Do away with the tyranny of Excel. And have less problems!

This is not the first time we promote the idea that a financial planning and analysis tool is a really good idea. But this time we have had coffee with Jeppe Bygholm, VP Finance of the SaaS company LogPoint, who shares his reflections on the FP&A tool Workday Adaptive Planning. He has just implemented the program in LogPoint and, therefore, has a handful of practice-based experiences you can benefit from if you are also considering leaving the tyranny of Excel for the benefit of a cloud-based budgeting tool.

Forty complex and well-designed Excel sheets. That was what Jeppe and the rest of LogPoint’s finance team were to get away from. And this was one of the reasons why they found it necessary to invest in an FP&A tool.

”The other reason was the cross-organisational cooperation,” says Jeppe. “We are a matrix organisation, where for example the budgeting of head count and confidential payroll data become complex. How can an Excel sheet cover this without becoming too complex? Should the data be subdivided according to country or manager? And on top of this, we have our hands full when we want to present the figures in another way and therefore need to slice the cake differently,” Jeppe smiles and continues: “This is a scenario that I reckon is well-known to many.”

”The third reason was data and keeping the data up to date. In a labour-intensive company like ours it is a huge advantage to be able to extract data directly from, for example, our HR system and to retrieve data from both Salesforce and Konsolidator on other financial figures. With the extra advantage that the storage and processing of, for example, personal data become safer.”

”And it’s worth mentioning how time efficient our work has become. Previously, the copying and checking of the 40 Excel files lasted one to four hours after having updated the data. Now, it’s two clicks away, and within an hour it is possible to update everything and check the impact on the accumulated profit and loss account.”

Workday Adaptive Planning wasn’t the obvious choice, and various tools were being considered.

”As a team, we have an eye for detail and are thorough, and therefore it was decisive for us to choose an FP&A tool that could operate with a high level of detail. And we didn’t want to be the first SaaS company that Workday Adaptive Planning had as its customer, so we were really pleased that they had experience with our specific type of business.”

”And it should be possible for us to build the same account structure as the one we already had, enabling us to match it one-to-one in Workday Adaptive Planning. Otherwise, it would be difficult for us to follow up later if the chart of accounts and the budget were to be subjected to mapping,” Jeppe rounds off.

According to Jeppe, the implementation of Workday Adaptive Planning has been no major eye-opener as regards the company’s sales activities because, previously, they used detailed Excel sheets, and this functioned well despite cumbersome, manual processes. Thus, LogPoint has been confirmed in its view that they had constructed some good models.

Having said that, it has become faster to obtain analyses illustrating the effect of the activities introduced. So, there is no doubt that Workday Adaptive Planning has accelerated sales activities.

But in major companies, where Excel models cannot be as complex and detailed as is the case in LogPoint, new and useful insights will often occur that have not been seen previously and that it could, thus, be of great value to take action on.

”In my experience, it is decisive to have a dedicated person experienced with FP&A and capable of understanding the design of the model. We learned that we were absolute beginners in this respect, and this insight came to me during the process. So, if I were to implement such a project once again, I would include an FP&A competence in my business case before approving the investment.”

”Otherwise, we haven’t gained any specific new insights because our budgeting model was good as it was, though I say it myself,” Jeppe says while laughing.

”But,” he adds, ”if we had made one or two somewhat creative solutions, it would have been different. So, we have been confirmed in our view that what we’ve built in Excel was well built.”

Jeppe pauses briefly before admitting that they’ve had a focus point as regards how fast they would be able to make changes or additions to the model with the complexity built into the model.

”All members of the team have been somewhat nervous and everybody has, in general, been very busy. Our model has been complex for our size – so we have been anxious to find out whether we have built a monster that it would be too heavy to dance with. But fortunately, our concern hasn’t been confirmed,” Jeppe explains.

He smiles and says: “Actually, the best argument for investing in an FP&A tool is the fact that a lot of your problems get solved because the answers are made visible the very second you leave your Excel sheet. Most finance professionals have more or less a love-hate relationship with Excel – you know what you have though it may be cumbersome. But the truth of it is that you get so much more with a planning and analysis tool like Workday Adaptive Planning.”