets and various criteria, helping reconcile and match instances. This capability allows you to rapidly reconcile account transactions and uncover insights into how different terms relate to one another. By combining records, we can identify patterns that finance teams can use for informed decision-making, improved bookkeeping and streamlined reconciliations.
Ultimately, it’s about using advanced analytical techniques to sift through vast quantities of data and find the critical insights needed to address your business challenges more effectively than ever before.
Where are you heading next? Making decisions about digital capabilities shouldn’t be done in isolation. At EY, we take a business-first approach to determine what mix of digital solutions will enable your company to meet your goals now and support your evolution in the years to come. Technology doesn’t stand still. The right strategy can help businesses blend the right mix of tools to meet current and future needs, with the flexibility to continue evolving over time.
Summary
Canadian businesses and finance teams looking to make more of digital should start by exploring business needs, existing data capabilities and forward-looking goals. This business-led view forms the foundation of successful digital adoption. It’s the first step in enabling finance teams with digital tools that create agility and improve operations — no matter what the market does next.