Digital Technology poised to revolutionise reporting (1)

For CFOs, a convergence of emerging technologies promises to automate reporting, decreasing drudgery while increasing quality.

A handful of digital technologies are converging to help reshape how companies can report. Consider, for example, that robotic process automation software can shorten the time companies spend on data manipulation by automating routine tasks.

For finance leaders, the word “reporting” might bring to mind binders full of spreadsheets, charts, and footnotes. Or maybe conference rooms with executives grinding through slide presentations. And behind the scenes, there’s an army of finance people who’ve been working for weeks to pull it together—a ritual that repeats month after month after month.

In the best of all worlds, this ritual would deliver reports aligned with the changing needs of the business. But that rarely seems to happen.

Instead, a Deloitte survey of 600 global finance leaders on management reporting uncovered this fact: Companies surveyed spent 48% of their time creating and updating reports versus 18% on communicating the results to the business. The survey also showed that companies knew they had room for improvement. Three-quarters of those interviewed said they were using standardisation to gain efficiency and get insights more quickly. In one company, the commitment to standardise led to replacing 1,000 unique reports with just 50 dashboards.

If standardisation alone can enhance performance so dramatically, imagine what would happen if digital tools, such as automation, advanced analytics, and machine learning, got added to the mix?

Toward Process

an

End-to-End

Plenty of progress on that front is already happening. Many companies are applying point solutions to traditional reporting processes to help improve specific capabilities. For example, some are programming chatbots so that smart devices and assistants can answer common performance questions. Others are using artificial intelligence (i.e., natural language generation) to write the first draft of narratives about basic financial data. Still other companies are moving to a continuous close and eliminating latency.

Further ahead is the challenge of combining different technologies across the entire end-to-end reporting process, reimagining reporting in a form that is fully automated and dynamic, with real-time insights.

The drumbeat for such change is growing louder. After all, the savings companies can achieve as reporting evolves promise to be real and sustainable. Many companies will be reducing human labour significantly—and delivering reports vastly more efficiently. The potential for value creation from improved reporting is even more promising. Finance is supposed to help the business uncover insights. That can’t happen when people are bogged down with spreadsheet farming, reconciling data between systems, or assembling massive binders. Finally, customer demand will drive a reporting overhaul. That demand will be influenced by self-service persona-based reporting via custom dashboards that generate the most pertinent and accurate information in the shortest amount of time.

A handful of digital technologies are converging to help reshape how companies can report. Consider, for example, that robotic process automation software can shorten the time companies spend on data manipulation by automating routine tasks. Chatbots enable users to interact directly with data using voice or text queries. Familiar visualisation tools allow users to display and play with data dynamically, making it easier to interact with and understand. Artificial intelligence, including natural language tools and machine learning, has the potential to replace low-value repetitive tasks, such as data entry, verifications, and referrals. What’s more, predictive analytics uses algorithms to execute forward-looking analysis—especially routine financial forecasts.

In next week’s issue, we’ll look at some of the potential traits of this revolutionary reporting and what it will mean for today’s CFOs and their teams.