Integrated Planning

If CFOs and their teams only look inward, their perspective won’t offer what senior leaders really need. The phrase “bottom line” and “finance” often seem to go hand-in-hand, but smart CFOs and their teams are increasingly beginning to realize that making sense of all those other lines is really important, too.  A great article on Finance Director recently described annual reports that are taking into account non-financial measures. HR rules may seem too internal to be of interest to investors and senior executives, for example, but they can contribute directly to corporate performance. The same goes for a firm’s research capabilities, changes in the customer base and beyond. A non-financial report brings these things together in a way that’s really meaningful, the article suggested: The financials may tell you how much money the company made, but not necessarily how it makes money. And more importantly, whether the current year earnings provide a long term sustainable proposition for value creation. The other great takeaway is that CFOs shouldn’t necessarily be using data to sway the organization, but to guide strategic thinking by marrying their traditional knowledge of resources with the operational drivers that determine how well a company works. All this may seem far removed from the reality of what finance departments are going through today. How do you start writing a non-financial report if you don’t have the right information? In a new report called “The Transformative Controller: Adding Value, Insight, and a Bridge to the Future,” KPMG suggested that there is a strong correlation between companies that make smart IT investments and those who have deeper insight into the things they need to know and share with others. “Some 73 percent of controllers say that a technology-driven financial reporting audit helps them assess comparative company performance in their industry,” a story on CPA Practice Advisor summing up the research said. “Additionally, more than one-third of respondents say a technology-driven audit improves speed, helps to flag high-risk areas, improves quality of work, and allows the auditor to perform deeper analysis.” Controllers are just one part of the finance team, of course, but you get the idea: Use technology not only to think through the things senior leaders have expected to hear from the CFO’s office, but things they might never have expected to hear. It doesn’t have to be all good news: it just has to be news they can really use and act on.   The post The Rise of the Non-Financial Report appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

There’s probably a reason why hieroglyphics were some of the first forms of written communication in human history. Long before there were comic books, movies or TV shows, Ancient Egyptians understood the power of using images to convey meaning rather than simply present a series of facts. This is the “show, don’t tell” rule that writing instructors have been drilling into their students for decades, and it may be time to embrace it in the finance department as well. Of course, the idea of a budget narrative is already common in some sectors, particularly in the non-profit sector. A post on the Grant Central Station blog explains how narratives are helpful in seeking public sector funding proposals as well: “Also known as a budget detail, budget description, or budget justification, the budget narrative explains what the numbers in the budget table or spreadsheet represent and how you arrived at them. The benefit of preparing a budget narrative is that it requires you to get down to your project’s nitty-gritty details by laying out who will accomplish what and when, as well as how you arrived at costs.” Some say numbers don’t lie, but numbers without context can be extremely misleading or altogether wrong. Incorporating thoughtful narratives and other supporting context into your planning and reporting process can greatly improve the understanding of your results, and reduce the time spent chasing down exceptions that can easily be explained. It follows that your budgeting or corporate performance management (CPM) software should to include such context – in the form of comments, attachments or drill-down capabilities – to help you better tell the story behind your numbers. Storytelling Basics for CFOs This isn’t to suggest CFOs and their teams should stop using numbers for forecasting, variance analysis or other tasks. It’s more about how they use them as part of a story. Aswath Damodaran, a professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at NYU, offers a highly insightful take on the use of narratives in the process of creating investment valuations. “If numbers without narrative is just modeling and narrative without numbers is storytelling, the solution, as I see it, is both obvious and difficult to put into practice,” he writes on his blog. “In a good valuation, the numbers are bound together by a coherent narrative and story telling is kept grounded with numbers.” Damodaran outlines a multi-step process for data-driven storytelling which can be applied far beyond investment valuations, including budgeting and other areas that interest finance departments. It can be summed up as: creating a narrative or theme to describe what the numbers are telling you; proving the points in the story through past history and experience; connecting the narrative into how it drives value; keeping an open feedback loop. The good news is that CPM software today can make it much easier to tell the story behind the numbers than Damodaran describes. With the right Excel spreadsheets, and the centralization of companies’ financial data, such solutions give organizations much more visibility into their numbers and the context behind them. This translates into more trusted insights and smarter, faster decision-making as a result. It’s not that the numbers lie, exactly. It’s just that, with a narrative approach, CFOs and their teams can offer their senior leadership team a more meaningful look at the truth.

Starting as early as the 1950’s, large organizations across the globe started embracing the Japanese concept of kaizen, which roughly translates into “continuous improvement.” While mostly applied in manufacturing firms, continuous improvement would quickly become an inherent part of the software world, even surpassing other sectors with the advent of cloud computing.   Although finance executives today are no doubt familiar with cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS), it might not be obvious how continuous improvement plays into the model as a major value proposition. ITBusinessEdge recently summed it up in its 2015 Enterprise Applications Outlook report: For buyers, SaaS means lower infrastructure costs, more rapid deployment, and losing the burden of managing, updating and patching applications. For software vendors, organizations moving to established cloud services means they can deliver applications faster and not wait on prolonged infrastructure improvements and deployment cycles. That second point is critical, but often overlooked. Most businesses might suggest “time is money,” but for SaaS providers it takes on new meaning, because they generate revenue based on the volume of transactions. Therefore, there’s a built-in motivation to keep improving application performance. Continuous Improvement in Action We’ve seen our clients experience this first-hand with our cloud-based corporate performance management (CPM) software. I remember one particular customer was in town, and he came to our offices to show us how some of his firm’s reports took more than two minutes to generate. When he opened them and tried a couple, however, none of them took any more than 10 seconds. After several attempts, eventually the customer gave up and simply asked: “Did you guys do an update?” In fact, we did. We do updates all the time. Our background monitoring and analytics systems detected and flagged the slow performance. Then our engineers conducted an analysis and wrote code that quietly fixed the issue without the customer ever being aware. While Vena hardly has an exclusive license on the cloud, this example typifies one of the classic benefits of SaaS delivery – the kaizen factor, if you will.   Kaizen = “Change” + “Good” The Bottom Line for Businesses There are many different approaches cloud-based software companies are taking to speed up the process of improving their products, including DevOps, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Integration. Forget about the terminology, though: it all boils down to the fact that companies should no longer need expensive infrastructure to deploy the latest release of an application. Whether you’re trying using Excel as a cloud database, or working with a more specialized SaaS tool, you’ll want the providers you work with to carry the burden of updating their products. If they’re not interested in continuous improvement, you may not want to continue with them at all. George Papayiannis is the Chief Technology Officer at Vena Solutions and a recognized thought leader in cloud computing, mobile development and more. Prior to co-founding Vena, George served in numerous technology leadership roles for global consulting firms and their Fortune 500 clients.

Partnership combines award-winning enterprise solution with deep industry expertise Toronto, Canada, March 9, 2015 – Vena Solutions, a cloud-based provider of corporate performance management (CPM) software, has partnered with SandPoint Consulting, providers of CPM implementation expertise, training and support since 2001. Together, the companies will help organizations implement and leverage Vena to streamline a range of finance, accounting and business processes. Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions, explains, “Both Vena and SandPoint are deeply invested in taking the stress out of finance and accounting departments. Our corporate performance management solution takes an ‘embrace-Excel’ approach, meaning Excel is our front-end. We’ve found this approach keeps users productive and happy because they continue to work in a familiar environment once they’re up and running on Vena; our solution doesn’t require them to rebuild templates, formulas and models in a completely new environment. SandPoint brings a strong customer focus and industry expertise to the table, which complements our own capabilities very well.” Bryan Wirthlin, President of SandPoint, adds, “Vena takes CPM to the next level with its cloud based architecture, rich, out-of-the-box CPM functionality and process controls, and its native Excel front-end interface. Vena’s solution is an exciting opportunity for SandPoint to continue its success in implementing world-class CPM solutions.” SandPoint joins an impressive roster of other partners who share Vena’s commitment to unparalleled service delivery and customer satisfaction. ABOUT VENA SOLUTIONS Vena Solutions has redefined how companies automate their most mission-critical finance, accounting and business processes. Our platform embraces the best of Microsoft® Excel®, extending and evolving its capabilities to create a next-generation enterprise solution that is powerful, yet intuitive. Vena is a first-to-market solution that offers the most comprehensive suite of cloud-based corporate performance management (CPM) capabilities with a quick deployment methodology – all without compromising what you love best about Excel. venasolutions.com   ABOUT SANDPOINT CONSULTING, INC. SandPoint Consulting has been focused on implementing CPM solutions since 2001. Our implementation methodology is focused on knowledge transfer, best practices, and end-user ownership and acceptance. We work with you every step of the way and help you implement a CPM solution to meet your needs and goals. Our team has helped implement hundreds of world-class CPM solutions. Our seasoned consultants have financial and accounting backgrounds, project leadership skills, and the technical know-how to help your CPM project succeed. http://www.sandpointc.com Vena and the Vena logo are trademarks of Vena Solutions registered in various jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders. Microsoft and Excel are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

High customer satisfaction ratings, strong functionality and superior usability launch Vena into top quadrant in record time. Toronto, Canada, November 04, 2014 – Vena Solutions, an industry recognized provider of next-generation corporate performance management (CPM) software, is proud to announce it has reached yet another top industry benchmark by achieving Leadership status in Nucleus Research’s latest Value Matrix. Vena progressed from the Facilitator quadrant to Leader in just six months, strengthening the company’s reputation in a mature and highly competitive industry. Nucleus evaluates vendors based on the operational efficiencies that customers realize through new and existing deployments. Vena’s cloud-based platform has gained traction in a wide range of industries due to its ability to automate and streamline core CPM processes while keeping users in native Microsoft® Excel®. “The Vena solution provides the flexibility, process control, security, workflow management and reporting capabilities that organizations are seeking, without the need to move away from using Excel,” says Nina Sandy, Principal Analyst of Nucleus Research. “Vena allows organizations to maintain their Excel environment – and their existing Excel expertise – while mitigating some of the challenges surrounding the use of spreadsheets. It is a strong solution for those seeking cloud-based financial planning and budgeting.” Nucleus Research’s latest report, “Technology Value Matrix Second Half 2014: CPM,” notes the growing demand for cloud capabilities, greater usability in CPM solutions and CPM solutions that integrate well with existing systems. Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions, explains, “Vena is fast becoming the solution of choice when it comes to CPM because of our customer-first approach. The application offers CPM capabilities that are on par with large vendors, but our appeal stems from the fact that our solution is cloud-based and leverages native Excel – the most ubiquitous business application in the world.” ABOUT VENA SOLUTIONS: Vena Solutions has redefined how companies automate their most mission-critical finance, accounting and business processes. Our platform embraces the best of Microsoft Excel, extending and evolving its capabilities to create a next-generation enterprise solution that is powerful, yet intuitive. Vena is a first-to-market solution that offers the most comprehensive suite of cloud-based corporate performance management (CPM) capabilities with a quick deployment methodology – all without compromising what you love best from Excel. venasolutions.com ABOUT NUCLEUS RESEARCH: Nucleus Research is a global provider of investigative, case-based technology research and advisory services that provide real-world insight into maximizing technology value. For more information, visit NucleusResearch.com or follow us on Twitter @NucleusResearch. Vena and the Vena logo are trademarks of Vena Solutions registered in various jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders. Microsoft and Excel are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

When most businesses seek to improve their business accounting strategies and maximize their bottom lines, they often focus on straightforward calculations involving sales numbers. If you plan to move X units at a price of Y dollars, you can easily compute your expected revenue and plan your budget from there. But simply doing the math might not be the best way to comprehensively plan your business. You may want to look beyond just the sales numbers – it’s often beneficial to zoom out and examine your operations from top to bottom.   The importance of predicting trends in supply and demand According to the article “Sales & Operations Planning: More than forecasting” on BusinessExcellence.com, effective sales and operations planning is a process that includes predicting trends in supply and demand in order to optimize your strategy for asset management. It requires a business-wide scope – yes, you’re poring over your sales figures, but you’re also assessing your efforts in marketing, manufacturing, engineering, finance and procurement. All of these areas cost money, and they all ultimately impact ROI. “The best results will be achieved when system calculations can be combined effectively with human insight,” the author writes. “Think about a system that can combine input from sales and marketing professionals with output from a forecasting engine. The data tells a lot, but it’s also important to fine tune it with intelligence from the people working closest to the market.” Acute insight and strong leadership help keep everyone on the same page Operations planning is a matter of balancing “goods out” and “revenues in,” but it also incorporates much more. The articles explains that sales and operations managers are not always automatically aligned; therefore, it’s important to have strong leadership in place to help everyone make long-term plans on the same page. Planning for your business’ operations is an ongoing process – it’s much more complex than simply hammering out a budget each year. Rather, it takes continued vigilance to get it right – and it’s always worthwhile to have a good budgeting and planning system in place to help you figure out the details. Click here to read the entire article.

Upgrading or migrating your old, legacy accounting system to a unified, web-based corporate performance management solution could significantly benefit your company. In his article, “5 Signs You Need a New Accounting System”, Brian Dietz, CPA, of Brittenford Systems, says that, rather than procuring, implementing, and training users on a net-new solution, companies should consider augmenting their existing accounting system with an automated, web-based corporate performance management (CPM) solution. Here are five signs that your company’s accounting system is inefficient and an explanation of the ways a CPM solution can help extend its life.   Your accounting team is doing a lot of manual work. If your accounting team is spending a lot of time keying and re-keying data into uncontrolled Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheets, or using spreadsheets outside of your accounting system to work around limited or complicated functionality, they may be under considerable strain and unable to keep up with the pace of business. Manual work significantly extends the life cycle of business processes. In fact, it took one Quickbooks user 45 days to finish the month-end close! In the absence of an automated solution, users communicate solely through static, multi-page workbooks, phone calls and emails that can quickly pile up and get lost in the shuffle. If this is the case for your company, it may be time to adopt a web-based, automated CPM solution that can integrate with your core business system. This kind of solution will extract, organize and house data from your source system in a single location and can automatically feed up-to-date data into the proper reporting format. As a result, your accounting team won’t need to manually copy and paste data from source systems into uncontrolled spreadsheets, collect additional data via email, then export all collected data into reports suitable for management, auditors and regulatory bodies. You cannot create or analyze reports in real-time. Users of legacy accounting systems rely on static reports that were manually created over extended periods of time. Reports of this nature can contain many errors and do not reflect the company’s current financials. As a result, executives cannot use these reports to make informed decisions about the future. A CPM solution that houses all your data in one place will automatically extract and organize data into dynamic reports. As a result, Finance teams will be able to analyze data in real-time and drill through to supporting details for a more complete picture of the company’s financials. Real-time insight into consolidated data and local financial and operational metrics enables management to make meaningful decisions more quickly and helps companies maintain a competitive edge. Your solution is expensive to maintain and requires a lot of external support. Many legacy accounting systems are expensive to maintain because they are limited in terms of functionality. Users must be trained on how to create new kinds of reports and IT must make frequent changes to the system’s structure to accommodate business growth. A CPM solution that integrates with your company’s core business system is easier to maintain because it does not come with many associated costs and users can be up and running in no time. The core business system of choice for many companies today is Excel. Companies around the world use the popular application to create templates, spreadsheets and business logic for accounting and other business processes. However, since Excel does not support user communication or collaboration, departments end up managing workflow through email, risking the loss or misinterpretation of data. The most effective solution CPM will add structure to Excel processes. As a result, companies will effectively gain an enterprise-scale solution without needing to abandon their core system. Your solution cannot keep up with your company’s growth. As companies expand operations and acquire businesses, processes become more complex. For example, as companies grow, they are faced with the need to manage disparate systems and consolidate data across multiple entities and regions, making it difficult for executives to maintain a holistic view of the company. In addition, increasingly strict regulatory and compliance requirements, such as tightening GAAP guidelines, are forcing companies to demonstrate higher levels of auditability and traceability. However, most accounting systems cannot accommodate business growth or trace and record user activity without the introduction of manual work or extra costs. In this case, companies should consider investing in a CPM solution that is flexible enough to accommodate all possible business scenarios and requirements. A unified CPM solution – that is, one that centrally stores a company’s data and automatically maps it to relevant templates – can support almost any process at no extra cost. Every user will be able to use the solution regardless of their language, location, accessibility needs or skill set. Your data is not secure. Accounting teams need to ensure their data is secure in order to submit accurate figures to auditors, meet regulatory and compliance requirements and protect their company against fraud. Financial controls, system backups and data recovery are therefore essential to accounting departments. Unfortunately, many accounting systems are limited in terms of design and expensive external consultants must intervene to extend the system’s functionality and create reports for uncommon scenarios. As a result, users of these systems tend to revert to familiar, user-friendly spreadsheets to collect, organize and store data. However, spreadsheets on their own cannot automatically confirm the accuracy of entered data, nor can they prevent unauthorized users from making changes to individual spreadsheets or workbooks. Conclusions Most accounting systems are expensive to maintain and cannot protect data integrity or support continuous business growth. However, companies should not abandon these systems in favor of spending significant resources and dollars assessing internal requirements and procuring, implementing and training users on a new system. Instead, companies should look to adopting an automated, web-based CPM solution that can seamlessly integrate with their core business system, eliminating the need to maintain multiple applications or buy a new one. With an automated, web-based CPM solution, companies will experience the best of both worlds. They will get to keep what they already have while gaining the flexibility and power of an enterprise-scale solution. As a result, users will be able to create accurate, timely, streamlined reports that satisfy auditors and enable management to make better decisions. Click here to read the full article.

Bank capital planning processes are coming under greater scrutiny as the Federal Reserve begins assessing firms’ internal controls more frequently and directly over the course of a year. After the economic meltdown of 2008, the Feds designed a “stress test” to hold banks to higher risk management standards and ensure they have enough capital to continue actively lending to households and businesses in adverse economic conditions. However, in June, 2014, Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo announced that banks need to be more closely supervised because some “still lack reliable information about their business and exposure” and are “unable to measure or understand how stressful conditions can change the performance of their material business lines”.   Tarullo also says that banks will need to strengthen senior oversight, implement more effective checks and enhance accountability in order to better measure the impact of and prepare for unusual and improbable risks. Stress tests are constantly evolving and banks must evolve, too According to Tarullo, the Fed’s tests and reviews will constantly evolve to reflect new risks and innovations in the financial system. In order to keep up with the Feds’ changing criteria, banks’ internal control structures must be flexible, transparent and able to facilitate firm-wide collaboration. However, the reality is that many banks store crucial financial data in siloed Excel® spreadsheets. On their own, spreadsheets are not secure, meaning any user can make changes to figures and formulas. Additionally, users must spend time manually inputting data into spreadsheets and confirming the accuracy of data through emails that tend to pile up and get pushed to the bottom of inboxes. Also, it’s not possible to monitor the status of tasks or processes using spreadsheets alone, meaning finance teams must do a lot of extra manual work to create an enterprise-wide view of the bank’s financial health. Without an enterprise-wide view of the firm, internal team members will have difficulty identifying and reversing potential risks. Conclusions: Best practices when it comes to bank capital planning Banks will be under greater scrutiny than ever by the Federal Reserve and must have flexible, automated, transparent and enterprise-wide internal controls to pass the Feds’ stress test. The software solutions that can best prepare banks for stress tests and future economic crises are those that wrap the best of Microsoft® Excel® in a secure, centrally-managed, automated environment. Solutions that automate the collection and consolidation of data reduce the need for manual processes and their associated risks. Also, secure, centrally-managed solutions gives management control over and insight into the status of individual tasks and department-wide processes, making it easy for management and the Fed’s committees to assess the firm’s financial health. A flexible solution will help banks easily adjust their processes according to the ever-changing financial conditions that have an impact on the Fed’s stress test criteria. Click here to read the full article.