The Controller’s Guide to Finance Automation

Data story-telling is instrumental in helping steer business decisions. Start by considering the value your financial insights hold for your CFO in the context of board and executive reporting. How has this changed in recent years? Make a list of the shareholder expectations and regulations guiding what needs to be reported on, noting the main areas that are currently evolving.

Next, consider the speed with which you can deliver these insights. If your CFO asks you for a particular figure, how quickly can you provide it? Take note of what information you can provide or verify quickly, and what data would be more challenging, or slower, to access.

To deliver high-quality insights, two things are needed: trust in the accuracy of your data and enough time to dive deep in your analysis and proactively anticipate questions and concerns. Highlight which areas you feel confident and less confident in reporting on with speed, accuracy, and depth. This will help you to flag the areas in your process that could be addressed with finance process automation.

As controllers are being made responsible for more financial and non-financial data than ever, it’s essential for you to have a clear view of where all your information originates. Your data points are most likely generated from multiple systems, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), business intelligence (BI), and enterprise performance management (EPM) platforms. Map out how and where your data is gathered and what financial planning, tracking, and reporting software is being used.

Continue building your map of financial data by following individual data points along their journey from the point of origin to the final report. Make note of all the different teams, systems, and processes a single data point encounters.

As you map out your data journeys, make note of the controls and processes that ensure information remains accurate and unchanged. How is data verified at source? What finance controls are in place as it passes from one team or software to the next? Consider whether information is being passed along manually (e.g., by copy/pasting) or automatically, and who is in charge of transferring, amending, and verifying figures.

As stakeholders demand more financial and non-financial insights, it’s likely that you’re working across more teams than you may even realize. As you map out your data journeys, compile an inventory of everyone involved in the financial reporting process and what roles they have, from input providers (e.g., FP&A, tax) to report creators (e.g., corporate accounting), to reviewers (e.g., executives, department leads).

As you map out your teams, consider how they work together. Take note of how edits are made, how comments are exchanged, where people are able to collaborate in real time, and where they circulate individual document versions (e.g., using emails or print-outs). How efficient, fast, and traceable is communication at every step? Consider how this works both within and between disparate teams.

Examining these different team processes should start to give you a clear picture of where the main inefficiencies and areas of weakness lie. Taking this information into account, ask your financial reporting team what their biggest frustrations are, what their most time-consuming tasks currently are, and what they feel they should be spending more time on.

While a strong solution should be quick to implement, successful implementation still needs planning and care. If a new tool is being implemented during a reporting cycle, running both old and new systems in parallel before fully changing over can help ensure a smooth transition. Consider the needs of all stakeholders and ensure everyone has enough time to get on board.

It’s important to include all key users from early on in the decision-making process to fully understand their needs, roadblocks, and reservations. Your team members may have varying levels of experience, ability, and confidence when it comes to technology. Internal onboarding sessions can go a long way to get everyone up and running more quickly.

From decision-making to implementation, adopting the right tools can be all-consuming. Make sure you speak to solution experts who can guide you through the entire financial automation process, help you make the right choices for your team, and provide support along the way. Involving partners and experts from the very beginning can help maximize your ROI and help you see results more quickly.