Our CEO made us build financial reports in Excel to understand our customer’s pain. Here’s what I learned. – Part 1 of 2
To provide a bit of backgrounder, I’m a Marketing Manager for a software company that develops data modeling platforms for reporting, planning, and analytics. My job requires very different skills from those of our technical consultants and our typical customer—the...
The Importance of Planning and Forecasting in BI
The budgeting and forecasting process for most organizations is long and tedious and occurs on an annual basis, at least. Companies try to do it more often to improve accuracy and aim to ultimately implement a procedure for continuous planning, rolling forecasts, and...
ERPs and Budgeting—What the Excel?!
How 2 Persistent Conditions Define Budget Planning in ERPs There are 2 remarkably persistent conditions in the world of Finance Technology that concern budgeting and ERPs. It’s surprising, because the complexities that Finance departments must address have increased...
Can we really “Stop using Excel”?
An article from the Wall Street Journal recently stirred up a commotion in the Finance world. The article is about Microsoft Excel. Read it here: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs A few days after, the astonished author wrote another article on all the...
Essential Questions to Ask During Data Prep & Analysis
Data preparation can be a tedious and time consuming activity. However, it is a fundamental part of the data analysis process in order to produce accurate information that can be trusted. If you are responsible for preparing data for analytics, you have to ask...