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Showing posts from January, 2018

Getting out of Excel Hell!

…and why you should automate your management financial reporting. Excel is one of the world’s greatest desktop tools and many people love it because it is familiar and easy to operate. If you want to analyze a lot of numbers or do some complex modelling on a static dataset, it's hard to beat.I personally am a power user of excel and love the flexibility and ability to model various scenarios easily, and then analyse it. However, running a company involves collaborative, multi-department processes like planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. It involves collating data from multiple source systems and people, curating & transforming it before it is ready for consumption. And that’s where the power of Excel falls short. Weeks are wasted every year, manually consolidating a mass of individual spreadsheets. Errors in cross-linkages, formulae getting converted to hard-coded numbers, manual errors, manual data entry, individuals having to laboriously search their computer

Success pill for the CFO of a mid-sized business

3 steps to improve financial performance management  Large organisations benefit from higher investments and adherence to systems, processes and controls. Small businesses have shorter command chains and thereby higher transparency and control. Mid-sized businesses lie somewhere in between. The complexity of their business is rapidly increasing, and systems that may have been appropriate for a smaller organisation are no longer adequate. While most mid-sized organisations acknowledge this problem, they don’t necessarily know how to get themselves out of it. Setting up the required systems, controls and processes for monitoring the financial and business health of a mid-sized business is not just important, it is mandatory. Step 1: Identify your measures for business success While the broad aspects of financial performance management remain the same across organisations, it is important to understand what sets your business apart, and define the measures accordingly. A servi