3 tips for choosing the right SaaS reporting software!

At EMAsphere, our reporting solution is used by 100% of managers in every department of the company. So, to better understand this statistic, we asked ourselves: why, and most importantly, how can a SaaS (Software as a Service) reporting software be adopted by everyone in the company? Because yes, finding a SaaS specialised in reporting is easy! Choosing the one that best suits your needs and consolidates all your data is another challenge. And above all, getting the WHOLE company to adopt it is yet another challenge!

All businesses are swamped with software programs:

• specialised task management software,
• software tailored to specific business areas such as marketing, HR, sales and accounting,
• and software that allows information to be shared among all employees.

Today, companies use more than 130 software programs, compared to just 8 in 2015. How did this happen? It's simple: each department within a company chooses the SaaS that best suits its needs. This makes sharing information between departments a real challenge (not to mention the often huge amount spent on ‘team software’ at the end of the year). The modern CFO is becoming one of the guardians of the data held in all of the company's software. This leads to several challenges: how can all this data be consolidated? Are all the tools interconnected and do they share consistent and reliable data?

In order to address these challenges and support CFOs in their data consolidation efforts, we asked ourselves what indicators show that a reporting SaaS truly delivers on its promise of being “software as a service”.

1 - Tip #1: the reporting SaaS solution must consolidate all your data automatically!

Data consolidation is one of the most common issues when managing and analysing company data. This means grouping together data from different sources, different currencies or even different software programs. This step is essential for allowing CFOs and business leaders to interpret company data as objectively and clearly as possible.

Obviously, this step can easily become time-consuming and tedious. Do you have several subsidiaries in different countries? Does each entity use different accounting software? In this case, we recommend checking that your future reporting software allows for automatic data consolidation. Another advantage is keeping your data up to date. It is essential that the solution integrates with all your software using specific connectors. This prevents you from having to use dozens of Excel files, which are complex and laborious to check, match and import into your reporting software.

These first key elements will allow you to have summarised and structured data in order to carry out your financial analysis.

2 - Tip #2: SaaS solution that makes it easy to share data across the entire company

After gathering and analysing consolidated data, the CFO is responsible for sharing it with their peers within the company. For example, they will share the analysis table of consolidated data regarding marketing expenditure by project or entity with the group's marketing director. To meet this need, it is necessary to ensure that the reporting SaaS allows not only financial data to be collected, but also non-financial data. 

What is non-financial data?

• HR data: absenteeism, cost of sick leave, etc.
• Sales data: sales results, pipeline forecasts, lost deals, etc.
• Marketing data: leads generated, lead sources, cost of loyalty campaigns, etc.

Combining all this data in a single reporting software package enables all managers to analyse all the costs and revenues generated by each of the company's actions in a clear, consolidated and, above all, accurate manner. Thanks to the software implemented by the CFO, the data will be available in a single reporting, even if it originates from different business software packages.

To illustrate this point, we surveyed all EMAsphere managers who use the same SaaS reporting software: EMAsphere, of course!

1 - CFO & CEO: the company's strategic duo! 

Responsible for the company's strategic vision, they supervise its overall financial management through daily reporting on EMAsphere. This allows them to steer the company's global growth and react quickly to market developments.

• Hugues Vandepeutte, our CFO, can use EMAsphere to focus on analysing cash flow and monitoring the company's profitability in real time. During the closing period, he makes a double comparison between the defined budgets and the updated forecasts. Not to mention the reforecast analysis, which takes into account staff movements, changes in the pipeline and the service backlog.
• Meanwhile, Bart Baute, our CEO, studies the performance of the Sales & Marketing team thanks to the direct connection between Hubspot and EMAsphere. Every day, he compares the cash flow and performance of the sales team. Each month, the dashboards give him easy access to reports that he can discuss with the CFO.

2 - Service and Customer Success Department: in-depth analysis directly linked to customers!

As Head of Revenue and Services (implementation, support and customer success), Quentin Lamaille monitors customer payments and the progress of projects on EMAsphere every day to ensure effective revenue conversion.

• He analyses the ageing balance, cash flow and operational data from ClickUp, our project management tool connected to EMAsphere, on a daily basis.
• To ensure effective customer management, he reviews the sales pipeline available in EMAsphere to anticipate deals and adjust the schedules of the consultants who will be accompanying customers.

3 - The sales team: a CRM is good, but reporting software is even better!

Jean-Charles Hebbelinck, who is in charge of managing the sales team, uses EMAsphere daily to optimise sales development.

• More specifically, he has designed specific dashboards to track key indicators: new deals, pipeline, refusals, calls made, emails sent. This provides him with a better understanding of individual performance so that he can adapt the strategy accordingly. 
• He can analyse results instantly every day and in more detail at the end of the month thanks to the native connection between Hubspot and EMAsphere.

How many start-ups and scale-ups do not use their own SaaS internally? Obviously, this is not a statistic that can be found in surveys or a question that one would dare to ask companies. But the reality is there, and the saying ‘the cobbler's children have no shoes’ takes on its full meaning (but not at EMAsphere, as you noticed). Let me explain: if internal employees naturally use the solution they sell, it means that it has been designed for their job (and therefore yours) and that it is intuitive enough for operational staff (other than the developers or consultants who use it on a daily basis) to know how to use it.

3 - Tip #3: Ensure that the reporting SaaS solution has been created by a data expert! 

The last but not least criterion is whether the reporting solution was created by an expert in the business issue. You might say ‘Well, of course, otherwise who would have created it?’. Some companies are initially established to meet a market need that someone has identified and fulfilled by creating a solution. This can sometimes be complex if not supported by an expert, particularly in a field as specialised as financial and extra-financial analysis.

This is why, at EMAsphere, we are proud to say that our co-founder Hugues Vandepeutte was a CFO for many years before coming up with this solution. Of course, we are far from being the only SaaS company that had a business expert leading the way when it was founded, but it is still a strong indication of the relevance of your future reporting SaaS within your company.

So why is it so noteworthy that EMAsphere uses EMAsphere on a daily basis? Quite simply because it proves the relevance of the tool and its adaptability to every department within the company:

• Sales management and development for the sales team,
• Financial management and cash flow analysis for the finance department,
• Strategic vision and growth boost for the company CEO,
• Customer payment and project tracking for the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO).

So yes, today we all need to do reporting, but the ideal is for all departments to use the same tool to keep the company aligned (and above all, connected!).