Are these remarks during executive reviews familiar to you?

• The numbers you are showing are different to my report…
• Explain the layout of the data in the slide, as it is not clear to me
• Why are you adding these non-standard Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?

Such situations take meeting time, often move discussions out of focus and bring confusion. I am not mentioning here the extensive amount of hours the teams spend to run the reports and prepare the slides.

What if all the points above are solved? What if the meetings are constructive, well-structured, smooth and efficient? What if the business and finance teams constantly focus on data analytics and understanding? This sounds like a dream, but it is not. It is possible through optimisation and centralisation of reporting in an organisational Reporting Factory.

The Reporting Factory enables the management to have a timely, accurate, clear and consistent view of the financial performance, risks and opportunities across the organisation. It also facilitates communication with stakeholders, therefore supporting strategic decision-making based on data-driven insights.

The mission of the Reporting Factory is:

• To optimise and streamline the processes of data preparation and analysis
• To set standards for reports and dashboards
• To ensure data consistency and accuracy
• To implement innovative ideas and optimisation possibilities into data analytics
• To use new technologies in the reporting landscape
• To be flexible for changes and new norms
• To allow quick and timely access to data in the company
• To foster a culture of continuous improvement based on the needs, feedback and input from the different stakeholders

The Reporting Factory design should consider specific profiles needed for success. These are data scientists with financial backgrounds and creative mindsets. Such profiles are capable of validating the data availability within the organisation, optimising data flows and designing the possibility of accurate information availability in one reliable source. New technologies help support the dashboard creation and reports set up per needs. The communication factor should not be underestimated. The Reporting Factory team members should have an open mindset and should be able to build strong visibility and accessibility for feedback.

The next step is to understand the needs of local data granularity versus executive discussion level. Standard review decks can contain core parts with high-level summaries for executive reviews followed by deeper analytics for local discussions. The decks are prepared by the Reporting Factory and become available as soon as the data are submitted.

The decks have standard layouts, aligned locally and centrally, and contain all the main information needed for data understanding.

It brings consistency into the processes and discussions. The teams know what will be reviewed and in which order, and what is important to understand if this information is visible. The source of information is clear and is the same for the whole organisation. The data is reliable and quickly available.

The departments work just to prepare comments, understand the trends and discuss the business risks and opportunities with the executive teams, focusing on strategic actions.

What happens when the focus changes and new KPIs start playing a role? Or if the new accounts are added? If the business hierarchy updates are coming? Or M&As are in place? The Reporting Factory specialists can quickly make the needed changes and integrate the new information into the databases, ensuring that the updates are quickly and well-integrated into related reports and dashboards.

The creation of the Reporting Factory can bring many advantages. However, to make it work, Change Management and training should also be in place.

Communication about the targets and roles of the new department within a company is highly important. The Reporting Factory team members should have a strong connection to the local organisations and management to understand clearly the needs of the data analytics specifics.

Another important element is the cross-department training provided by the Reporting Factory in cooperation with the other members of the FP&A team.

The target of training should be:

• To speak the same language inside the organisation (KPIs, metrics, key factors of performance understanding, etc.)
• To ensure the efficient self-service of data usage
• To help with the new analytics and reporting technologies usage
• To share the formats and scope of data availability (“what”/“where”/“when”)

The above will help us leverage the financial reporting systems and the analysis framework and adopt a data-driven and analytical mindset.

Conclusions

In conclusion, optimising the organisation by establishing the Reporting Factory can bring multiple advantages, such as:

• Improving the accuracy, timeliness, and reliability of the financial information
• Setting standards for reviews and discussions
• Reducing the costs, errors, and redundancies of data utilisation
• Enhancing the efficiency, productivity, and collaboration of the finance teams and other functions
• Supporting the strategic decision-making
• Increasing the transparency, accountability, and trust among different stakeholders.