22 Jun Financial Integration Pitfalls to Avoid in 2022
The key to future-proofing your firm in an increasingly competitive, ever-evolving environment is to adopt a flexible architecture and open application programming interfaces (APIs) that optimize efficiencies, while addressing customer needs, cost-effectively. With software and data residing virtually anywhere, it is important to ensure that your infrastructure can scale up or down in real-time and be prepared to integrate anything. In this guide, we discuss a few financial integration pitfalls to avoid in 2022.
Modern tools use financial integrations to eliminate the rekeying of data, easily share information across teams or departments, and gather intelligence for deeper insights that enable faster and smarter decisions. For most companies using a best-in-class technology strategy, the finance system is the hub where all other systems plug into. It becomes a central point that delivers the right data, wherever it resides when you need it with speed and accuracy. In short, implementing financial integrations is a critical component to maximizing efficiencies and your ultimate success.
As you look to create a holistic, fully integrated financial management system, learn the five big financial integration pitfalls and how to avoid them so you can get the most out of your connections – within and beyond your financial services firm.
Failing to set and manage expectations and requirements
This one is obvious yet the most difficult to attain across the life of your project! Here’s how to avoid the top five risk factors that impact every integration project:
Create realistic time estimates
Making an overly eager time estimate because of business demands is a risk that could haunt you throughout the project. As the project team struggles to meet the deadlines, quality often suffers, which means work may need to be redone ultimately causing you more costly delays.
Align developer costs to project scope
Your largest expense is usually tied to the developer’s time. As costs begin to pile up, management may begin to lose faith in you, putting pressure on you to complete the project asap. The result can be more errors, lost time, and lost rands.
Beware of scope creep
When stakeholders begin to sneak in little change requests that circumvent the identified change request system, both time and cost are impacted. Scope changes can also stem from the project team not having a clear understanding of what’s considered in or out of scope. As a rule, you should decline any
changes to scope unless they are absolutely necessary.
Ensure that the project goal is attainable
Some projects are unrealistic. Expectations for the project scope, schedule, and budget may be completely flawed. Realize the unfeasible aspects of a project or face the consequences.
Give us a call on 011 792 9521 for more guidance on other financial integration pitfalls to avoid in 2022.