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Microsoft Excel has been helping construction professionals create pie charts, track data, and crunch numbers for decades. Many companies consider the software a primary tool for employees to access and complete their work. And it’s not without good reason — Excel is relatively easy to use and can perform a long list of accounting tasks like a champ. However, when it comes to construction software, accounting, financial reporting, and data analysis, Excel is being increasingly relegated to “legacy tool” status.
Financial automation software offers striking improvements over Excel across several categories. Companies experiencing rapid growth stand to gain the most marked benefits from transitioning to automation-enhanced accounting and analytics tools.
Eight reasons to invest in analytics
Traditional spreadsheets are fine for straightforward tasks that involve limited data sets. However, “limited” is the key descriptor here. The analytics tools offered by financial automation have the potential to transform your accounting and analysis capabilities. These eight enhancements make a financial automation platform a clear winner against Excel:
1. Automated Reporting
Financial software that uses AI analytics can create real-time, on-demand reports and deliver them to internal and external stakeholders. The best part? The whole process is automated, meaning you don’t have to go hunting for information and build these overwhelming, error-prone spreadsheets manually.
2. Connectivity for All
Most people aren’t aware that the reporting tools out of your accounting or project management system only represent about 13% of the data in your entire business. A robust financial platform uses data analytics to draw 7x more data points and give you insights across your entire business, not just your project management software or accounting application.
3. Higher Capacity
Excel struggles with large data files. Analytics, on the other hand, can allow the right financial software to handle enormous amounts of data stored in multiple locations. It makes it easy to instantly organize, merge and sort datasets, rather than spend hours adjusting spreadsheets in Excel.
4. Better Visualizations
Pie charts and line graphs are great, but when you need a more in-depth analysis of disparate data relationships, analytics is the answer. Financial software can connect your data to AI analytics models that help visualize your information. These visualizations can incorporate geodata or complex financial analysis that provide a clearer analytical picture tailored to your business needs.
5. Faster Visualizations
Creating a complex dashboard can be just as hard in BI software as in Excel. Why? It’s because there’s still a human required to manually type in figures and produce results. Modern analytics allow tools like Briq to connect to your systems for you. With an analytics-powered platform, data is updated in real-time, and dashboards can be created with just a few clicks.
6. Collaborative Capabilities
Need to get input from key team members before moving ahead with a timely purchase? Financial platforms are built to use analytics to connect the data to the user. Now, multiple users can view and adjust the same files from anywhere, all while in the cloud.
7. Security Enhancements
Excel files are not only prone to human error, but they are also highly susceptible to theft and cybersecurity concerns. Most Excel files are emailed or passed around on shared drives and they do not have security requirements for accessing sensitive data. Analytics platforms make your financial data more secure and make it easier to prevent data loss or theft.
8. Scalability Implications
The robust power of cloud-based analytics platforms allows for incredibly fast scalability.
A critical consideration when scaling up work is the chance for human error. Because Excel functions often require manual manipulation, there’s a high risk for data entry inaccuracies. Data entry tasks are often a significant issue with Excel processes.
Apart from accuracy concerns, arduous double-entry is often required to complete an accurate forecast or report. All of this creates a bottleneck for accounting processes as you scale. Automation can eliminate these tasks so that your team can do more with less. Your teams won’t need to fear scaling, because AI analytics can handle the data entry for them.
Real-time analytics can change the way you do business
When your company is ready to scale, you don’t want to be held back by familiar but limited tech. The insights gained from data analytics can help you streamline, scale, and improve the foundational elements of your company.
Briq is a financial automation platform designed to bring data analytics to the construction industry. Our software was built with decades of construction experience to be the right fit for your business. Contact us here to speak with our experts and learn how Briq’s data analytics can enhance your business.
