The Ultimate Style Guide for Financial Reports

According to the 2020 Pulse of Performance Management survey from advisory firm BPM Partners, ease of use is the most important feature that finance teams are looking for from their business performance management (BPM) software solutions. The annual survey—which polled 336 finance professionals and executives this year—provides an unbiased look at the trends and technologies that are shaping the BPM software market. Synonymous with corporate performance management (CPM) and enterprise performance management (EPM), BPM solutions are defined in the survey as tools that “enable an organization to plan, monitor and execute on its strategy.” Modern BPM solutions encompass the full suite of FP&A processes, including budgeting, forecasting, reporting and financial consolidation. When asked to rank the most important software features for budgeting, forecasting and planning on a five-point scale, survey respondents put “ease of use” at the top of the list with an average ranking of 4.57 out of five. Additionally, when asked to identify the pain points with their current budgeting systems, the top three responses were “labor-intensive,” “takes too long” and “not easy to administrate.” Ease of use was identified as the most sought-after feature for financial consolidation as well, with an average ranking of 4.41 out of five. The next two responses in that category were “finance ownership” (4.26) and “integration with ERP/GL” (4.14)—both of which are also reflective of a BPM solution’s usability. As more organizations make the shift towards integrated, finance-led business planning, stakeholders need real-time access to key financial insights from every function of the business. BPM software solutions provide that holistic view because they can automatically consolidate company-wide financial data—ultimately empowering key stakeholders with the information they need to plan for the future and make agile, well-informed business decisions. However, agile finance-led business planning is very hard to achieve with solutions that are difficult to operate. If financial data is tied up in disparate, disconnected source systems that cross-functional leaders can’t access or easily understand, they won’t be able to participate in key planning processes—such as budgeting, forecasting and reporting—alongside their finance teams. This creates data silos, planning inefficiencies and data integrity problems across the entire business, making it tough for finance leaders to plan confidently for today and tomorrow. That’s why BPM software vendors work hard to prioritize their end-user experiences. Vena Solutions, for example, is recognized as one of BPM Partners’ Core Vendors for 2020 with ease of use, product flexibility and quick implementations listed as the solution’s primary strengths. Vena earned an overall satisfaction rating of 4.62 out of five in this year’s survey, placing it among BPM’s top five vendors overall. Vena’s key usability differentiator is its Excel interface, which allows both finance and non-finance users to leverage the flexible functionality of an already familiar tool. This feature—coupled with Vena’s centralized database, collaborative workflows and seamless source system integrations—makes business planning easier and enables automated consolidations, real-time forecasting and predictive scenario modeling. As integrated, finance-led business planning continues its evolution into standard practice, the need for flexible, easy-to-use BPM solutions is only going to increase. With user-friendly tools and the right processes in place, finance teams can support agile, strategic decision making and lead their companies forward with confidence—while ensuring the right stakeholders are always involved and engaged in the process. Learn how Vena can streamline your finance-led business planning and enable cross-functional collaboration so you can plan confidently for today and tomorrow. Check out BPM Partners’ 2020 Pulse of Performance Management webinar on demand here.

When Vena’s Meg Bowie hosted a panel of Vena customers and FP&A veterans, she expected to learn about the evolution of finance and the processes it manages. Instead, what she learned from MasterCorp’s Holly Snyder, Santee Cooper’s Andrea Williams as well as Chrstine Sawyer from the American College of Health Executives went much further, illustrating how injecting FP&A thinking across departments led to transformational changes throughout their organizations.  Join Meg as she hosts an intimate, interactive panel discussion with Holly, Andrea and Christine in their panel discussion, How to Make FP&A Part of Your Company DNA. Visit plantogrow.com for a wealth of on-demand, CPE-accredited videos offered as an educational platform for financial and operations leaders alike.  What Does an FP&A Mindset Mean? As the panel discussion illustrates, FP&A is more than a finance function but a way of thinking. It means finance-led planning that incorporates data from far beyond finance to chart the best future for your organization. It means a way of approaching business-wide planning that includes: Engaging non-finance business unit managers and end users early and often throughout the planning process. Going beyond core financials to analyze cross-departmental data for a holistic picture of where the organization stands today…and how to plan for the best future moving forward. Digging behind summary financials to tell the full story behind your business performance today, and uncovering insights into how to plan for the best possible future. FP&A DNA: Firsthand Accounts Andrea Williams from Santee Cooper shows how putting off the move to modern FP&A solutions can mean costly consequences. How traditional—often unsupported—legacy FP&A software left her finance and executive teams with summary data on the health of the organization—but not how to best move forward, or why to make the decisions they needed to.  “We were using software that had become obsolete and unsupported. So, the longer you run a software that’s unsupported, the greater the risk. For us, it was time to mitigate that risk and make that change.” — Andrea Williams Christina Sawyer from the American College of Healthcare Executives goes a step further. She explains in detail how it’s not only technology that transforms your FP&A, but how you engage and energize your management colleagues in the planning process. It’s guiding principles, such as transparency and providing business partners with self-serve tools, that make for more engaged planning partners and a better planning process as a result.  “It gives us a lot more visibility to what’s going on and when, which I think is phenomenal. Our contributors or end users are very happy with the on-demand nature of getting at the data, where before they had to wait for the monthly financials to be published.” — Chrstina Sawyer MasterCorp’s Holly Snyder explains how, especially as a high-growth company, she put the transparency and tools that Andrea and Christina spoke of into action at MasterCorp. How she adopted a modern, full-spectrum FP&A solution (in this case, Vena) and creative training and implementation methods with results including: Using centralized, pre-populated templates to structure and streamline budgeting and planning processes—with accurate numbers and the audit trails to back them up. Running Finance 101 and Budgeting 101 courses in part to show her non-finance contributors how and why better participation on their part spells better budgets—and better business as a result. Performing a most-mortem after every budget improved the process and identified operational KPIs—e.g. payroll metrics, year-over-year change—at least as instructive about the future of MasterCorp’s business as traditional, core financials. “We are an ever-changing, fast-paced company in growth mode…Vena [has offered us] an efficient way of reporting data, streamlining processes and operating with a lean financial staff—which means a huge savings to our company and the ability to move us to the next step and next direction within finance.” — Holly Snyder In Summary: Why FP&A Means Far More than Finance FP&A is a mindset that extends well beyond finance—ideally across every department involved in your integrated planning efforts, even more so when that process is finance-led. Join Meg and her panel to hear firsthand accounts of the value of using company-wide data to inform your planning decisions, engaging LOB managers early and often throughout the planning process, and providing transparency for everyone from executives to department managers. Watch Meg, Christine, Holly and Andrea’s full panel discussion at plantogrow.com for additional takeaways including: Why to involve non-finance managers, end users and other stakeholders often and early in the planning process, not only for more holistic planning but also so they’re more invested in the success of FP&A in the process. The roles, skills and backgrounds of non-finance contributors to take into account when building new planning processes, selecting new technologies, deploying training and documentation and more. Remembering that planning is an iterative process and the importance of soliciting feedback from everyone involved to improve it with every iteration. Discover through firsthand accounts how injecting an FP&A mindset can lead directly to transformative, positive change for your team and organization as a whole. The value of self-serve reporting in putting insights, reporting, predictive analytics and more in the hands of department managers to drive their own data-driven decisions. Learn how to make FP&A part of your company DNA today at plantogrow.com. Thought Leader Bios Meg Bowie: Manager, Customer Success, Vena Solutions Meg’s software experience spans a decade with roles from support and training to her current role in customer success management. More than most, she understands the importance of teamwork and active listening in managing the best customer success teams as well as delivering the best possible customer experience for her worldwide customers.      Andrea Williams: Financial Analyst, Santee Cooper Over a decade in the power sector, Andrea’s roles included accounts payable, inventory and budgeting. Throughout her experiences implementing new finance systems, she has consistently built strong, transparent relationships with all her end users, guided by a mission of making finance faster and more user-friendly for everyone throughout her organizations.     Christine Sawyer: Associate Director,  Finance and Administration, American College of Healthcare Executives Christine has over 25 years of experience in the association field, spanning roles from accounting manager to finance director—and more recently as a business advisor to colleagues outside her organization. She is adept at implementing financial systems, processes and controls to optimize departmental and organizational performance.      Holly Snyder: Director, Financial Planning & Analysis, MasterCorp Holly is a forward-focused finance professional with over 15 years in accounting, budgeting, forecasting, reporting and FP&A. She’s also dealt with multiple country and currency reporting in her global business experiences. Holly is considered a disrupter for consistently applying business analysis and critical-thinking skills to enhance traditional finance processes.

If you’ve been in finance for more than a few years, odds are you’ve heard all about the potential value of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and predictive analytics. You’ve heard that when the conditions are right and the technology is ready, AI promises to uncover hidden insights on your business today and help you plan for a successful tomorrow.  Has that time come for finance to adopt AI and put its theory into practice? According to Vena’s Rishi Grover and published AI author Ramy Nassar—both thought leaders in the space—the answer is an unequivocal yes.  Join Rishi and Ramy as they dive into the topic in the CPE-accredited, on-demand video, Demystifying AI, at PlanToGrow.com, a digital learning platform for business leaders and finance and operations professionals.  As Rishi and Ramy explain, AI and related technologies are ripe for finance adoption for three key reasons: 1. The evolving role of the strategic finance function It’s hard to read a finance or business publication today without finding a reference to the evolving role of the finance function in modern, agile organizations. If you’re reading this, you already know how strategic finance teams aren’t bookkeepers of yesteryear. They lead your company’s strategic planning efforts, plan for virtually any future scenario and tell the story behind your core financial numbers to plan with confidence for today and tomorrow.  2. An explosion in company-wide data for finance to analyze Today’s strategic finance teams are also tasked with analyzing an ever-increasing volume of data. To tell the story behind your numbers and to get a holistic picture of your business, they need to look not just at financials, but at the larger set of non-financial data from virtually every department in your business. And that larger data set—if it’s not already—is quickly becoming too big for humans to analyze on their own.  If anything, this explosion of data is a key reason why AI isn’t just ripe for finance adoption, but essential to uncover hidden insights that no individual or team can find on their own. “AI and machine learning give us the power to uncover signals or patterns buried inside of massive data sets. And we can use those signals to make better, more strategic, more well-timed, forward-looking decisions that are grounded in data insight.” — Ramy Nassar 3. A wealth of readily available tools and resources For evidence of AI and related tools readily available to today’s strategic office of finance, you need look no further than the world’s favorite business software—Excel. In addition to Google, IBM and others, in recent years, Microsoft has made major and growing investments building AI and ML technologies into Excel and into its data visualization companion, Power BI.  Excel Ideas, for example, identifies hidden correlations and anomalies in your data to identify what truly drives growth and other changes in your performance metrics. What’s more, Excel Ideas learns from your feedback to provide increasingly valuable insights every time you use it. “[AI and machine learning] have been around for a very long time. There are lots of companies like Microsoft and others that are creating applications and technologies that are leveraging these underlying models. We don’t need to recreate those.” — Rishi Grover Join Rishi and Ramy to dive deeper into these trends as they unpack best practices to develop a successful AI strategy—from increasing your organization’s curiosity quotient (CQ) to understanding your data strengths and biases. Learn how AI can help maximize business performance and uncover the (often surprising) factors that drive your business the most. And go one step further to make accurate predictions about the future of your market and business performance.  “CQ stands for curiosity quotient…and there’s a group of researchers and there are organizations all over the world starting to look at the impact of CQ on the ability to make better strategic decisions.” — Ramy Nassar  Learn how and why you can make AI work for your finance team today, with key takeaways from Rishi and Ramy including: Diving into the key trends that make AI more valuable to finance today than ever. Knowing the difference between AI and related technologies including ML and deep learning (DL). Understanding how AI can help you distinguish between traditional lagging indicators (FYIs) and data-driven leading indicators (KPIs). Identifying your true business drivers to maximize business performance and other practical AI use cases for the strategic office of finance. Learning about the readily available tools you can use to deploy AI and other emerging technologies today. Discover why the timing is right to adopt AI in your finance department today. Catch Rishi and Ramy’s AI session on demand at PlantoGrow.com. Thought Leader Bios Rishi Grover: Chief Solutions Architect, Vena Solutions Rishi focuses on the continuous innovation of Vena’s product offering, delivery and vision, working closely with clients and fellow industry experts. Starting his financial software career in sales engineering, Rishi has since developed a passion for translating AI and other emerging technologies into customer value. Ramy Nassar: Digital Expert & AI Author Ramy is an engineer, designer and maker. He leads digital studio 1000 Days Out to help clients, including Apple and Facebook, align emerging technology with their organizational goals and end-user desires. He is a frequent speaker on emerging technologies and the author of the AI Product Design Handbook.