Workday Adaptive Planning Customer Automates OfficeConnect Report Distribution at Scale
The Challenge
Workday Adaptive Planning served as a valuable central repository for financial data and insights, but getting that information in front of the managers and executives who needed it was difficult.
The Solution
QueBIT ReportWORQ provided a solution that automates the secure distribution of personalized Workday Adaptive OfficeConnect (Excel) reports across the organization with ease.
The Benefit
QueBIT ReportWORQ enabled the client to unlock the true potential of the FP&A team as a strategic data analysis and reporting partner for the organization.
About Our Client
QueBIT’s client, a publicly traded financial technology provider, is not just a market leader but also one of the fastest growing fintech trailblazers in the world. The company boasts of a global clientele including Fortune 500 as well as unicorn start-ups.
The company’s Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) group uses Workday Adaptive Planning for all its financial reporting, budgeting, and revenue and expense planning tasks. While Workday Adaptive Planning provides significant planning flexibility well-suited for the kinds of complex multi-currency financial modelling they needed, there were some limitations around report distribution and getting executives and other endusers to engage with the data.
The Challenge
While Workday Adaptive Planning served as a valuable central repository for financial data and insights, getting that information in front of the managers and executives who needed it was difficult. The concept of self-service reporting within the Adaptive website was not working for this busy and easily distracted audience. They needed something that would integrate seamlessly with Slack and email, where they spent most of their time.
Scalability - This led to the FP&A team receiving requests to create custom reports for each recipient in Excel spreadsheets. Since many of these reports needed to be recreated weekly or monthly, this model was inherently unscalable and was an inefficient use of highly skilled analysts’ time.
Limits of Self-Service Reporting - The reporting paradigm for Workday Adaptive Planning is based on dashboards and reports that are accessed securely through a web browser. To be effective, users need to understand how to use the tool, and to know how to sift through the data to get to the information they need. While this worked very well for analysts and some middle managers, executives higher up on the corporate ladder did not have the time to acquire the necessary dexterity. Even when they were willing to learn, as occasional users they needed constant refreshers which also put a strain on FP&A resources.
Slack and Email - Most company interactions occur via Slack and email. The client felt that their goal of delivering accurate, timely and relevant information to decision-makers would be most effective using these two channels. The problem was that the data lived in Workday Adaptive Planning, and there was no native way to present that data in Slack or email short of providing a link to the Adaptive website.
““Over 100+ various monthly reporting packages now updated and distributed systematically to over 70 unique Slack channels and broad email distributions.”
- Director of FP&A
Delivering the Solution
Implementing QueBIT ReportWORQ for Systematic Automation
QueBIT ReportWORQ is a solution that automates the secure distribution of personalized Adaptive OfficeConnect (Excel) reports across any organization with ease. It supports email and Slack as distribution channels, in a variety of formats including HTML, Excel, PDF and PowerPoint.
With QueBIT ReportWORQ the client unlocked the true potential of its FP&A function as a strategic data analysis and reporting hub. They are planning to take this a step further and begin using ReportWORQ’s distributed data collection function too. This function will allow end-users to fill out data input forms sent to them in Slack or email via ReportWORQ, which will then be automatically uploaded into the Workday Adaptive Planning system. This will add convenience for planning contributors and make it easier to involve more front-line staff. Involving more people in the planning data collection process will break down silos and enable the company to collect more granular and more informed data. This in turn will open up doors for more detailed analysis and reporting, leading to better insights.
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Benefits/Results
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