Evaluating a Cloud-Based Financial Reporting Tool for EBS? Here’s why Orbit is better than its competitors’ offerings

Finance teams are fast embracing cloud-based financial reporting tools for speed, flexibility, and agility. This observation is no different for the users of Oracle EBS Financial Modules including Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Cash Management, Fixed Assets and General Ledger. 

Oracle EBS Financials also seamlessly integrates with other business systems including your company’s ERP, SCM and CRM. Among the many benefits of using such an integrated system is better financial decision-making with greater efficiency and effectiveness, thanks to real-time data available at your fingertips. 

But, finance teams still team a world-class financial reporting tool to get a 360° view of data from the general ledger to the supporting details in sub ledgers.

A cloud-based financial reporting is becoming the default preference for businesses because of the following reasons:

• Anytime, anywhere access of key financial data 
• Cost-effective management of infrastructure
• Greater security and automatic (periodic) updates
• Facilitating sharing of data and collaboration with stakeholders
• Less paperwork and improved sustainability
• Improved management of financial processes
• Greater compliance
• Enhanced scalability, flexibility, and accuracy
• Unified view of financial data
• Real-time reporting and data visualization

Know Your Options: What are some of the popular Cloud-Based Financial Reporting Solutions?

There are many cloud-based, feature-rich financial reporting tools available today that provide businesses with choice but also make it difficult to identify the right one. Among the key features businesses look for, integration with Microsoft Excel is one. A popular tool used by finance users for analyzing financial data, easy integration with Excel becomes an important requirement to minimize dependence on IT and generate their own reports for further analysis.

In this category, some of the tools that stand out are Oracle’s Smart View, Financial Reporting Software from Insight Software and Wands from Insight Software.

Option # 1 – Oracle Smart View

Oracle Smart View for Office (Smart View) is a tool meant for accessing and integrating Oracle’s Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Business Intelligence (BI) content from within Microsoft Office products such as Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. It has a common interface that enables viewing, importing, manipulating, distributing, and sharing of data in Microsoft. 

Some of its key capabilities include:

• Integrate data from enterprise systems and BI from the source into Microsoft Office applications to view, import, manipulate, distribute, and share data
• Using simple queries, it is possible to perform ad hoc and free-form analysis for on-prem and cloud data, save it centrally or locally and reuse
• It also facilitates the use of flex and predefined forms while still allowing users to leverage the Excel features of such as sorting and filtering
• In Smart View, users can leverage data retrieves for reporting and create documents, reports, and presentations using data from different sources when they become available within Office
• The reports created in Office can be refreshed as required
• It also does not require the content to be recreated when importing in any of the Office interfaces

Option #2 – Financial Reporting from Insight Software

Insight Software’s solution also works well with EBS and ERP Cloud data, allowing drill-down visibility, eliminating discrepancies in data, and enabling faster decision making. In addition, reports and dashboards can be refreshed by the users themselves for achieving speed and efficiency. 

Some of the features that make this a popular choice include:

• Empowering finance teams to independently generate reports using real-time data
• Creating flexible, standard and ad hoc reports with multiple filters 
• Answering frequently asked questions by dragging additional fields such as revenue trends, capex spending, weekly forecasting, scenario modeling, and so on onto the report
• Integration with enterprise software systems to get a unified version of the truth
• Flexible, real-time reporting, drill-down capabilities, dashboards to track the progress of KPIs, interactive ad hoc visualizations, and executive storyboards
• Integrates not only with Oracle EBS but also other solutions such as JD Edwards, Microsoft, SAP, and so on

Option #3 – Insight Software’s Wands 

Insight Software also provides an exclusive Excel reporting tool for financial processes in Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) and SAP called Wands. The tool enables:

• Building reports that can be refreshed with drillable, real-time data in Excel
• Integrating deeply by leveraging the Oracle data dictionary 
• Technical expertise for heavy lifting for table joins, calculations, and queries not required
• This tool too is not limited to Oracle but integrates with SAP

Option #4 – Orbit Reporting and Analytics 

Another popular financial reporting tool that allows Excel integration with Oracle EBS and other ERPs is Orbit GLSense from Orbit Reporting and Analytics. The other feature that makes it distinct from its competitors is that it is also Web-based while others are only Excel-based. (Orbit also has an Excel Add-In, but it offers both web-based and Excel-based analysis). 

Purpose-built software for finance users, Orbit GLSense provides a holistic view of data from the general ledger to the supporting details in the sub-ledgers. In addition, it expedites the reconciliation of and closure of processes by directly integrating with ERP financial applications to build financial statements.

Its five key benefits include:

Benefit #1 – Generate Live Financial Reports: Orbit’s GLSense generates live financial reports leveraging the convenience of Excel and managing the associated complexity and risk. Users can quickly produce financial analyses and statements by defining rows and columns using GLSense to access all General Ledger Segments, Accounts, and Functions.

Benefit #2 – Real-Time Account Analysis: Performing ad hoc GL Account Analysis for auditing and posting the transactions to the right GL accounts at the time of period end reconciliations is possible with GL Sense. The financial reports and ad hoc analyses can be shared directly from within Excel, enabling faster and more informed decisions.

Benefit #3 – Faster Period Closing: Quickly building financial statements within Microsoft Excel and automatically populating them with live data from the enterprise’s financial system is enabled by GL Sense. All key business applications can be connected for getting a holistic view of month-end, quarter-end, or year-end data in Excel. Make your close processes more efficient, accurate, and reliable by integrating GLSense with your ERP’s general ledger and sub-ledger modules.

Benefit #4 – Drilldown To Details: Find answers for your business questions using pre-built sub-ledger drill-down reports for modules like Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Fixed Assets, Inventory, and Purchasing. To view the journal activity for any balance, build charts, apply filters, and use conditional formatting.

Benefit #5 – ERP Integrations: Orbit is also a platform-neutral tool that integrates with leading financial applications such as NetSuite, PeopleSoft, and JDEdwards, in addition to Oracle EBS, Fusion, etc.

To know more about Oracle GLSense and how it can empower your financial team with cloud-based financial reporting, Contact Us now.