11/05/2016 Accountex 2016 1

How the right technology can deliver the holy grail “Out of the box, fully integrated P&L, Balance Sheet & Cash flow”

A Presentation by Gavin Allen Managing Director, LucaNet UK & Ireland

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Financial Performance Management

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Is Life In The Office Of Finance Any Easier?

Despite advances in technology, the core Office Of Finance challenges remain: • Financial Close and Management • Consolidation: Management, Financial, Statutory • Reporting • Planning: Both Financial and Operational • Budgeting • Strategic Forecasting • Rolling Forecasting • Key Performance Indicators and Monitoring • Analysis • Disclosure • Governance, Regulation and Compliance • Continued Legislation and Accounting Standards

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Beyond Functionality

Small or enterprise scale organisation, the Office Of Finance challenges must be addressed beyond mere functionality: • The right technology should be easily accessible to all organisations • Affordable solutions • Flexible procurement options • No loss of functionality in solution versus scale • Office Of Finance functions in often in much smaller organisations face

greater demands • Community feel vital • Non-technical, finance friendly • Client engagement from day one, ownership of solution(s) • Self-sufficiency • Rapid implementation • Swift realisation of Returns on Investment • Agility • Modern technology and deployment options

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What Are The Options?

So you realise the need for change, what comes next? • Evaluate the market and the plethora of Financial Performance

Management vendors • Engage in the standard processes of demonstrations, presentations,

proof of concept builds etc. • Internally assess each solution in turn: do they really make a difference? • Exhaust several man hours going through said process above. • Take the leap of faith and select a vendor – hope it all turns out okay! • Divert key financial resources to work alongside vendor for several

months. • Perform countless rounds of end user testing. • Evaluate post implementation success and outcomes. • Hopefully prove your return on investment originally anticipated.

Or despite the need for change, do nothing • Retain existing technology; increase headcount • Seek assistance from your ERP provider

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Technology: Help or Hindrance?

To Help • Reduce the time taken in the financial close processes • Release valuable time within the Office Of Finance • Simplify the most complex of process, especially forecasting • Mitigate the risks of spreadsheets usage • Supported platforms with modern architecture • Empower the Office Of Finance; collaboration

To Hinder • Additional training and education requirements • Potentially change your current processes to align to technology • Reliance on 3rd party consultancy • Investment costs • Diversion of critical Office Of Finance resources during implementation • Not finance friendly – not spreadsheet like

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What Are The Risks?

Key risk factors to consider

• Time

• Costs

• Resources

• Fear

• Uncertainty

• Doubt

• Solution adoption

• Training and education needs

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What Are The Benefits?

With the RIGHT technology however…

• Decrease Time

• Reduce Costs

• Release Resources

• Mitigate Fear

• Alleviate Uncertainty

• Destroy Doubt

• Embrace Solution adoption

• Easy Training and education needs

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Overwhelming Choices!

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Bombarded With Technology Messages

In an industry crowded with terminology…

• Cloud • Hosted Cloud • Dimensionality • Driver Based Planning • In Memory; Relational; Hybrid • Financial Analytics • Business Intelligence • Mobile • Etc, etc..

What does all this mean when considering the challenges faced by the Office Of Finance??

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Back To Spreadsheet Comfort

So it’s back to our “Friend”, the spreadsheet? • Spreadsheets are GREAT for..

• Personal consolidations, plans and analysis • Rough-and-ready reports • Checking the integrity of static raw data • Analysis of static data sets

• Spreadsheets are BAD for..

• Collaborative consolidation, plans and reports • Management information • Managing financial processes • Performance analysis across several business segments

The bottom line : you spend huge amounts of time, energy and resources fighting against a tool that simply wasn't designed to do what you do for a living in the Office Of Finance

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9 out of 10 business still use spreadsheets to consolidate,

report, plan and analyse

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Spreadsheets ARE an important part of the business, but often are

pushed beyond their means.

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Here are seven reasons to upgrade from spreadsheets in the

Office Of Finance

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REASON #1

Data Your spreadsheet is not a database. It’s easy to get an answer from spreadsheets, but it is not necessarily the right answer…it’s static data

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REASON #2

Accuracy When working from version 108 of a

spreadsheet, imagine how many errors could be affecting your analysis and decision making.

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REASON #3

Scalability With no plan to migrate off spreadsheets, you

are harming the companies potential opportunity for growth and expansion.

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REASON #4

Risk To jog your memory.

A spreadsheet error by the London Organising Committee (Locog) for the 2012 Olympic Games led to four synchronised swimming events being

massively oversold. An employee accidently keyed in ‘20,000’ rather than 10,000 available tickets. Locog spent the Christmas period contacting

disappointed ticket holders to offer alternatives.

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REASON #5

Time When migrating off of spreadsheets, and onto a

true Performance Management platform, you will see a massive return on time investment.

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REASON #6

Flexibility To properly manage your business and it’s

future, you need access to both past data, and future possibilities by running scenario-based

strategic planning

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REASON #7

Agility Agility is different to flexibility. Agility is the

ability to see an issue or opportunity and take action or course correct to find a solution.

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The Often Forgotten Arts

Returning to the Office Of Finance

• Financial Consolidation • Beyond Aggregation • Inter-Company • Ownerships and Investments • Control Of Close Process

• Planning • Financial Integration of P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow • Planning, Budgeting & Forecasting Are Different Process • Operational Plans = Greater Levels Of Detail • Beyond Months

• Reporting and Analysis • First & Foremost Cell Based, Spreadsheet Like • Embrace Spreadsheets For Information Presentation • Access To Transactional Information From ERP • Analytics & Visualisation Secondary • Disclosure Management, Compliance, iXBRL

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Thank You

GAVIN ALLEN Managing Director UK & Ireland LucaNet (UK) Limited Global House 1, Ashley Avenue Epsom Surrey. KT18 5AD

info@lucanet.co.uk www.lucanet.co.uk

Twitter: @lucanetuk

Find Us On Linked In Search for

LucaNet (UK) Limited

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Q&A