FinancialForce has unveiled its Fall 2021 release, which includes new capabilities such as advanced resource management for the Professional Services Cloud, which creates a more efficient staffing process, as well as new ERP enhancements aimed at making it easier for customers to run their business digitally.
“The pace of change has never been faster. Organizations need to be more agile and customer-centric than ever to meet the evolving demands of the market,” said Dan Brown, chief product and strategy officer at FinancialForce, in a statement. “Our Fall 2021 release enables organizations to get the very most out of their ERP and PSA solutions. It gives them everything they need to run their operations digitally so they can adapt to change and truly put customers at the center of everything they do.”
Staffing resources
The Fall 2021 release introduces a set of enhancements to FinancialForce’s advanced resource management capabilities within PS Cloud. ARM is meant to optimize the staffing process for resource managers and provide an engaging experience for employees.
Resource managers can now access a richer set of information across skills, experiences, and certifications to inform staffing decisions. They are also able to leverage an automated approach to searching for resources and ranking them across multiple requests, allowing them to optimize staffing plans and build stronger project teams.
Employees and team members can now take a more central role in the staffing process by identifying skill aspirations and expressing interest in work that's more interesting to them. They can also receive prompts through the "Next Best Action" feature to update their skills based on previous assignments. This gives employees more influence over the scheduling process and helps them chart the advancement of their own careers.
ERP updates
The release also introduces new ERP features, including additional localizations, improved customer engagement, and globalization enhancements to our next-generation financial report builder.
On the multi-x front, the release includes support for multi-company journals, which allows for the ability to post journal entries regardless of the current organization. With this capability, information can be shared and unified across the entire enterprise. The release also provides support for advanced consolidations, aimed at accelerating period-end-close for multi-tiered organizations by simplifying the consolidation process across entities, reducing manual efforts, and minimizing errors.
Customers can improve efficiency of cash matching through automatic write-offs based on threshold rules for companies and currencies. This allows customers with a high volume of invoices to speed up the cash matching process in a multi-company environment, eliminating the need to manually write-off remaining invoice amounts one by one. Additionally, the revenue contract true up capability in Revenue Management is designed to help customers account for currency rate fluctuations, ensuring accurate month-end reporting.
International updates
The Fall 2021 release also includes expanded localization support for Germany, Norway, Sweden and Belgium, as well as additional withholding tax support. These enhancements allow customers to meet the regulatory accounting requirements in the countries in which they operate and quickly adapt to the unique needs of different locations.
The release further extends the power of FinancialForce’s Customer Engagement offering through the addition of Inventory Sales Orders. Sales orders can be analyzed across multiple customer projects or accounts, and Revenue Contracts and performance obligations for Revenue Recognition can be generated. Consolidated invoices across subscriptions, drop shipments, sales orders and services provide a more complete and accurate picture of customer engagement and behavior, providing a single view of all related customer activity through the Customer Engagement functionality.
Report builder updates
The new release bolsters Financial Report Builder, FinancialForce’s next generation financial reporting technology. Now in its third version, FRB has added “out of the box” financial statements for the French and Spanish markets to the rich existing repository of financial statements and reports. With support for the new Reporting currency, FRB leverages the multi-x capabilities of FinancialForce Accounting, enabling even more complex financial report creation without the need for post-installation efforts or report rebuild.
Upgraded user experience
The latest Salesforce Lightning Experience (LEX) updates in the Fall 2021 release include improved efficiency and accuracy across transaction & bank reconciliations, automatic write-offs, services billing, as well as put away and shipping queues. Consultants are able to enter expenses through the new LEX enabled interface either directly in a workspace or project, or remotely using the new mobile expense entry in the Salesforce mobile app.
The Fall 2021 release provides an optimized design across all workspaces to increase efficiencies with collapsible left and right regions and a new Percentage KPI card that highlights performance. Related lists can also be accessed on KPI cards to quickly drill down to the level of detail needed to make informed business decisions.
