As I walk around various offices or even in social gatherings, I find many conversations about artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), and big data. And logically, then, the discussion quite often rolls into how our life will change due to the availability of data, how each of our actions is turning into data, how future consumer behaviour thus can be predicted etc. Thus people quite often discuss predictive analysis (PA), and we hear stories about its use in elections to predict voters' behaviour, customer behaviour, payment risks, etc.

Excel is still a popular tool when it comes to preparing financials or analysis. However, we often hear financial professionals complaining about how inadequate Excel can be. So why have we not “rid” ourselves of this seemingly “inadequate” tool. This article explores the pros and cons of using spreadsheets. There are a few best practice tips that may be helpful to the vast majority of spreadsheet users.
 

In this blog I take a broader view of new products and talk about how best to monitor progress post-launch when information is still a little sketchy, volumes are still very low and reporting mechanisms may not yet be fully in place.

Scenario analysis, sensitivity analysis and what-if analysis are very similar concepts and are really only slight variations of the same thing. All are very important components of financial modelling – in fact, being able to run sensitivities, scenarios and what-if analysis is often the whole reason the model was built in the first place.

Is your most fancied FP&A RPA initiative not delivering the anticipated benefits? You are not alone. So, what are the most common pitfalls? And more importantly, how can you sidestep them and increase your odds of a successful RPA implementation?

Ask anyone working in the finance field now, how much time you consume in some manual tasks; such as data entry, accumulation & validation of data, accounts reconciliation & preparing some basic statements or reports. Unfortunately, statistics say that more than 35% from Accounting & Finance Teams spent from 50 to 70% from their time on manual processes & data entry on ERP systems!