Financial Planning & Analysis

The last thing organizations want is more complexity in their applications and data centers. That’s why the cloud migration can’t happen quickly enough. We all have our personal center of gravity — that metaphorical place where we feel sure of ourselves and who we are. It could be a physical place or merely a state of mind, but one thing’s for sure — when your center of gravity shifts, everything shifts with it. That’s literally what’s happening with data in the enterprise. A CTO named Dave McCrory is credited with coining the term “data gravity,” a concept that suggests the number of services and applications grows in parallel to the volume of information being managed by a particular organization. For companies considering their business intelligence (BI) strategy, data gravity deserves some major consideration, unless you’re willing to keep on building out your own data centers. “While the data in the cloud environment continues to increase, migrating to the cloud without considering the length and strength of next application might cause issues in the future,” a recent article on Host Review pointed out. “It’s always recommended to take into account long-term effects of your user base’s growth along with the amount of resources the application will demand. In addition, there are some crucial considerations that can’t be overlooked such as the effect data gravity will have on other applications; issues that will come up if the data cannot be migrated, and so on. Exploring different essential areas can help avoid problems later.” Iterative Analytics Financial executives may see these kinds of things as the IT department’s problem, but you also have to consider the end results that BI tools offer. In ‘Solving Data Gravity Pain,’ Information Management suggests an interface that will be familiar to many CFOs will benefit from a thoughtful approach to using the cloud: “Most analytics projects are highly iterative in nature. Dashboards enlighten a decision maker that in turn sends action items for adjustment. The business process being monitored by a dashboard is continuously tuned for optimal performance at various points from various data sources. To effectively deliver iterative intelligence, data and added context flows rapidly back and forth between apps, data sources and the analytical assets regardless of where they live…on-premises or in the cloud.” A post on MinuteHack said much the same thing, calling out data gravity as a major tech trend for 2017. While hybrid environments (cloud applications as well as those on-premise) will still be in place for a while, it said, “cloud analytics will increasingly represent a faster and more scalable solution.” Every organization will need to decide for itself how quickly it needs to manage this transition, but the quicker everyone understands data gravity, the better they’ll be able to gauge how strong its pull on your BI deployment will ultimately be. The post Defying (Data) Gravity appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

A Finance-owned cloud solution gives the department the freedom to make decisions fast—but involving IT at the right time and stage makes such projects more likely to succeed. Although 90 percent of businesses are already using the cloud for various mission critical processes, implementation continues at a slow, cautious rate. Take a recent survey by Softchoice, which found “most organizations have only progressed toward [cloud] migration on a limited or experimental basis.” Some of the relatively cautious progress can be attributed to now-debunked myths revolving around the cloud: security, control, or the threat of “noisy neighbors,” among others. Balancing Finance and IT involvement All myths aside, the Softchoice survey discovered the main obstacle to more widespread cloud adoption the inclination of many managers to make cloud investments without involving CIOs or the IT department. This is nothing new. Especially with cloud and SaaS services, it’s easier for Finance and other departments to adopt new solutions while bypassing IT entirely. Such a practice is even encouraged by some vendors–so CFOs and their teams can make decisions more quickly–but in the early stages of cloud application deployment, Finance can benefit immensely from IT’s insights and involvement. KPMG suggests as much, sharing their finding that IT involvement at adoption stages is a priority in any tech purchase, especially so when it comes to the cloud: Acting in silos or ignoring important stakeholders is another common mistake companies new to the cloud can make. Cloud services provide the business with the opportunity to contract directly, without the involvement of IT in some cases. When a particular function of the business…forms contracts directly with cloud vendors, it can often break more than it fixes. The case for timely collaboration Instead of avoiding IT, business managers are better off collaborating to ensure successful cloud deployment and integration. Although in recent years Finance has increasingly circumvented IT to buy technology on its own, there are signs collaboration is starting to improve. In one of its surveys, Recruiting firm Robert Half Technology found that 77% of CFOs surveyed said they are now spending more time talking to the CIO or the most senior IT manager when implementing cloud solutions. These new, collaborative initiatives give IT a new important yet unobtrusive leadership role and Finance an imperative to communicate with IT at a much needed time. As finance applications continue their move to the cloud, “IT can become the knowledgeable voice to advise on the proper balance between better functionality versus the importance of system integration and the ease of reporting across a number of different platforms,” writes Patrick Fenton, head of financial management at KPMG in the U.K. In other words, the right degree and timing of collaboration between Finance and IT can make all the difference between heaven and hell in the cloud.

Don’t believe the naysayers: just glance at the startups out there to show how spreadsheet use is getting easier and more exciting. If you’re as regular a user of Excel spreadsheets as the rest of the world, getting started probably feels as routine as picking up the phone and dialling a number: you turn on your computer, select the Excel icon from the menu and seamlessly start working with the numbers in columns and rows–it’s all second nature. Just imagine, however, if those steps were replaced by the following: sit down anywhere ­­or stand even ­­and rather than working off a notebook or desktop, you strap on a set of virtual reality goggles and start looking at Excel in an three dimensions. This futuristic scenario is not, in fact, very futuristic at all. Fortune magazine recently profiled a startup called Envelop that takes traditional Microsoft Windows applications and puts them in a VR environment. The magazine’s staff got hands­on with the product and talked about what it was like: Looking at an Excel spreadsheet in virtual reality was pretty much like looking at Excel on a desktop—except supersized. Displaying spreadsheet data in a graph form, like a bar graph or something more complex, takes advantage of virtual reality’s 3­D capabilities and makes staring at a pie chart far more exciting than normal. Why would anyone do this, you might wonder? Part of the rationale is to help those trying to create more unusual VR apps to get more familiar with the technology by representing software programs they already know well. In another sense, you might think of it as a way of bridging the user experience of a desktop world and a VR world. Before PCs became an office mainstay, for example, lots of senior executives sat at a surface that was covered only by a blotter and some stationary. It took a while to get used to sitting in front of computers for eight hours. The transition to VR may not be much different. The good news is that while PCs forced everyone to learn how to type, other technology innovations are trying to make imputing and managing data in applications much easier. Take officeAutomata, another startup that builds upon Microsoft’s virtual assistant, Cortana, to create a sort of digital coach for Excel users. A blogger on American Genius explained why this could be game­changing. “I try to avoid the program altogether. Being that I rarely require it for personal use, all is good until my boss says, ‘Hey, you’re good with Excel, right? I need you to do this, that, and the other,’” a writer named Taylor Leddin writes. “At this point, there is a crash course involved with trying to relearn Excel.” Using the artificial intelligence ­like a tool, however, means your personal activity will teach the app to create personalized macros, or functions and commands like “Finish this worksheet” or “Can you help me find the data?” If anyone tries to tell you Excel is on the way out, just take a look at the ecosystem of innovators who are making it more accessible ­­and more likely to become a true enterprise platform ­­than ever before. The post How Excel is Inspiring Innovation Into VR and AI appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

The things that once stood in the way of on-demand applications are starting to crumble, which is good news for business users. Real clouds are just condensed water – light, almost ephemeral things you could pass through with ease. Moving towards cloud computing, on the other hand, may be unnecessarily more difficult for some organizations, for reasons that have nothing to do with the technology. Take a recent story on Information Management, which captures some of the frustrations around a U.S. government program designed to ensure IT investments are made with due diligence and avoid duplication of effort. Sadly, nearly 80% of government workers surveyed said they weren’t happy with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). The attractions of getting on the cloud may actually inspire a mutiny: Federal cloud decision makers remain uncertain about the process, with some ignoring the program entirely even though it is mandatory for federal agency cloud deployments and service models at the low and moderate risk impact levels. Of course, there are sound reasons why programs like FedRAMP have been introduced in the public sector, just as private enterprises have been cautious and careful about moving workloads into hosted environments. Many started out with so-called private cloud environments, for example, before getting more serious about offloading IT infrastructure to third parties and using software-as-a-service to meet their needs. Debunking the Myth The biggest issue has traditionally been security, which has been largely overcome or folded within more over-arching data protection strategies. The other concern has been that cloud-based IT might not work as well as that which runs in your own data centers. However InfoWorld has suggested that the threat of “noisy neighbours” – having other firm’s software running next to your own – has turned out to be something of a myth: “You simply don’t hear of performance problems caused by contention with other cloud tenants. The multi-tenant factor that scared the hell out of traditional IT shops does not seem to be a real issue,” the publication said. “Public clouds let you allocate more machine instances on demand. That elasticity prevents performance degradation because you can quickly address resource contention with the simple invocation of a provisioning API by the admins or, better yet, the applications themselves.” This isn’t just important insight for IT professionals or CIOs. It’s also worth bringing to the attention of CFOs and finance teams because, as these technologies and compute models occur, there may be more instances where business units choose to migrate to these tools directly. Of course they’ll need to consider compliance and partner with IT, but it looks like the road to on-demand software and services is slowly but surely happening. In other words, the clouds are finally parting. The post The Truth about Cloud Computing Concerns appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

Most companies are now results-oriented and fairly relaxed about letting employees occasionally use their desktops to browse social media or surf personal web sites as long as they get things done, but remember the time when management was so tough some software programs came with a “boss button?” These were the icons you would quickly click on if a supervisor suddenly appeared over your shoulder, which would change the screen to look like you were in the middle of something work-related. You know, like using an Excel spreadsheet. This is a far cry from Help Button Excel, an experiment of sorts from a budding entrepreneur named Rick Rosenthal which recently won first place at Startup Weekend Stamford. A story in The Stamford Advocate had the details: Rosenthal’s idea to provide instant, hands-on assistance for people wrestling with Microsoft Excel spreadsheet functions, formatting, macros and other issues. “People have been coming up to me for years almost on a daily basis asking for this kind of help,” Rosenthal said. “I had a hunch that these kinds of issues were going on around the country.” Often when we think of innovation, we think of creating something entirely new, but this is a good example of where innovation can be built on top of something like Excel. A second way to innovate with Excel is by applying it to unusually difficult challenges – say, trying to go from being an Uber driver to a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. That’s what Jason Shuman did. As he wrote in a post on TechCrunch, he knew he needed to keep information “maniacally” organized if he was going to reach his goal: “For me, that meant making a list of the top 30 seed-stage firms I wanted to work for between Boston and New York. With each firm I made a spreadsheet that included every partner’s name, my mutual connections to them, the investments they were responsible for in the portfolio, my thoughts on each and my mutual connections within portfolio companies,” he wrote. “I was laser-focused on learning as much as I could about the firm, the partners and the companies so I could use that knowledge in my interviews and other venture conversations.” This leaves innovation approach No. 3. If you’re not going to create something innovative on top of Excel, or use Excel to solve an innovative problem, there is plenty of opportunity to use Excel as a platform – connecting the front-end tool to enterprise-grade capabilities – to transform your business. In other words, using Excel this way can let organizations be more innovative in the way they carry out day-to-day processes, and discover effective solutions to longstanding problems. You don’t have to act like a startup or a Silcon Valley insider to be an innovator – you just have to make smart choices, and then see them through. The post Three Ways to Innovate with Excel Spreadsheets appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

FP&A software powering your plan to grow Drive smarter, more data-driven business decisions with numbers you can trust. A lot of things ended in 1992 — Johnny Carson’s run as host of The Tonight Show, the Cold War and, eventually, the popularity of acid washed jeans — but something particularly important for business leaders was just getting started. As hard as it is to believe, that was the year Drs. Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the concept of the Balanced Scorecard. Today, as entrepreneurs explore the “lean startup” approach and manufacturers continue to wrestle with Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecard has managed to sustain a surprisingly loyal following in the C-suite as a strategic framework for looking at a business from multiple perspectives. As organizations continue to reap the advantages of corporate performance management (CPM) software – and Excel spreadsheets for that matter – think of Balanced Scorecard as a way of complementing such technology with highly effective management practices. Balanced Scorecard 101 There are plenty of consultants and other resources to help organizations understand and implement Balanced Scorecard, but one of the best ways to get started might be by looking at how it has worked in practice. For that, turn back to the archives of Harvard Business Review, which in 2000 published an in-depth look of how Balanced Scorecard helped Mobile North America Marketing and Refining evolve from industry laggard to profit leader. As Kaplan and Norton explain, a bit part of the success comes down to senior-level buy-in. Inspired and dedicated middle managers can sustain quality improvements, local process improvements, and many other change programs. Middle managers can also implement programs that have been ordered from centralized corporate staff groups . . . (but) we are skeptical that significant results can be delivered with the Balanced Scorecard without such active leadership and ongoing reinforcement. Framework Fatigue? Of course, Balanced Scorecard isn’t the only tool senior executives can use to steer their organization forward. In fact, that might be one of the challenges. This year, for example, consulting firm Bain published its 15th annual Management Tools and Trends report. While it showed Balanced Scorecard still within the top 10 frameworks and strategies used by large enterprises, it also suggested that many firms were struggling to choose between older, established approaches versus newer ones. “Established market firms in North America and Europe are heavier users of more traditional tools,” it said, while other regions look for ways to “catapult themselves into global markets as fast followers.” This is where hard numbers come in handy. Bain’s report says Balanced Scorecard is used by 44% of the 13,000 who responded to its survey, with one of the highest satisfaction scores. Perhaps the best business case for this framework, however, comes from Clearpoint Strategy lead Ted S. Jackson, who published a post on Business2Community a few months ago that outlines six reasons Balanced Scorecard remains so viable. These include the way Balanced Scorecard leads to greater transparency, how it can rally an organization around a central mission, its focus on execution and the way it quantifies results. Finance departments have long understood the value of sticking with what works — witness the longevity of financial spreadsheets — and given Balanced Scorecard is nearing the 24-year mark, it’s probably time for those who haven’t taken the plunge to start taking a closer look.

FP&A software powering your plan to grow Drive smarter, more data-driven business decisions with numbers you can trust. Former Vena CEO Don Mal reveals why FinTech represents such a pivotal and enabling yet still misunderstood market. A recent headline on Bloomberg.com sounded almost deliberately confrontational: Banker Beware: Meet the FinTech Insurgents. What followed, however, was a video recap of a thoughtful discussion with startups who are offering various kinds of digital products for the financial services industry. It was a good example of how everyone — from traditional financial services firms to CFOs — is still trying to figure out if FinTech represents a competitive threat or the potential solution to some long-standing industry challenges. Earlier this year, Chris Skinner attempted to properly define FinTech on the Financial Services Club blog: Fintech is a new market. It is 21st century finance. It is the new form of banking, and is related but very different to the old form.  Some of the old form players will metamorphose into these new digital FinTech players. Some, not all.   Some of the new players will take over the markets of the old incumbents. Some, not all. American Banker, meanwhile, recently pointed out that the term FinTech has a surprisingly long history, but suggested that the best way to conceptualize it is “innovative technologies and startups pushing the financial services industry to improve.”  That sounds about right. According to IDC, global FinTech spending is expected to grow at an exponential rate over the next three years, from $461-million to $5.4-billion, a direct reflection of the impact those investments will have on the financial services industry (see figure). With these trends in mind, here are a few ways to think about how FinTech can be such a catalyst to change in the financial services sector we know today: Cost and Quality of Service Improvements: According to a recent report from consulting firm McKinsey, the world’s banks could lose $1 trillion in profit if they can’t find a way to compete (or partner with) an estimated 12,000 FinTech startups. Customers who have been frustrated by what often feels like a monopoly in some markets will look for alternatives, especially if it means they can avoid hefty fees and receive a more personalized user experience. Data-Driven Approaches to Risk Assessment: Financial services has always been about data, but until recently – and in some cases, still – a disproportionate number of processes to manage it have been highly manual. FinTech firms are standing out by their use of machine learning, social media reviews and other ways to make better decisions about lending and investing, according to the Economist. A Diversified, Stable Credit Landscape: Banks usually start out in one location before spreading out their branches. They also need sufficient capital before they can start lending money out. In contrast, FinTech firms can often reside anywhere and facilitate transactions easily. No wonder IDC Financial Insights predicts a slew of acquisitions in its just-released 2015 FinTech Rankings. FinTech is more than just a buzzword. If all goes even remotely as planned, it could become a case study in how technology can be truly transformative for the entire financial services sector, one that fuels virtually every other the world over. Don Mal is the former CEO of Vena Solutions. A proven leader in the corporate performance management (CPM) space, Don’s experience spans decades of general management and executive leadership positions at successful companies in the financial technology sector.

The finance world is fighting a war for talent according to a new survey from from the American Institute of CPAs. As reported recently in CFO Magazine, the AICPA’s Economic Outlook Survey polled over 1,400 CEOs, CFOs and other CPAs. Among its findings, since 2014: 43% have experienced increased competition in finding and recruiting top candidates; The availability of talented professionals is once again among the top 3 concerns of respondents; 39% reported that turnover remains a going concern. The survey’s findings – and the clear talent war facing finance leaders today – underscores the importance of automating financial processes, for at least two reasons – efficiency and morale.   Morale As we’ve discussed previously in this blog, turnover is not just frustrating, but it can be extremely costly; just finding and retraining a single employee can cost upwards of 65% of the role’s base salary. Automating manual tasks, particularly in high stress functions like the month-end financial close, goes a long way to keep your best people engaged, doing rewarding work and – as a result – happy.   Efficiency Longer hiring cycles that come with increased competition for top talent is yet one more factor adding to the already overwhelming pressures of making your financial processes more efficient. Learning to get by one one less person (or 10) makes increased efficiency a virtue out of necessity. But if you do it right – automating time-consuming tasks and source system integration – the efficiency gains of automation will be permanent ones.

This blog was first published in 2014 and updated on December 8, 2021 2021. FP&A Software With a Native Excel Interface Keep the tool you know—Microsoft Excel—and gain central database, process automation and data aggregation capabilities with Vena. Excel spreadsheets are ideal for performing ad-hoc analyses and calculations with limited data sets but should never be used as a database. In her article, “Excel is Not a Database,” author and administrative support expert Jodith Allen explains that many companies store critical data in Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheets. The problem is, simple human errors can skew formulas, equations, and figures, thus resulting in inaccurate budgets, forecasts and other business processes. Why Businesses Use Spreadsheets Instead of Excel Databases Though it takes hours of coding and manual work to make spreadsheets behave like databases, many companies do just that. Here are the main reasons companies say they are sticking with spreadsheets: We’ve Always Used Excel Some companies argue that since they have always used spreadsheets to store data, there’s no reason to move to a database now. However, it’s easy to export cumulative data from databases to spreadsheets for one-off or special calculations. This includes things like projections and planning. Regarding using Excel for spreadsheets, visit this post next to learn about the three best practices for building effective spreadsheets for finance pros and business leaders. We Don’t Have Enough Data To Warrant the Use of a Database Many companies believe their pool of data is relatively small. But Allen points out that as companies grow, so does the amount of data they must work with. She explains that even if a company intends to use a spreadsheet to store a list of 50 employees and their contact information, details about those employees could grow exponentially in a short period, resulting in a spreadsheet that contains thousands of rows and columns and takes several minutes to load. Why Your Company Should Use a Database Instead of Excel Spreadsheets To Store Data According to Allen, these are the six major reasons a database will serve your company better than spreadsheets when it comes to storing data: 1. More Than One Person Can Update a Database at a Time Only one person can use a spreadsheet at any given time. Allen notes that it’s common for someone to open a spreadsheet in “Read Only” mode, save changes to their hard drive, and copy the spreadsheet back to the network. In this case, the employee has effectively erased the work of the person who worked on the spreadsheet before them. Take a look at this post next to learn how Vena's Excel interface provides flexibility and ease of use for stakeholders on the ground in 10 developing countries. 2. Data Can Be Audited in a Database Usually, a single person is responsible for the creation and maintenance of a spreadsheet. If they are transferred to another department or leave the company, all their knowledge goes along with them. At the same time, it may take months to train another employee to fill their role and get the spreadsheet back up and running. However, databases that offer audit trails automatically record user activity, providing subsequent users insight into how a spreadsheet was previously managed. 3. Databases Support Formal Workflow When companies rely on spreadsheets to accomplish business processes, they must email a single spreadsheet to multiple contributors, reviewers, and approvers. Or, they must create and distribute multiple spreadsheets to dozens, if not hundreds, of users. Then, later consolidate these spreadsheets manually. However, databases that support workflow enable managers to map, automate, track and manage processes specific to their business requirements onto a solution. As a result, each contributor effectively works with a centrally managed spreadsheet that includes instructions specific to their assigned tasks. Workflow engines also notify both managers and contributors of upcoming or missed deadlines. This eliminates the need for back and forth emails and phone calls or the reliance on the inefficient Outlook® and Excel pairing. 4. Databases Can Support Modeling Better Than Spreadsheets As spreadsheets and workbooks grow, they become very fragile, and the smallest of user errors can have serious consequences. For example, copying existing equations to new locations can change the cell references. Or, accidentally inserting a number into a cell that already contains an equation converts the cell’s content into a constant. 5. It’s Easy To Create Reports With Databases Queries, and the reports based on those queries, are easier to write and run in a database. It’s easy to mix, match, and re-sort data in a relational environment instead of static spreadsheets. Would you like to see how agile reporting from an easy-to-use Excel interface drops iPSL's planning cycle from 6 weeks to 10 days? Click here to find out. 6. Databases Are Secure and Enforce Control Spreadsheets lack control and security features. This means their accuracy completely depends on the users’ skill level and ability to identify and correct mistakes manually. However, mistakes usually go unnoticed because spreadsheets are rarely checked or tested thoroughly before being rolled out. Conclusions About Using Excel as a Database Excel is not going away any time soon. Not to mention, the application is undoubtedly useful when it comes to data entry and review. Excel’s formatting, charting and graphing capabilities make it ideal for entering and accessing data and creating reports. But companies who use Excel also need a central database with a formal workflow, audit trail, and business rules to secure their data and facilitate communication. Excel users primarily use emails and phone calls to augment the application’s lack of communication tools. However, companies can still stay in the familiar Excel environment. They can do this without developing inefficient or costly workarounds to compensate for the important features that spreadsheets lack. Companies would greatly benefit from a solution that combines Excel functionality with a secure, centrally managed application and database. One that allows users to experience the power of an enterprise-scale solution without abandoning their extensive investments in spreadsheets or leaving the familiarity and flexibility of Excel behind. Want to learn more? Click here to find out how we can help. Did you learn a lot about using Excel as a database in this post? Here are three more posts to read next:  10 Excel Tips & Tricks Everyone Should Know Excel – And Nothing but Excel It’s NEVER the Time to Move Away from Spreadsheets in the Consolidation Process