Farewell Excel chaos: 5 steps to reimagine planning and forecasting

Part 1: What is EPM?

In today’s fast-paced business world, staying competitive requires more than just spreadsheets and manual processes. As your business grows and evolves, so do your needs for managing budgets, performance, data, and reports. If you find yourself grappling with which version is the source of truth, fragmented and manual reporting, and increasing data complexity, it might be time to consider a new approach.

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The Excel era: A solid foundation

For years, Excel has been the go-to tool for financial planning, budgeting, and reporting. Its flexibility and familiarity have served businesses well, allowing them to create complex models, track data, and collaborate across teams. However, as your business expands and faces new challenges, relying solely on Excel can become a hindrance rather than an advantage.

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The shift to Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)

Imagine moving from a manual typewriter to a high-speed computer. That’s the leap from Excel to EPM. EPM software automates and accelerates critical processes, providing a unified financial planning, forecasting, and reporting platform. Here are some key indicators that signal you are ready for this transformation:

1. Growing stakeholder involvement: As your organisation matures, more stakeholders become part of the decision-making process. Excel’s collaboration and version control limitations can hinder effective communication across departments and regions.

2. Version chaos: If you’re juggling multiple versions of spreadsheets, struggling to consolidate changes, and fearing errors. Chasing the right version down over email and file-sharing worsens the problem and lack of accountability by budget owners.

3. Data complexity and sources: Excel struggles with large datasets and complex calculations.

4. Reconciliation challenges: Manually reconciling data across departments or subsidiaries is time-consuming and error-prone.

5. Fragmented and manual reporting: Excel reports often involve manual data extraction, formatting, and distribution. This is time-consuming and takes away valuable time from your analysts.

Accountability, growth, and insights

Ask yourself: Are you getting the accountability you need? Is your planning process yielding growth and improvement, or are you stuck in repetitive cycles? In some organisations, budget cycles are becoming longer.

The next section outlines how EPM shifts the focus from baseline management reporting to strategic insights. It enables proactive decision-making, aligning your organisation to focus on key business initiatives and changes.

Part 2: Why EPM?

EPM has become an essential part of organisations, empowering them to make decisions faster vs spending time on Excel reporting. Artificial Intelligence (AI)- powered EPM supercharges this by helping organisations to be faster, leaner, and more accurate.

EPM offers a comprehensive solution that not only addresses these challenges but also provides tangible benefits:

1. Achieve data consistency and accuracy: Discrepancies in data across various systems can hinder accurate reporting and decision-making. EPM acts as a unifying force by consolidating data from different sources,  creating a single source of truth. With accurate and holistic data, strategic decisions become more informed, and processes can operate faster and more smoothly. As a result, staff members can focus on actionable strategic activities rather than grapple with data discrepancies.

2. Drive collaboration and governance: The absence of a centralised platform or heavy reliance on manual tools like Excel often leads to disjointed collaboration and governance challenges. EPM bridges this gap by providing a structured approach to align your teams. By centralising data and providing automated approval workflows, EPM ensures accuracy and eliminates governance concerns. Seamless communication across teams becomes possible, leading to better joint planning and efficiency.

3. Effective KPIs that drive faster decision-making: Tracking and analysing KPIs are essential for understanding your business performance. EPM goes beyond basic reporting by offering intuitive visualisations, dashboards, and real-time insights. Leveraging data across corporate functions allows decision-makers to understand the drivers of your business better, identify potential risks, and take proactive measures. Whether it’s financial metrics, operational efficiency, or customer satisfaction, EPM empowers you as decision-makers with actionable information.

4. Manage scalable growth and complexity: As your business expands, managing complexity becomes imperative. EPM accommodates growing data volumes and evolving business needs, whether organically or through acquisition. It equips your business users with scenario planning and forecasting capabilities, enabling them to navigate growth effectively. Whether scaling operations, entering new markets, or adapting to changing customer demands, EPM provides the agility needed to achieve your business objectives.

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A look to the future: By integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI), organisations can leverage advanced algorithms to automate repetitive tasks, enhance data accuracy, and generate valuable insights faster. AI-driven EPM solutions enable finance teams to streamline processes, reduce manual efforts and reporting narrations, improve decision-making capabilities, and adapt swiftly to changing market conditions, ultimately leading to increased efficiency and competitiveness.

Part 3: How to get started with EPM?

How do you start an EPM journey? Excellent choice! Let’s break down the process into five straightforward steps that will set you on the right path:  

5 simple steps to kickstart your EPM adoption journey:

1. Assess current processes and identify pain points: Start by thoroughly evaluating your current financial processes managed in Excel. Pinpoint areas of inefficiency like manual errors, version control issues, lack of collaboration, and time-consuming data consolidation. Understanding these pain points is crucial for setting clear objectives for your EPM implementation.

2. Build your business case and understand the value of EPM: Establish precise goals for integrating an EPM solution that aligns with your organisation's strategic vision. Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your EPM initiative. Determine how EPM adoption will enhance decision-making, boost forecasting accuracy, drive operational efficiencies, and support overall business growth.

3. Select the right EPM solution: Research and evaluate EPM tools that best suit your organisation's requirements. Consider factors like platform scalability, data integration with existing systems, user-friendliness, future-ready AI capabilities, vendor reputation, and most importantly, predictable cost planning. Involve key stakeholders in the selection process to ensure alignment with business needs and secure organisational buy-in.

4. Start small and scale: Avoid the temptation to tackle everything at once in the initial phase of EPM adoption. Begin with a pilot project or a specific department to test the waters and refine processes before scaling up. Starting small allows for smoother implementation, minimises risks, and enables you to learn from early successes and challenges.

5. It is a business change, so plan for it!: Develop a detailed implementation roadmap outlining timelines, resource allocation, training needs, and milestones for deploying the EPM solution. Implement robust change management strategies to facilitate user adoption. Provide comprehensive training sessions to ensure proficiency in using the new system effectively. Monitor progress against KPIs regularly and adjust strategies to optimize EPM utilisation.

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In summary, transitioning from Excel to an EPM solution isn’t just about adopting new software but embracing a transformative mindset. Prepare for the future by automating and optimising your operations. The era of manual spreadsheets is fading; it’s time to unlock efficiency with EPM.