The Data Intelligence Layer for Manufacturing Finance
Published January 15, 2026 · Updated May 11, 2026 · By Louis Gerard, Co-founder of Aperture
Manufacturing finance teams operate on fragmented and unconnected data — 70% of their time goes to finding data, not using it. Aperture is the intelligence layer that connects ERPs, MES logs, PDFs and spreadsheets into one source-backed graph, so every variance, every cell and every number is traced back to its origin.
The Problem: Manufacturing Finance Runs on Fragmented Data
Across produce-and-operate, report-and-reconcile, and decide-and-act, data is lost on every export and every handoff. The classic variance cycle takes around five weeks — by the time the report is ready, the decision is gone.
Our Mission: From Raw Data to Sourced Decisions
Aperture turns raw documents and systems into structured intelligence and sourced, auditable decisions. An ontology-first knowledge graph with pre-built entity types — BOMs, suppliers, components, equipment, compliance documents, cost centers, contracts, periods and versions — gives finance teams field-level traceability and a compounding operational memory.
How Aperture Works: Connect, Retrieve, Answer
Stage 1 ingests any source in any format — ERP exports, Excel, PDFs, MES logs, scan uploads. Stage 2 runs a 3-stage retrieval engine with cross-encoder reranking that improves precision by ~19% over naive RAG (BEIR, Thakur et al. NeurIPS 2021). Stage 3 returns plain-language answers with mandatory field-level provenance — every output cites document, page, section and excerpt.
Five Workflows for Manufacturing Finance Teams
Aperture compresses month-end close from 3–5 days of manual reconciliation to hours; turns 5-week COGS variance cycles into root-cause investigations with every figure cited; produces board-ready output with field-level provenance for CFOs and external auditors; consolidates multi-entity M&A reporting in days; and builds an evidence trail by construction for compliance and legal teams.
How is Aperture Different from a Naive LLM Wrapper?
Naive RAG tools rely on dense vector similarity, chunk-split tables, and offer no provenance. Aperture uses a 3-stage hybrid retrieval (keyword → deep AI → cross-encoder), full-document injection for financial tables, and field-level provenance on every cell — making compliance auditing possible by construction.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Aperture?
Aperture is the data intelligence layer for manufacturing finance teams. It connects ERPs, MES logs, PDFs and spreadsheets into a source-backed ontology so every number in a finance report is traceable.
How does Aperture work for manufacturing finance teams?
Aperture ingests structured, unstructured and manual records as-is, structures them through an ontology-first knowledge graph, and answers questions with mandatory field-level provenance — document, page, section and excerpt.
Can Aperture be used for COGS variance and month-end close?
Yes. Controllers use Aperture to cut month-end close from days to hours, and CFOs and FP&A analysts use it to compress 5-week COGS variance investigations into minutes, with every figure cited to source.
How does Aperture handle source traceability?
Every claim, number and metric is linked to the originating document, page and cell. Token-level numeric verification coerces unverifiable values to "[Data not available]" so reports stay trustworthy and audit-ready.
What document types and systems does Aperture support?
Aperture supports PDFs, Word, Excel and CSV, PowerPoint, emails (EML), images with OCR, plus direct connectors to ERP, MES, Google Drive, SharePoint and supplier portals.
Get started
Request early access and cut your variance cycle from 5 weeks to minutes.