Planning & Forecasting

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: How to Filter Data for Sage Intacct Integrations within Adaptive Staging Tables

May 15, 2024 by Marc Assenza

There are many times when importing data into the staging tables for Sage Intacct integrations that I am looking for just a subset of data and not all the data. Importing everything takes time, and if you filter your retrieval in the staging area, you can save time on the import and spend that time on more impactful things.

The screenshots below show you a few ways in which you can apply some of these filters.

In Sage Intacct, the General Ledger Details table contains just that – all the details for all types of transactions, including for all time and all reporting methods.

What if you didn’t want all that data in the staging area? How could you limit it?

For starters, in this example, you would click on the down arrow icon next to the General Ledger Detail table name, and select Table Settings from the context menu presented, see below.

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A new screen will pop up with the options you now see.

In the area labeled “Data Import Mode,” set that to All records that fall within a period range transmitted. If we look down to Period Range to import, we see that this is set to a “parameter” named CurrentYearToDate.

This parameter was created by clicking on the Edit Parameter link right under the Period Range to Import. When you click on this, you then have the option to create a Period Range parameter as seen below.

Once you click on the parameter, you have the options to define what that parameter will look like and the range it will grab, it can either be static, dynamic, or a combination of both. For this parameter, we designed it to grab two years of data from whatever the current month and year is. The Start Period is two years backwards from the ending period, which is the current month and year.

Once that is in place, you can then select that parameter as the Period Range to Import and match it up against a column in the table named Entry Date. If the data in the Entry Date column is within the date range of the defined parameter, it will be imported into the staging area table.

Two years of data is still a lot of data. In this example, we only want data that has a Reporting Method of “ACCRUAL” in the General Ledger Detail table. There are many reporting methods available within Sage. If you are only reporting on Accrual data, then you only need to import the Accrual data. As such, our filter now only imports two years of data that meet the reporting method criteria. This shaved quite a bit of time off importing this subset of data into the staging tables.

Revelwood is an award-winning, Platinum Solution Provider for Workday Adaptive Planning. We build solutions for the Office of Finance that minimize your risk by seamlessly incorporating business analytics into your everyday thinking. By combining the software with our best practices and out-of-the-box applications, we help businesses achieve their full potential with Workday Adaptive Planning.

Solving Financial Reporting Challenges

May 3, 2024 by Revelwood

This is a blog post from our partner Workday, highlighting common financial reporting challenges and explaining how to solve them.

Stakeholders want self-service: Reporting runs the gamut, from presenting department managers with data on how their actuals compare to budget, to showing board members how expansions or changes in the product mix are impacting margins.

Why it matters: Businesses largely run on accurate, timely financial reports, as they are home to critical financial and operational key performance indicators.

Most organizations know that their financial reporting is not as good as it should be. The reasons are many—chief among them is the perception that process improvements are too difficult and take too much time to implement.

But when you put better reporting on the back burner, you put your business at risk. Instead of looking in the rear-view mirror—a static approach to planning that reports on what happened in the past—it’s far more effective for finance teams to look out the windshield and anticipate what’s ahead.

Let’s take a look at four common financial reporting challenges and how to tackle them:

Challenge 1: Verifying Accuracy

Excel is a great tool. But the static nature of spreadsheets makes it difficult to quickly and consistently produce up-to-date financial reports, which compromises speed and accuracy. Spreadsheets can also create version-control issues when they’re routed for review or verification, hindering efficiency and security.

Even with single-user spreadsheets, lack of a centralized reporting system introduces more inconsistencies in metrics, data, and calculations, forcing finance teams to spend valuable time verifying and validating data. In this situation, it’s especially difficult to conduct variance and comparative reporting—a step that can reveal necessary course corrections. CFOs who automate data gathering can instill a greater level of trust in the data while making it easier to reveal valuable insights.

Excel is a great tool. But the static nature of spreadsheets makes it difficult to quickly and consistently produce up-to-date financial reports, which compromises speed and accuracy.

Challenge 2: Wrestling Data from Multiple Systems

As a finance professional, you’re responsible for generating clear and actionable financial data. Your company’s decision-makers must be able to understand not only the analysis behind the data, but also the actions to consider as a result of that analysis.

But one missing piece of data can prevent stakeholders from getting the insights they need. And with more organizations tracking nonfinancial metrics, corporate reports are including increasing amounts of operational data. Using traditional reporting methods to access and incorporate such information—usually housed outside of finance—creates an additional burden.

Challenge 3: Lack of Collaboration

Financial reporting should be a collaborative process, with finance and nonfinance managers working together to not only report the numbers, but to also use them to drive insights and take action. But all too often, operating managers don’t have sufficient input or buy-in to the financial planning process, and they aren’t educated about how their decisions can influence overall profitability. For its part, finance isn’t able to offer real performance insights that might truly help managers improve their results because legacy reporting tools don’t enable stakeholder collaboration.

Challenge 4: Data Interpretation

You’ve gathered the data—now you need to analyze and interpret it so you can clearly articulate financial and operational insights. The more the organization understands the story behind the numbers, the greater the chance it has to be data-driven—and the more effective you can be in getting your message across to key stakeholders.

That’s because those outside of finance tend to consume data visually. They seek more than just numbers; they want to understand the impact and implications of the data you present. For those wanting to make good on good intentions, intuitive dashboards and data visualization are a great way to build a story that clearly shows current performance, future trends, and possible scenarios. Ideally, you should choose a dashboard offering that gives finance staff the flexibility to quickly and easily deliver data in a range of formats desired by stakeholders.

What’s the Answer?

To overcome these traditional reporting challenges, you need to go beyond yesterday’s inadequate access to information and limited financial reporting. You need a system that is more sophisticated than a spreadsheet, but not so overly engineered that it takes six months to deploy and requires significant IT involvement.

The solution you choose should deliver financial intelligence that drives improved business performance and accelerates growth. And it should enable an active planning approach to finance—a process that allows finance to shift into a leadership and guiding role, instead of having to focus on static, transactional back-office tasks.

This blog post was originally published on the Workday blog.

More from our FP&A Done Right Series:

The Promise of AI in Finance

The Role of Generative AI in Forecasting

The Future of FP&A: Intelligent Forecasting

CFOs on AI, Partnerships and Skills

February 16, 2024 by Revelwood

This a blog post from our partner Workday, sharing thoughts from the CFOs at Kickstarter, McKinsey & Company and Workday.

It’s never been more important for CFOs to understand and embrace technologies with the potential to transform the finance function—particularly as the impact of AI becomes more apparent every day.

“If you look at the role of the CFO today, which in many ways is a core component—if not the strategic architect—of an institution, you have to look at the opportunities around technology,” said Eric Kutcher, senior partner and CFO at McKinsey & Company. “If we’re going to drive growth and productivity … technology probably becomes the number one source of that productivity.”

Finance leaders must familiarize themselves with technologies in a way that helps them not only see firsthand the possibilities for enterprise value, but also understand how younger generations have come to experience technology, Kutcher said. That’s particularly important with generative AI, he added. “It’s hard to be leading an organization of the size and scale we all do if we’re not at the forefront.”

Those were just some of the critical observations that came out of a CFO panel in a recent Fortune webinar. Read on to learn what more Kutcher, Kickstarter CFO Sindy Wilson, and Workday CFO Zane Rowe shared on their approaches to people and technology in the era of AI.

The CFO Role in Innovation

CFOs have largely fulfilled a financial controller function within organizations, protecting value by evaluating ROI. While that remains a core function for finance leaders, the future of finance is built on value creation.

That shift necessitates CFOs to think about significant enterprise expenditures on technology as investments, which requires CFOs to establish greater partnerships with CIOs and CTOs.

Part of that journey, Kutcher added, involves shifting to a mindset that asks: “How do we evolve our firm or institution to enable us to do the things that are strategically important—much of which has an innovation component to it—and how do we create the economic model to do that?”

That’s how CFOs can go from someone whose purpose appears to be cost containment to being an enabler of innovation.

Finance leaders are positioned to have a broadly informed and valuable perspective, Kutcher said. “You have this unique vantage so you can ask those questions and can invite yourself into some meetings, and as long as you do it in a way that is uplifting and moving forward.”

For his part, Kutcher said he makes telephone calls to his peers on McKinsey’s leadership team on at least a weekly basis. “I’m actually just curious what they’re doing, both personally and professionally.”

AI’s Potential: ‘The Biggest Sea Change’

When it comes to AI in finance, Kutcher said he’s bullish: “With the limited experiments we’ve already done with AI, it has created real opportunities for us to have better insight and be able to synthesize much faster.”

Kutcher added that he only expects the technology’s speed and quality to improve over time, enhancing strategic thinking and allowing for deeper questions.

“We’re just at the beginning, but I think this is the biggest sea change we will see not just in finance but in business at large.”

Why Relationships and Trust Matter

Building trust with technology leaders is important for Sindy Wilson, CFO at Kickstarter.

“Gaining an understanding of our capabilities and challenges has really helped to build trust and have less friction-filled interactions with our technology leaders as we try to solve for innovative solutions we want to develop together,” she said.

Wilson added that one of her goals for herself and her team is learning. “I want them to be a student of the functions that we support,” she said.

Finally, Wilson values transparency about how she makes decisions. “I’m an incrementalist,” she said. “I like to make sure that we test and learn. I want to pilot a kind of proof before making big investments, and the team understanding how I think about how we make investments is important as well.”

People and learning are also an important part of technology strategy for Zane Rowe, CFO at Workday.

“As CFOs you should be encouraged to work closely in partnership with technology—a practice that can help leaders identify shared opportunities, whether it’s around AI or other advances in technology,” he said.

Rowe said he spends plenty of time with colleagues on the business technology side “to think about how we do things better not only in finance but across the organization, to become more efficient and then invest in other parts of the business.”

Technology as ‘Co-Pilot’

As AI plays a larger role in finance, Rowe emphasized the importance of CFOs recognizing the technology’s capabilities.

“It’s incumbent upon you to learn and to understand it’s not necessarily learning in conventional ways,” he said. “To really understand what is the art of the possible doesn’t mean you have to become a coder. Spending enough time and being influenced by people in technology will help you understand what those opportunities are.”

Acknowledging the increase in “consumerization”—or low-code, no-code interfaces—of business technology, Kutcher said he views technology as a “co-pilot” to assist people. “At some level, it is less about understanding that technology, and more about understanding the application of that technology.”

Rowe described how that works in practice: At Workday, the finance organization conducted brainstorming sessions in partnership with the technology group to come up with ideas for real-life use cases where AI and other technologies could increase productivity and efficiency.

“It was an opportunity to have real-time results and have teams go out and try different things,” Rowe said. “The speed and the consumerization of it is really impressive.”

Using Data to Achieve Efficiencies at Scale

Wilson recounted her previous experience at a multibillion-dollar construction materials company that grew via acquisitions to more than 200 manufacturing locations. The fragmented structure of the company’s components meant multiple customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

“The challenging part was integrating those,” she said. “We realized we needed to get smarter about how we can leverage the power of our manufacturing footprint to improve things like on-time delivery for customers and as a go-to-market as one sales team.”

Wilson said her team worked with Kickstarter’s technology organization to conceptualize what kind of architecture, tools, and systems they needed—including ERP and CRM systems—as well as the processes they needed to put in place “to make sure we have the right policies and practices around clean data.”

The Path Forward

Kutcher also had a bright view about what AI can do with quality inputs.

“I’m actually remarkably optimistic about the path forward, in part because one of the things we are learning is: You can pull an awful lot out of existing systems and find ways to make great use out of it,” he said. “What we’re doing with generative AI already is a great demonstration of that—and, by the way, that’s only going to get better as we go.”

Rowe said the growth of AI has put pressure on companies to think more strategically about investing, as well as how to analyze data to generate insights with far greater speed than was possible before.

“It’s an exciting time to be part of finance as well as part of IT, and we both need each other just as much.”

This blog post was originally published on the Workday blog.

More from our FP&A Done Right Series:

Workday’s Global CFO AI Indicator Report

The Mandate for Business Agility

How Artificial Intelligence will Impact the CFO

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Using the Subset Editor in Planning Analytics Workspace

December 12, 2023 by Revelwood

In the past, manipulating subsets in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) involved a convoluted process of copying, creating new sets, and pasting elements. The subset editor solves this problem. The subset editor enables you to perform multiple tasks with a single click.

Watch this short IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video to see Lee Lazarow, Revelwood’s IBM Planning Analytics practice leader, demonstrate how to easily grab an element, its children, siblings, parents and descendants.

Previously, manipulating subsets focused on the left side of navigation. Inserting elements or expanding to children or descendants was confined to this area, creating limitations in functionality. Planning Analytics, version 88, extended the subset editor’s manipulation functionality. Now users can easily expand or keep elements with a single click!

By right-clicking on an element, users can choose between options like “expand to” or “keep with.” This newfound flexibility allows for expanding to descendants, ancestors, parents, siblings, or any combination, all with a single click.

This new functionality makes the process of manipulating subsets more intuitive and efficient. You can easily work with children, siblings, parents, or any combination of them.

IBM Planning Analytics, which TM1 is the engine for, is full of new features and functionality. Not sure where to start? Our team here at Revelwood can help. Contact us for more information at info@revelwood.com. And stay tuned for more Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks weekly in our Knowledge Center and in upcoming newsletters!

Fortune Interview with Workday’s CFO on Artificial Intelligence

October 27, 2023 by Revelwood

This article by Sheryl Estradada (Sheryl.Estrada@Fortune.com) originally appeared in Fortune’s CFO Daily newsletter.

Generative AI developments are moving at a rapid pace. And CFOs are tasked with understanding the latest trends as it relates to the workplace.

“It’s not like finance people who are savvy in technology can do it all themselves,” Zane Rowe, CFO at Workday, tells me. “What I love about technology is that it actually takes more than just anyone with one discipline to implement.” You have to bring a cross-functional group together to think about what type of strategic changes are needed, determine the technology to support it, and create a plan for change management, Rowe says. “I’m very fortunate to have a wealth of people that I know in different areas that keep me challenged and learning,” he says.

Rowe began his role as finance chief at Workday (which is a CFO Daily sponsor) in June. The enterprise cloud company’s total annual revenues for its fiscal year 2023 were $6.22 billion, an increase of 21.0% from fiscal 2022. Rowe succeeded former Workday CFO Barbara Larson, who stepped back to spend more time with her family, according to the company.

Rowe was most recently CFO of VMware, a developer of virtualization software, for seven years. During that time, he served as interim CEO from February to May 2021. Before VMware, Rowe was the CFO at EMC. He was also previously CFO at United Airlines and Continental Airlines and then led North American sales for Apple.

Working as a finance chief in the people-centric airline industry was actually a catalyst for his love of tech. “Back in those days with the airlines it was about growing internationally and connecting people, and technology became such a big part of underpinning that,” he says. “And then I shifted, and had an opportunity to work at Apple, and found my passion for technology and driving change.”

Rowe says Workday’s people, culture, and products attracted him to the CFO role. The company recently announced a series of new AI and machine learning (ML) enhancements for finance and HR solutions, including generative AI capabilities for creating job descriptions and employee growth plans, for example. In using AL and ML technology, “on the financial side, you can be looking at variance analysis, you can take a lot of the mundane tasks out of the everyday work week,” Rowe says.

What CFOs are thinking about GenAI

Generative AI, and its impact on productivity, continues to be a hot topic in the business community. Recent McKinsey research estimates that generative AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy.

What’s Rowe hearing from fellow CFOs about investing in this technology? Companies that don’t prepare themselves for technological disruption run the risk of competitors capturing market share and taking business away, Rowe says. “I think many CFOs do recognize this,” he says.

“In the area of AI and the work going on there, a lot of the peer groups that I talk to are very inquisitive and want to learn a lot more about it,” he says. “I think the nature of the job has changed where I haven’t heard many CFOs pull back on that type of spending. In fact, they are encouraging it, to really understand where it adds value.”

According to Deloitte’s CFO Signals survey for Q3 2023, the finance chiefs surveyed said if their company decides to incorporate generative AI, these are the top three goals: to reduce costs (52%), provide better customer experience (50%), and achieve greater margins, efficiencies and productivity (45%), according to the report.

Thinking outside the box

Rowe still believes in being people-centric, so, since joining Workday, he’s been having a lot of conversations. “I’m spending a lot of time with customers to understand what we can do with the product, and spending time with our own product teams looking at cutting-edge ideas,” Rowe says. He’s also building out the finance and accounting teams, he says.

What does he seek in a team member? Someone who can think outside of the box, according to Rowe. “We did a session fairly recently with our accounting team to think about how they can use AI to do processes a little bit more differently and creatively than they did before,” he says. You can find the original article on Fortune.com.

More from our FP&A Done Right Series:

The Power of the Growth Mindset: How CFOs Drive Success in Finance

Workday Adaptive Planning Recognized with the 2023 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Financial Planning Software

No, Artificial Intelligence Will Not Replace Finance Jobs

Unlocking Success: Harnessing Customer Satisfaction Metrics with Workday Adaptive Planning

September 20, 2023 by Revelwood

In today’s competitive business landscape, customer satisfaction is more critical than ever. Happy customers are not only likely to stay loyal but also become advocates for your brand, driving growth through referrals and repeat business. Workday Adaptive Planning can help monitor customer satisfaction metrics and leverage the data for strategic decision-making, with a particular focus on the professional services industry.

The Importance of Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is the backbone of any successful business, but it holds even more significance in the professional services sector. Here’s why:

1. Client Retention:

High customer satisfaction translates into strong client retention rates. Satisfied clients are more likely to continue using your services, providing a stable revenue stream.

2. Reliable Referrals:

Happy customers become your brand advocates. They are more inclined to recommend your services to others, leading to a steady influx of new clients through referrals.

3. Competitive Advantage:

Exceptional customer satisfaction sets you apart from your competitors. It’s a key differentiator that can make potential clients choose your services over others.

Leveraging Workday Adaptive Planning

Workday Adaptive Planning offers a powerful solution for tracking and utilizing customer satisfaction metrics. Here’s how it can help:

1. Integration with Customer Feedback Software:

Workday Adaptive Planning seamlessly integrates with customer feedback software like Zendesk or Monday. You can easily import customer satisfaction data into the platform, ensuring that teams across your organization have access to valuable insights.

2. Comprehensive Dashboard:

The platform provides an active dashboard displaying essential metrics such as average SLA, Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and customer satisfaction. It also breaks down renewal rates by team leads. Conditional formatting helps identify areas where improvements can be made.

3. Drill-Down Capabilities:

With Workday Adaptive Planning, you can drill down into the data further. For example, you can explore specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as new references. This feature allows for in-depth analysis and customized reporting.

4. Informed Decision-Making:

By leveraging the data from customer satisfaction metrics, businesses can make informed decisions. Whether it’s retaining clients, generating references, or delivering projects on time, the platform offers insights to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.

5. Industry-Specific Metrics:

Workday Adaptive Planning doesn’t just stop at basic metrics. It can provide additional details on industry-specific metrics, giving you a more comprehensive view of your performance within your sector.

In a world where customer satisfaction reigns supreme, Workday Adaptive Planning empowers businesses, especially those in the professional services industry, to turn data into actionable insights. By monitoring and analyzing customer satisfaction metrics, you can maintain your current customer base and drive business growth.

If you’re interested in diving deeper into other Adaptive use cases for professional services or want to explore how Workday Adaptive Planning can transform your organization, take a look at our Workday-approved framework for using Adaptive Planning to track customer satisfaction.

The Power of the Growth Mindset: How CFOs Drive Success in Finance

September 15, 2023 by Revelwood

This is an excerpt from a blog post from our partner Workday Adaptive Planning. In It, A McKinsey & Company senior partner lays out five elements that help drive performance, and finance leaders from Adobe, e.l.f. Beauty, and TD Bank share their individual approaches to growth, in a Fortune virtual event.

For CFOs, a growth mindset means the ability to help their companies thrive by firing on multiple cylinders.

That’s according to Ishaan Seth, a senior partner and co-lead of global banking and securities practice at McKinsey & Company, who outlined a three-pronged approach that includes customer acquisition and retention, innovation, and building new businesses.

“The mindset that personifies the best growth leaders, be they CFOs or CEOs, are those who can help the company operate across all three of those areas at once,” Seth said in a Fortune webinar sponsored by Workday. “That’s the essence of the growth mindset.”

Developed by Stanford University psychology professor Carol Dweck, the concept of a “growth mindset” was based on research that found people enjoyed greater success when they believed their talents could be developed “through hard work, good strategies, and input from others.” The research also found effects for organizations: “When entire companies embrace a growth mindset, their employees report feeling far more empowered and committed; they also receive greater organizational support for collaboration and innovation,” Dweck wrote.

In practice, a growth mindset can be seen in the C-suite of successful organizations. Seth said McKinsey surveyed 2,500 public companies over the past two decades and found five variables that drive outperformance in relation to their peers.

1. Resource allocation. “How dynamically or fluidly are you reallocating resources to newer businesses and opportunities?” Seth said.
2. Mergers and acquisitions. “M&A and a constant portfolio pruning both on acquisition but equally on divestiture” is critical, Seth said. “Are you regenerating the base?”
3. Productivity and efficiency. Outpacing peers is important.
4. Technology and technology innovation. “It’s a space where the arms race to keep current has in many cases across industries outstripped the ability for companies to invest at the level to be on the leading edge,” Seth said.
5. Margin expansion. This is accomplished by refreshing the value proposition, he added.

When it comes to technology, finance leaders are uniquely positioned to drive innovation at scale by making the right investments and establishing the pace necessary to more quickly benefit from that technology—whether it’s artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), or generative AI.

Seth cited a McKinsey study that found generative AI could potentially add $2.6-$4.4 trillion per year to the global economy, noting that the United Kingdom’s entire GDP in 2021 was $3.1 trillion.

Finance leaders, then, must understand how to invest intelligently in technology and help set the pace at which to do so.

“Is there a competitive advantage in getting to a higher-quality capability around whatever the technology may be 12 or 20 months sooner than your competitors?” Seth said. “The CFO can play an outsized role in driving speed as a source of competitive advantage.”

Seth added that calculating the return on investment (ROI) on technology spending might well require organizations to rethink their key performance indicators (KPIs), with CFOs driving the conversation around growth metrics.

The CFO, he said, owns the value creation story of a company. “We see the role of the CFO as being able to describe what it would take to double the market cap of the company in five years.”

Creating an Atmosphere of Innovation

To Mandy Fields, senior vice president and CFO at e.l.f. Beauty, leadership means promoting an organizational growth mindset by creating an environment that fosters innovation.

“It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks, but it’s the manager’s job to make sure it’s safe for others to take them,” she said, attributing that ideal to the company’s 17 consecutive quarters of net sales growth—with a fourth quarter that saw sales growth of nearly 80%. “A lot of that has been not being afraid to take risks.”

As an example, Fields said e.l.f. Beauty in 2019 decided to invest in growing their presence on social media video platform TikTok, a move that resulted in “amazing” engagement. “As we went into the pandemic in 2020, when everybody was rushing in to figure out how to get on this platform, how to engage with the consumer, we were already there.”

Fields said the company holds annual off-site meetings to align its people to its priorities. “It helps us think about how we set an annual budget, but it really is an opportunity for inspiration, imagination, and possibility to converge,” she added. “That’s motivating for the team—not just for finance but for the entire company—to know that even though we’ve experienced this tremendous growth, there’s still so much more ahead of us.”

‘Be Constructively Unreasonable’

For enterprise software company Adobe, innovation is part of its DNA, according to Dan Durn, CFO and executive vice president, finance, technology services and operations.

“We are consistently reinventing the company and engaging with customers in a way that’s very relevant for them,” he said. “Status quo is not a business strategy.”

Durn said understanding Adobe’s products “with granularity” helps the company innovate in order to serve customers better, making its growth and market position sustainable for the long run. He added that there’s “a velocity within the company” and clarity about innovation, as well as how to achieve growth via acquisitions.

“We’re going to primarily be an organic, innovation-driven company,” Durn said. “But we will complement from time to time, and you can see that speed play out not only in our decision-making but the way we want to enable customers as well.”

The concept of a growth mindset—and continuous learning—is critical within a technology company, Durn said, offering a guiding leadership principle: “Be constructively unreasonable, which is that sweet spot of stretching people to more than they thought was possible and getting them to lean into problems and deliver more than they thought was possible.”

Growth on Personal and Organizational Levels

The variability in the macro environment, along with competition for customers in the retail banking space, keeps TD Bank CFO Xihao Hu focused on innovation on the customer-facing side as well as the back end.

“We are working on enhancing our strategies to make sure we not only defend our turf but can continue to speed up our customer acquisitions, bring new customers in, and retain the loyal customer,” he said, adding that the bank had recently launched two new, unique credit card products and is looking at expanding its commercial banking into new geographies.

TD Bank’s growth mindset, Hu said, shows up on organizational and personal levels. “Once we had the strategy set, we embarked on a journey to tell the story across TD Bank in the U.S.,” he added, sharing in detail the bank’s plans with leaders who would then “take those stories back to their teams to cascade that sense of a mindset of growth.”

Hu also described a three-year blueprint for finance employees to improve their storytelling abilities to help TD Bank’s business partners grow. “We want to shift from a traditional role of overseers of past transactions into strategic partners to our finance employees,” he said.

Watch the full Fortune webcast “Emerging CFO: Maintaining a Growth Mindset in Turbulent Times.”

Read the full blog post on the Workday blog.

More from our FP&A Done Right Series:

Navigating the BPM Vendor Landscape: Key Insights from the 2023-2024 Report

Navigating Economic Volatility: Insights from CFOs

Workday Adaptive Planning Recognized with the 2023 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Financial Planning Software

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Adding Images to Charts

September 12, 2023 by Ivan Cepero

Charts are an excellent way to use visuals to convey information. Did you know that you can increase the effect of charts in Excel by adding custom images?

Consider this plain pie chart.

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We can insert a corporate logo to give the chart a greater visual appeal and branding.

1 – Click on the chart to select it

2 – Right click and select “Format Chart Area”

3 – Select “Picture or texture fill”

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4 – Select “Insert” to insert an image from your computer or “Clipboard” to insert a previously copied image

When clicking “Insert” you will see a pop up letting you pick various image sources.

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5 – You can further refine the options by having the image tile, offset or scale.

Here is the updated chart with the Revelwood logo applied, tiled and set with transparency level 80%:

You can also apply custom images to a specific data point (e.g. a pie slice in this example) by initially selecting the data point instead of the entire chart, then following the steps outlined above.

Accounting Automation Transforms Finance

September 7, 2023 by Revelwood

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, finance and accounting teams face increasing pressure to close the books faster, ensure data accuracy, and comply with ever-changing regulations. Manual accounting processes not only consume valuable time and resources but also pose significant risks of errors and inconsistencies. However, there’s a solution — accounting automation software.

Simplifying Account Reconciliation

One of the core features of accounting automation software is for account reconciliations. Traditional reconciliations involve manual data entry, cross-checking, and time-consuming reviews. Accounting automation software transforms this process by offering auto-certifications, matching technology, and real-time visibility into the status of reconciliations. Intelligent algorithms handle high volumes of accounts effortlessly, minimizing the risk of errors and ensuring compliance with accounting standards.

Empowering Transaction Matching

Another game-changing aspect of accounting automation software is transaction matching. Matching records from multiple data sources, such as bank statements and general ledger transactions, can be a tedious and error-prone task when done manually. Advanced matching logic can handle various types of matches, enabling efficient one-to-many and many-to-many reconciliations. This capability saves valuable time and ensures accurate results for even the most complex datasets.

The Benefits of Accounting Automation

Implementing accounting automation in your finance department offers a plethora of advantages. First, it significantly reduces the time and effort required for financial reconciliations, enabling teams to focus on value-added tasks. By automating workflows and standardizing processes, the software ensures consistency across different accounting practices, reducing the likelihood of errors and discrepancies.

Ensuring Data Security and Compliance

The best accounting automation solutions prioritize data security, confidentiality, and compliance. It should have robust encryption measures, access controls, and secure cloud storage so that sensitive financial information remains protected from unauthorized access.

As finance and accounting professionals seek to streamline their processes and achieve greater efficiency, accounting automation software emerges as a transformative solution in the Office of Finance. By centralizing financial tasks, automating reconciliations, and providing real-time insights, the software can revolutionize the way financial operations are managed. Embrace the future of accounting automation and empower your finance team to drive business success like never before.

Planning & Forecasting

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Challenge 1: Verifying Accuracy

Challenge 2: Wrestling Data from Multiple Systems

Challenge 3: Lack of Collaboration

Challenge 4: Data Interpretation

What’s the Answer?

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The CFO Role in Innovation

AI’s Potential: ‘The Biggest Sea Change’

Why Relationships and Trust Matter

Technology as ‘Co-Pilot’

Using Data to Achieve Efficiencies at Scale

The Path Forward

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What CFOs are thinking about GenAI

Thinking outside the box

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The Importance of Customer Satisfaction

Leveraging Workday Adaptive Planning

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Creating an Atmosphere of Innovation

‘Be Constructively Unreasonable’

Growth on Personal and Organizational Levels

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Simplifying Account Reconciliation

Empowering Transaction Matching

The Benefits of Accounting Automation

Ensuring Data Security and Compliance

Read more about Accounting & Accounts Receivable:

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