Elevate Financial Insights With Unified Planning and Consolidation

In this article we discuss:

• The Limits of Outdated Tech
• The Opportunities of Interoperability
• The Transformation of Consolidation

In today’s increasingly fast-paced business environment, the finance function can’t act quickly enough. Almost 9 in 10 CFOs said the speed of strategic decision-making has increased, while 67% said they feel paralyzed by the number of decisions and volume of choices they’re expected to make, per an Accenture survey.

Finance leaders know that speed alone isn’t the end goal—it’s what time savings enable. Finance must “get things done faster, save time, and use that time for greater effectiveness,” Mark Smith, partner and head of software research for Ventana Research (now part of the ISG), said during a recent Workday webinar.

Today’s finance teams must work both faster and better. Too often, however, they’re held back by the limits of their financial technology. By 2026, only one-third of finance departments will have achieved a level of technology competence that can be described as digitally transformed, Ventana Research found. The CFOs that do will have greater influence in their organization’s management.

But even at organizations not yet ready to undertake a full digital transformation, CFOs can enable their teams to work more efficiently and effectively. They can achieve that by leveraging technology that connects their organization’s consolidation and close process with their planning process—seamlessly.

The Limits of Outdated Tech

“Seamless” is not how finance processes traditionally work. For many organizations, the consolidation and close process and the planning process happen in separate silos with disconnected datasets.

As a result, finance teams spend long hours wrangling the data they need. Accounting teams sweat the monthly close, unsure about the quality and consistency of data they’ve gathered from a bevy of sources that are managed on disparate applications. Indeed, Ventana Research shows that over two-thirds of organizations are focused on eliminating the challenges of preparing and streamlining data and sharing information within the organization, and only one-third report being satisfied with how they manage their consolidations.

When it comes to planning, finance teams are forced to shift between consolidation and planning processes and tools—extracting data, dumping it into pivot tables, and then loading it into reporting or planning solutions. It’s a clunky, error-prone process that floods inboxes with spreadsheets titled “Final,” “Final v2,” “Final v3” . . . and so on.

The Opportunities of Interoperability

Leading-edge CFOs are taking a different approach. They’re enabling their finance teams to work both faster and better—to be both agile and adaptive—by leveraging technology that unifies their consolidation and planning processes. They’re breaking down the silos between accounting and planning.

With a solution that combines consolidation and planning with a unified data core, finance teams can navigate easily between both processes. Accounting and finance each own their piece—but those pieces share the same up-to-date data. As a result, both consolidation and planning teams spend less time gathering data and more time interpreting it—and sharing their insights with their business partners. “It’s not just about going through the close process faster. It’s about using the time for analysis, auditing, and helping management better understand the dynamics of the business,” Smith said.

Instead of shuffling multiple versions of spreadsheets, planning teams have a single place to plan and to slice and dice different dimensions of the plan. They use the data to gain a clearer, more nuanced picture of the financial dynamics shaping company performance. And they speed up their data analysis and get that information to their stakeholders more quickly. 

Brandon Smith-Daigle, Workday vice president, product strategy planning and analytics, added during the webinar: “They can look at the performance of their organization and make strategic decisions, and spend less time wrangling spreadsheets and data across many different silos.”

The Transformation of Consolidation

With AI and machine learning (ML) embedded into the consolidation and planning solution, planning teams can perform unlimited predictive forecasts—creating as many versions as they need. And they can easily adjust their plans as assumptions change. “That agility allows an organization to proactively anticipate change, rather than reactively look at what they might do,” Smith-Daigle said.

A truly seamless consolidation and planning solution enables finance and accounting to function not as separate parts but as a cohesive, collaborative whole. And that empowers finance to help the business adapt nimbly to any change—whether it’s a new merger, a changing economic environment, or shifting regulations. “It’s not just about operating faster; it’s about being more agile,” Smith said. “It’s about adapting to the needs and changes in your organization.”

Starting in the first half of 2024, Workday will launch a new offering that unifies planning with close and consolidation. Workday Adaptive Planning and Consolidation brings together the robust and agile planning of Workday Adaptive Planning with the comprehensive close and consolidation capabilities of Workday Financial Management. The solution streamlines and simplifies data management, the close and consolidation process, the planning process, and financial reporting and analytics.

Organizations can use the new Workday solution while keeping their other financial applications, general ledgers, and ERPs in place. Even if they’re not yet ready to embrace the full digital transformation of their finance function, organizations can still unify their consolidation and planning processes—accelerating the close; increasing planning agility; and driving faster, more informed business decisions.