finance_saturated

Reporting as a Service

A Fortune 50 company with a highly decentralized reporting operation (ie. technology, processes, storage, communication) approached Zenda to observe how finance professionals fulfilled management and operational reporting activities and deadlines, and to recommend future-state improvements to the reporting event.

Zenda discovered that many analyst level reporting activities were unnecessarily manual, defined by unpredictable, and hoc requests for up-to-date information and clarification. It was often easier for finance professionals to independently create one-off sets of data rather than make sense of existing, inflexible reports. Zenda’s research highlighted a lack of standardization in data sourcing, reporting analysis, and technology interfaces, which was informing a culture of investigation, reconciliation, and customization rather than consistent insight generation based on trustworthy reports.

Industry / ORG

Consumer Products, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Finance

Capabilities

Strategic Operation Design, Behavior Research, Business Process Modeling, Enterprise Tool Design

Solution

Zenda’s designers created a system for report standardization by identifying both patterns in human behavior and in the data landscape of extant reports, allowing BPO’s and TPO’s to consolidate key reports and establish a governance process for the creation of new relevant reports. Zenda’s designers then standardized the design of the reports and optimized how reports were accessed to align with finance professionals’ behaviors, enabling faster, more consistent analysis.
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Result

  • Consolidated data models and standardized report design decrease report load times from 16 minutes to 12 seconds across all operational reports and reporting packages.
  • New design report standards decrease time for new report creation from approximately 1 hour to under 10 minutes.
  • When compared to the legacy reporting environment, finance professionals consistently describe report access in the new environment as easier, faster, and more accurate. Revised work process and reporting environment resulting in significant time saving and data accuracy during monthly, quarterly, and year end close cycles.
  • A new governance process was defined through insights derived from Zenda behavioral observation and research. The result was the creation of a new WorkDesign schematic, supporting BPO and TPO evaluation of new report proposals, maintaining a consolidated and consistent landscape of reports.