Role of Business Intelligence in Accounting

Recently updated on September 6th, 2023 at 08:00 am

Even though business intelligence is useful for many industries, it may play the most pivotal role in accounting and accounting advisory services. Not only does business intelligence populate an accounting dashboard with actionable information, but when combined with accounting business intelligence software, it can also guide a wide array of organizations to a more profitable future. Here’s why business intelligence plays such a significant role when it comes to accounting advisory services.

Business Intelligence Removes the Guesswork

Many decision-makers resort to gut feelings, intuition, and other forms of guesswork when making important decisions. Often, it’s not because they necessarily want to. In the absence of hard data, there may be no other choice. With accounting business intelligence software, stakeholders, executives, and others who are often forced to make tough calls can do so with verifiable data on an accounting dashboard.

Take, for example, a car manufacturer that’s experiencing delays in its microchip supply chain. Without chips, you can’t make cars—at least not the ones that dominate the roads today. However, you can construct most of the vehicle, store it somewhere, and then wait for the chip to arrive. A decision-maker must decide how much garage or parking lot space to lease to hold the incomplete vehicles coming off the assembly line. Instead of coming up with a ballpark figure, the decision-maker can consult with the company’s accounting advisory services to see:

• How many vehicles they’re producing a week
• How the lack of sales to wholesalers is impacting their cash flow, affecting what they can invest in storage space
• How their books would be impacted if they severed the relationship with the current chip manufacturer and hired another one that’s in the same country and costs more

A few minutes in front of their accounting dashboard, and their accountant can come up with concrete figures to help the decision-maker make the best call possible.

Evaluation of Results Compared to Business Goals

Business intelligence software gives you the freedom to juxtapose your current and past results with your business’s goals because it provides you with tangible, reliable financial performance analytics. Each metric in a company’s financial picture can be quantified, reported, and visualized in a central location then put next to the business’s goals for an objective evaluation. There’s no need to guess whether a client is hitting their smart KPIs or how far away they are from meeting their objectives. You can see it right in front of you!

For instance, suppose you’re advising a car rental company that has set the goal of increasing rentals in their Boston market by 4% over the course of a year. The end of June is around the corner, and it’s time to evaluate where the company stands. Knowing this was one of the company’s goals since the previous December, you’ve set up your accounting data analytics software with a performance dashboard tracking rentals in the Boston area.

Instead of spending hours—or longer—tracking down reports from different branches and crunching the numbers, you have the figures your client needs right there in front of you. With a 2-minute phone call, all questions are answered, and they can go into their meeting with reliable, fact-based numbers.

PathQuest BI gives you the kind of business intelligence you need to provide advanced financial performance analytics when and how your clients need it. To learn more about the potential of PathQuest BI for your advisory services, book a free demo today!