Why are CFOs giving up on Excel?

The reasons why more and more CFOs are giving up on Excel for their financial reporting.

Every day, finance leaders decide to stop building their financial reporting in Excel. In general, the reasons that push them to give up on Excel are:

• wasted time;
• the risk of errors;
• a lack of collaboration.

 Is one of these issues more relevant to you than the others? Click on it to go straight to that section!

Stop wasting time on Excel 

For most CFOs, building reports in Excel means wasting time. When Thierry Guelfi, Group CFO, HR & Legal at Peers Group, ran his group's management consolidation in Excel, he faced a long and repetitive process: 

Once my 9 reports were built, I [had to bring them together] in a new file to get a consolidated view. But if a single accounting entry was missing, I had to repeat every step, which was tedious.

The time lost is made worse by the number and complexity of the Excel files to maintain. Simon Beufkens, Business Controller at Urbantz, explains:

On the one hand, we had lots of Excel files. We had to update them and keep them in sync to report on our business. On the other hand, we received requests from teams who needed information on a specific KPI or data point. Extracting one precise figure took time...

CFOs who have moved from Excel to automated reporting with EMASPHERE see up to a 67% reduction in the time spent building their reporting. 

Reduce the risk of Excel errors 

88% of Excel files contain errors. CFOs therefore have every reason to worry about Excel errors. As Simon Beufkens puts it, the risk of errors in Excel grows as files get bigger.

Nathalie Vienne, Business Controller at amfori, would certainly agree. Despite her vigilance, the first Excel report she sent after taking up her position contained errors. Those errors left a lasting impression: they earned her a call from her manager while she was on vacation, because the incorrect report had been presented at a meeting. It was an uncomfortable situation that made her realize how urgently she needed to move away from Excel.

Endless manual handling and inaccurate month-end closes are not inevitable. By automating their reporting with EMASPHERE, CFOs generally see a dramatic improvement in the reliability of their reporting. Maxime Vandermeersch,  CFO of Onefield Belgium, comments:

With EMASPHERE, I don't need to wonder whether the data has been processed correctly. The solution gives me peace of mind: I no longer ask myself a thousand questions about the reliability of the financial data.

Sharing financial information 

Excel files are not built for collaboration. For Damien Ruiz,  Financial Projects Manager at Coffreo, Excel makes data harder to read and slows processes down. This is especially true for people “whose core job is not to understand financial data in detail, but to have an overview of it.“

To put an end to the communication problems caused by Excel, CFOs are turning to collaborative solutions. The experience of Chloé Fieux and Sam Boribon, respectively Head of Studio and Finance Manager at Qualifio, confirms this. According to them, they managed to “build a bridge” between finance and operations.

With the right solution, sharing financial information becomes easier, and it can be tailored to the needs of internal users (department heads, entity directors…) as well as external ones (investors, banks…). Better communication of financial information has a direct impact on CFOs' day-to-day work. CFOs using EMASPHERE see up to 80% fewer recurring finance-related questions (compared with Excel).  

In short 

A source of uncertainty and stress, Excel reduces productivity, produces unreliable data and makes it harder to communicate financial information. Most CFOs who have freed themselves from Excel-based reporting see their day-to-day work improve.

You too deserve reliable reports that update automatically. To join the community of 10,000+ companies that are already EMASPHERE customers, get in touch with us.