Modernizing Your Finance Team With Technology

Modernizing YourFinance TeamWith Technology

Creating performance reporting that cuts

across departments is key to quicker executive

decisions that enable growth objectives.

This SlideShare introduces some of the

underlying issues of this strategy, including:

• The importance of modern finance to business strategy

• How to modernize the finance department

• Software needed to enable that transformation

There are a handful of external influences that

every company will encounter on its roadmap

to profitability.

Here we examine a few of the challenges and how

they can be addressed—including possible process

improvements to modernize the finance function.

Business Imperatives forModern Finance

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• Worldwide economic health

• Market volatility

• Equity markets are no longer overvalued

• Debt is becoming less attractive

Macroeconomic Factors$

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Challenge:

Challenge:

Cybersecurity attacks are becoming more frequent,

opportunistic, and sophisticated.

Most strategies have shifted from building a castle

moat to keep intruders out to building internal

safeguards to protect critical data once they get in.

Cybersecurity

Due to the changing landscape of policies, regulations, and

enforcement, CFOs now spend more time on regulatory affairs.

Key changes include:

• Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

• FASB/IASB Revenue Recognition

• Fair-value measurements

• Lease accounting

• Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA)

Policy and Regulation Uncertainty

Challenge:

Solution:

Given the uncertainty of the macroeconomic and

regulatory environment, transformative initiatives are

critical to adding value across the business and to

being a better business partner.

Transformation Initiatives

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Digitization, robotic process automation, cloud, and new

self-service analytics tools are technological game

changers for finance.

Re-engineering processes for greater efficiency is the main

way to free up funds for investing in value creation while

continuing commitment to competitive cost structure.

Re-engineer Processes

Solution:

Performance management helps bring value in the areas

of strategy, key performance indicators (KPIs), and

cost reduction.

Improved performance management will make the finance

function, and the enterprise as a whole, more agile.

Improve Finance PerformanceManagement Capability

Solution:

It has never been more important for CFOs to integrate business

strategy and execution with enterprise risk management (ERM)

under the performance management umbrella:

• CFOs must ask themselves which internal and external risks

they regard as most worrisome for business performance

• CFOs need to pay increased attention to high-impact,

low-frequency risks

Performance-Based Risk Management

Solution:

For private companies, the previous transformations

are key to creating a path to liquidity, whether that

path is going public, being acquired, or continuing to

operate as a private entity.

IPO Readiness—GettingYour House in Order

Solution:

Keep the books

Identify and track key

external metrics

Implement timely budget

preparation and review

all processes

Appoint auditors

Select legal counsel

Adopt long-term

incentive program

Audited annual report

(10-Q like)

Appoint relevant public

company board members

and set up committees

Complete historical audits

Appoint dedicated IPO

leadership team

Select bankers and banker

due diligence

Choose exchange

Assess need for additional

technical accountants for SEC

reporting and investor

relations personnel

Retain SOX resources and develop

Section 404 compliance plan

Implement investor

relations program and begin

providing investor guidance

Implement SOX 302

certification and

sub-certification processes

Implement accounting policies

Document key business

processes and remediate control

deficiencies

Practice actual to budget

quarterly

Conduct more frequent

reporting, including monthly

performance reporting

Set human resources policies

and procedures

Identify human resources, legal,

and IT risk management

Keep rolling forecast

Budget to actual monthly with

department heads

Prepare to draft S-1

Prepare mock earnings releases

and call scripts

Hold quarterly board meetings

with committee reports

Execute first 10-Q

and XBRL tagging

Execute on first

earnings release

12-18 Months 3-12 Months 6 Months18-24 Months

Transitions

InternalProcesses

This table shows the key characteristics and timeline of IPO readiness,

which we like to call getting your house in order.

The most important modern finance business imperative is the

adoption of weekly and monthly performance reporting and

integrated monthly management review to support

high-velocity, informed decision-making.

Technology that provides an integrated data platform and a

repeatable reporting framework to automate this kind of

performance reporting is absolutely essential.

Business Process Improvement

It's key that modern finance applications be delivered in the cloud:

• Accessible by any employee, anytime, anywhere

• Rapid deployment delivers lower implementation costs

• Designed for business users, not IT

Platform Requirements to Support Modern Finance

Cloud-based infrastructure1


2Through data experience, users can better gather, organize, extend,

and share business data:

• Scalable, high-performance, as-reported datastore for single

source of truth

• Data collection subsystem for collection and organizing

unstructured data

• Smart documents with flexible linking and query connections

for connecting narrative and numerical data

Integrated data-experience platform

Cloud-based infrastructure

To author smart documents within the data experience platform, a repeatable reporting

framework is required:

• Multiple users edit the document at the same time without version control issues

• Document and presentation formats that can be linked to the as-reported datastore

• Table templates designed for accounting and finance formatting

• A full audit trail to track all submitted updates from any user

• Permissions that can control access at both the document level and section level

• Task assignment to manage input from all involved parties across the enterprise

• Blackline reports that show changes between revisions


3 Repeatable reporting framework



Distribution of reports for review is often overlooked:

• Digital review should occur within the workflow

• Comments and markup should be aggregated and displayed

• Multiple content types should be supported


4Repeatable reporting framework

Digital review and mobile access



Wdesk from Workiva provides a modern finance platform for

performance reporting:

• A data experience platform and repeatable reporting

framework combining numbers and narrative

• Improved control of processes to mitigate corporate risk

• A secure cloud-based platform for finance, internal

controls, and risk

A Smart Platform for Modern Finance

Get the complete story.Check out the full white paper from this series. It covers all of these topics in depth, including a critical analysis of current software on the market.

workiva.com | [email protected] | +1.888.275.3125

https://www.workiva.com/resources/technology-modern-finance-teams

Modernizing Your Finance Team With Technology

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