Reporting models by TopCFO

In the last couple of years business had an crazy dynamic due to the pandemic and its resulting shift in working paradigm.

One important task in any business organization is the review and reporting of the outcome of the previously undertaken activities.

This may sound simple and easy to do but sometimes it can get very trick, time-consuming and complex.

The statutory reporting, at least in Romania, is a little more easy due to the many existing norms, rules and laws that stipulate very clearly the content of the reporting package. Even with the big volume of rules and laws that the reporting package required by state fiscal authorities keeps its degree of complexity and time-consumption.

When talking about financial, business and operational management reporting , there is little to no “safety-net” like norms, laws, etc. that guides us through the reporting “adventure”.

In this case the reporting process starts form the very first step, requirements gathering , what is the goal of the report/reports.

The most important steps taken by TopCFO when dealing with the design of an reporting system are:

• Gathering of requirements is usual done through extensive discussions with the involved stakeholders
• Analysis, assessment and evaluation of available data and their processing requirements
• get all the data into an format that is usable for reporting , depending on used reporting tool . The data can be in XLS format or an complex database
• draft the 1st version of the reporting model
• review , update and refine the 1st draft based on the received feedback
• rollout the reporting model and organize training sessions with all involved stakeholders and operational teams that generate the primary reporting data

When going through a reporting system design process we follow the economic value flow of the client business organization.

The data visualization tool that we have used extensively in the last years is PowerBi from Microsoft.

The Desktop version , PowerBi Desktop is completely free at the time when writing this post 05.2023 and it can be downloaded from their site free of charge.

 The paid versions of PowerBi have a lot of very interesting features that integrate seamless in the O365 software package. The easy integration with O365 enables an increased data transparency and democratization while meeting all needed business and IT related security requirements.

All reporting systems that we have designed and implemented meet the following requirements:

• data transparency and availability 24/7
• data accessibility from any device and location while maintaining data security at its highest level
• most of the data are presented in an visual form with the aid of PowerBi
• depending of primary data availability and processing the reports deliver the required data almost in real time

An comprehensive and permanently accessible reporting system that can deliver the needed business reports to any device and any location is key to an modern, dynamic and efficient management decision process. This allows an easy and quick reaction of any business organization that is interested in value creation.

For more details on the topic please get in touch with us , we will gladly support your way to the TOP through the design/redesign of your management reporting system.

We are looking forward to your email or your message on LinkedIn.

Photo by Myriam Jessier on Unsplash and Lukas Blazek on Unsplash