Our client—a large international utility company, acting to accelerate the transition to a carbon-neutral world for a positive impact on people and planet – made an urgent call to us two days before Christmas. They were facing a fast-approaching financial reporting deadline over the Christmas holidays that required unique technical accounting expertise.
When it comes to the new lease accounting standard, across all industries, embedded leases have proven to be complex. EXAMPLE: Consider a standard product supply agreement. This type of contract might not seem like it contains a lease, but it may include an embedded lease if the purchaser has control over most of the services output.
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals are a necessary part of a company’s initiative toward sustainability and equality. ESG is gaining traction, with 91% of business leaders admitting that they think they are responsible for addressing ESG issues. These issues include carbon emissions, climate change, anti-corruption, water use, community development, and human rights. Changes in behavior and society are driven by incentives that are primarily financial, and this is why sustainable finance is critical to tackling these issues. Companies can incentivize customers to make eco-friendly decisions and invest in companies that are on a journey toward Net-Zero (or are already there). This is all a part of their ESG framework, which tracks, plans, and reports on an organization’s actions.
We hear dashboards are on their way out. I recently saw a tombstone for Dashboards on TDWI’s thought post (good read, btw!). Try a Google search for "dashboards 2021" and you may find many references that say dashboards are becoming obsolete. Sirius maintains, however, that dashboards have simply been upgraded. Quality data visualization for business intelligence dashboards helps businesses make money. The function of data visualization and continuous data curation allows for deeper insights and predictive measures, helping businesses make better decisions and create improved business performance. Old dashboards, perhaps, were clunky, took time to build and maintain, and changes were slow and expensive. But, the evolution of analytical dashboards now allows for businesses to quickly analyze data and run better.
The amount of corporate data is expanding and appears to be at an all-time high. Every organization today is rapidly evolving into a data organization. In an era where data is becoming the backbone of an organization (i.e., companies use data to identify the overall health of an organization) and the decision maker (i.e., companies use data to make judgments and predictive analytics), businesses must find out how to best organize their data.
The world of CRM continues to morph with new software systems and new best practices, as our CRM practice is deeply focused on Salesforce and Dynamics. With more and more companies revisiting their CRM workflows post-COVID, we continue to reassess and incorporate best practices for implementing platforms, workflows, and data.