How to Leverage CadencyDirect for Connected Visibility Across Financial Processes

The way the Office of Finance works is changing day-to-day: new processes, new technology, new standards to adhere to. A recent study from McKinsey stated that finance professionals have the highest potential to continue remote work in a post-pandemic world, adding another element of complexity to the finance function.

Many companies have adopted tools that help to standardize, digitize and, in some cases even, automate certain processes in their organizations. However, digitization without visibility across financial processes is incomplete. Furthermore, process visibility without context is not as effective as it can and should be.

As organizations grow and become more dispersed, whether through a shift to remote work or organic change, maintaining end-to-end visibility across financial processes like account and general ledger certification becomes more difficult.

CadencyDirect^® by Trintech (available on the ServiceNow^® platform) helps organizations continue their focus on digital transformation and tie finance function transformation into that effort.

Give Visibility Across Financial Processes to the Entire Office of the CFO

CadencyDirect enables enterprises to standardize and automate the Record to Report (R2R) process, including the period-end reconciliation processes. Furthermore, with standard and powerful reporting, dashboards and exception workflows, finance leaders can easily determine progress throughout the period and quickly identify risk and exceptions.

CadencyDirect’s capabilities easily expand beyond period-end reconciliation processes and even the larger R2R process. It is a native Built on Now^TM application for the ServiceNow platform, meaning finance professionals can monitor their R2R process as an independent workstream, as well as view it in the larger context of the entire Office of Finance with digital workflows for finance that were previously manual efforts.

Now, when something impacts the Record to Report process, downstream visibility is easily accessible and doesn’t rely on manual efforts — emails, IMs, etc. — to convey to the relevant parties.

The Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) team no longer needs to rely on manual updates from the Record to Report team. FP&A can simply access CadencyDirect on the Now Platform and view relevant information at their leisure and as they need it. They can drill into the specifics of certain accounts and even specific reconciliations, finding important information that impacts their work without interrupting the Record to Report team or relying on manually-generated readouts.

CadencyDirect upholds the integrity of the R2R by ensuring that only the proper parties have access to manipulate and view the full reconciliation data. The financial close application also delineates the workstreams, making auditors happy, too.

The dashboards and charts available in CadencyDirect are user-friendly and feature relevant data. Additionally, the grids and views should be familiar to those that already leverage ServiceNow for their workflow digitization, including the ability to sort and filter on grids within the app.

Benefits of Digital Workflows in Finance

As the only native Built on Now app for the financial close, ServiceNow customers can configure automated workflows based on updates in the account certification process in CadencyDirect.

For instance, if a certain high-impact account is certified and will have a resulting impact for the Financial Consolidation team, that team can be notified of the change automatically without the human effort that is typically required to facilitate communication between the two teams.

Removing these manual steps to convey information between separate but related teams is crucially important. Things happen in manual processes; tasks are missed, turnover occurs, and these minor slip ups can create serious delays and rework that breaks down a company’s processes.

Additionally, it may be helpful for people within the disclosure group to understand when a period is closed as part of the Record to Report process so they may begin finalizing their financial reporting. With CadencyDirect, the disclosure team isn’t waiting to receive an email or be updated by a meeting to begin their work; they’ll be notified of the event along with the relevant information they may need to complete their work.

Visibility on its own is hugely beneficial and powerful in the Office of Finance, but visibility without context lacks meaningful impact.

With CadencyDirect on the Now Platform, finance leaders can gain connected and contextual visibility across financial processes, reducing risk and cost while increasing efficiency and effectiveness.

To learn more about CadencyDirect — whether you’re an experienced ServiceNow® user looking to focus on finance function transformation or are just starting your digital transformation journey — and the insightful visibility it offers, download the solution brief.

Written by:

Sam King
Senior Product Owner