When push comes to shove, how simple, reliable and secure are the financial processes and software that your enterprise use for detailed workforce planning, and financial reporting in general? If you're using Excel for the job, the answer is probably 'not very.' With a high chance of errors sneaking through, alongside a lack of security and consistency, Excel just isn't an acceptable platform for such an important process.
After all, depending on the type of business you operate, workforce planning can be an extremely complex task, encompassing everything from planning and predicting capacity, utilisation, capabilities, accounting for individual compensation and entitlements, and managing organisation-wide costs and risks. The level of granularity with which you plan for labour and model scenarios will be dictated by the type of business you run. To put it simply, the process must roll up to the overall financial plan and is critical to ensuring an enterprise has the right people on staff, and the right skills in place to deliver the very best. Should you really be trusting such an important part of your business to software that isn't reliable or secure?
Why Excel isn't enough for workforce planning
Consider the amount of data and variations required for effective workforce planning. There are countless figures to compile and keep track of - a job that becomes difficult when saved in multiple spreadsheets. In fact, when using Excel, simply finding the right data arguably becomes one of the biggest challenges faced by finance and HR staff when planning for labour. After all, you've brought these employees in for their ability to analyse data, not to spend hours on maintenance work that they shouldn't have to do.
In addition, there are all the other well-known risks associated with using spreadsheets to run core financial budgeting, planning and forecasting processes for an enterprise, which we've covered in-depth in a previous article on the true price of a spreadsheet. These include:
- Basic errors slipping through from copy-paste and manual data entry.
- A lack of security when it comes to sensitive or confidential information.
- Difficulties when moving between different versions of Excel.
- Problems when consolidating multiple spreadsheets into one.
- An inability to load historic data, or data from other systems.
Recognising this, leading enterprises are shifting away from spreadsheets, with the best alternative being cloud-based EPM software.
Cloud-based EPM software: A better solution
There is a growing trend to cloud-based EPM systems that can replace manual, overly-complex financial processes with automated consolidation of disparate data and provide an integrated view of operational, strategic and financial planning and reporting, at a much lower total cost of ownership.
A trend that is aimed at empowering the office of finance, attracting new talent, eliminating duplication, automating and standardising processes and improving service levels & response times. It's a simple choice. By removing the reliance on Excel in favour of cloud-based EPM software you can better accelerate and integrate workforce planning with the financial plan and enable finance to gain more control over the process to move the business forward with greater insight.
