The reporting difference between CPM Heaven and Excel Hell
Have you invested in expensive reporting systems yet your business users are still doing a considerable amount of “cut, copy and paste?” of information in order to create your Corporater Performance Management reports? Well, I have two words for you: Epic. Fail.
Research shows that:
- 95% of companies use Excel for Financial reporting*
- 9 out of 10 spreadsheets contains errors**
- JP Morgan reported USD 6 Billion loss due to Cut and Paste errors in 2013**
Why do so many businesses still have tedious, labour-intensive, manual reporting processes in which they report the same information via various channels, month after month? It has everything to do with the tools that they have provided to their staff to use.
However, be careful not to jump too quickly to questions such as “what tool do we need?” Instead, start by asking what results you desire. Below are four key questions you should ask:
Question #1: What reports do you need?
Do your homework and find out what the business needs and why they are resorting to using “copy and paste” today.
Question #2: What are the content of the reports?
It might surprise you, but the content of a report is usually more than just the quantitative data from a data warehouse.
Try to decode the reports and see what is lacking from your data. Uncover why users have resorted to pulling the report together from multiple sources.
Question #3: Where are the users getting the content / data for the reports?
It might surprise you, but the data is often compiled from information in emails, in people’s heads, in Word reports, etc.
Question #4: What does the report look like and how is it used?
In which format, in which style, with what branding and graphics? Does the user need it in PowerPoint or in Word format or both? Does the user need scheduled delivery at recurring dates/times or only when there are deviations requiring a report to support a meeting or other management action?
At Corporater, we followed the above approach, asking questions to uncover what results users desire, when building our Business Management Platform. We have ensured our system captures the variety of information users need for their reports – whether it is qualitative or quantitative data, manual input or automated data, text or numbers.
Our customers are in “Corporater Nirvana”, due to our strong reporting capabilities – a world which harnesses the power of MS Word and PPT functionality, without Cut/Copy & Paste. With Corporater, our users get pixel-perfect reports (Word, PowerPoint, and other formats) with the click of a button, fully automated.
* Raymond Panko “what we know about Spreadsheet errors”
** Wall street Journal 2013
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Tags: Microsoft Excel, operational performance
