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Automating Financial Forecasting with Office365, SharePoint and PowerBI Score Boards

Aug 30, 2018 by Bryce Finnerty 0 Comments

automating financial forecasting with office265, Sharepoint and powerbi score boards blog

Want to learn how to enhance how you play the Great Game of Business? Open-book management is a powerful tool to grow profitable businesses that benefit all employees and stakeholders. At the core is financial literacy, which includes financial forecasts that are reported in weekly Huddles and presented on white boards, so everyone can follow the action and keep score to know if they are winning or losing The Game. We want to show you how to go beyond traditional desktop tools like Excel for financial forecasting and scoreboards. 

 

We will teach you how to use financial data from accounting and merge it efficiently with weekly forecasts from the departments and teams in your Game. Learn new tips and tools to automate the busy work using technology that is cost effective and you probably already own such as Office365, SharePoint and PowerBI and others to make amazing and insightful financial scoreboards.

 

Common Financial Forecasting Workflows

In many organizations we see the financial reporting and forecasting working something like the follow. How does it work in your company?

  • Actual financial results are reported weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually from the accounting team using the financial management system.
  • Export financial statements to Excel for P&L, income statements, and balance sheet
  • Staff and teams update and reforecast Critical Numbers in Excel
  • Teams review and approve the forecasts
  • Huddle – teams post the forecast and actuals on a physical white board scoreboard in a team room
  • Everyone follows the action in the weekly and monthly Huddle
  • Optional – some teams project the Excel forecast onto a projector screen for the Huddle

 

Why Automate This Process?

Is your financial forecasting successful and efficient? Is your financial reporting secure? There are many benefits of automation for your business that may include:

  • Reduce the necessary level of effort = productivity, efficiency, speed
  • Reduce errors = credibility, trust, quality
  • Widely distributed information = adoption, empowerment
  • Visualization = insight, meaning, trends
  • Better results = profit and bigger bonuses
  • Cultural fit – mobile, tech-savvy users may prefer digital score boards

 

Who Benefits from Automation?

There are a number of people and departments groups that can be big beneficiaries of automation tools, that go beyond the business benefits above. We find the following groups have a lot to gain:

  • Financial Department – Automation can help with the work associated with weekly financial reporting and distributing that information across the company, in addition to lightening the load often placed on the finance team.
  • Forecasters – Employees responsible for forecasting a Critical Number can streamline the time they spend analyzing and updating their forecast if the data and reporting was automated at some level. Additionally, teams and managers that help collaborate to review the forecast can streamline the steps using software automation in many cases.
  • Everyone – All employees across the company can using digital score boards to follow the action and carry the information around with them on their devices, or project them on screens around the facility so the data is available everyone, any time, from any location.

Want to learn the details of how to automate your company's financial reporting? Check out our full article for a deeper dive into the concepts above and tips for Office365 for Excel, Office365 SharePoint, BI Score Boards, and Systems Integration.

 

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Topics: Financial Forecasting

Bryce Finnerty
Written by Bryce Finnerty

Mr. Finnerty is an innovator in guiding companies through technology transformations, so they can grow, scale, and make life better for employees. As a unique hybrid systems and civil engineer, he brings over 25 years’ experience in software systems that automates the busy work, so you can focus on scaling profitably. Eliminating the waste, redundancy, and road blocks for maximizing profit. Leveraging technology as a strategy, you can reach your full potential by simplifying systems to collect and manage the information that creates lasting owner equity and return on investment. Integrating all systems in a seamless workflow. Real-time access to information via cloud and mobile and analytics tools.

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About The Great Game of Business

Our approach to running a company was developed to help close one of the biggest gaps in business: the gap between managers and employees. We call our open-book approach The Great Game of Business. What lies at the heart of The Game is a very simple proposition: The best, most efficient, most profitable way to operate a business is to give everybody in the company a voice in saying how the company is run and a stake in the outcome. Let us teach you how to develop a culture of ownership, where employees think, act and feel like owners.