Risks of Excel
Control is paramount, yet firms still struggle with risky spreadsheets.
Finance and other back office teams in the Wealth industry have traditionally struggled with a simple trial balance and unstructured AUM feeds.
Highly paid professionals spend most of the month performing manual, spreadsheet-based processes— collecting, consolidating and validating data. Analysis is often disconnected between income and the underlying asset book; or costs and the underlying headcount.
Departments are often unable to deliver the needed plans, forecasts, reports and analysis in a timely fashion. Timelines are often sacrificed in favour of control & accuracy.
Adhoc queries not only take forever, they are fraught with danger. Additional reconciliations are layered on to existing processes simply to justify the output.
With a background in finance, we understand that spreadsheets will always be a part of your toolkit. That’s also why IBM Planning Analytics enables users to continue working in the Microsoft Excel interface where needed, rather than replace their spreadsheets.
“Your data in excel dynamically linked to a structured data source”
Full Excel functionality and formatting is retained, including Excel capabilities such as graphing and built-in functions. The difference is how the data is sourced, structured and available to end users without the need for Excel adjustments or complex formulas, look ups or pivots.
Excel becomes a simple, but very effective, reporting tool, guaranteeing only one version of the truth. Users can quickly report using multi-dimensional reporting and analytics models, confident that the numbers are accurate and complete.
