Automate Your Financial Reporting

Why Automate Financial Reporting?

Finance teams are under pressure to accelerate the speed with which they report their financial results. At the same time, investors’ expectations of the quality of these financial disclosures continue to increase.  To meet these expectations, CFOs, controllers, and investor relations teams must look to automate financial reporting.

Manual data entry and spreadsheets are error prone. Instead, companies should leverage automated financial reporting platforms to produce key reporting documents including:

• Financial Statements
• Management’s Discussion and Analysis
• Results and Webcast Announcement
• Quarterly Results Webcast and Conference Call Scripts
• Quarterly Results Webcast and Conference Call Presentation
• Quarterly Results News Release
• Supplementary Data and Fact Sheets

Automated financial reporting platforms give financial reporting teams the ability to produce these materials from a single source of truth. Instead of maintaining separate files (and duplicate data) for each document, automation lets you link all outputs to the same underlying data. When a number updates, it updates across all documents instantly. This not only reduces effort but also enhances credibility, since inconsistencies between these documents can be virtually eliminated.

In this article, we:

1. Outline the benefits of automating financial reporting;
2. Discuss the advantages of Workiva (formerly known as Wdesk) as a solution;
3. Review the risks of a dead Workiva implementation; and
4. Explore how MCI implements Workiva to support ongoing reporting in an efficient, end-to-end automated reporting process.

The Benefits of Automated Financial Reporting

Manual financial reporting is time-consuming and error-prone. Teams often spend weeks every quarter pulling numbers from various systems, copying them into multiple documents, and double-checking for consistency. This traditional process can involve a lot of repetitive work and last-minute scrambles to meet deadlines. This is especially true when changes need to be flowed through the company’s reporting materials. Automating the process addresses these challenges in several ways:

• Improved Accuracy and Fewer Errors: Automated reporting software establishes a single source of truth and manages the update of data and calculations across multiple documents for you. This ensures every figure is consistent and up-to-date, significantly reducing the risk of human errors.
• Time Savings and Efficiency: By automating repetitive, non-value-generating tasks, organizations can reduce overhead associated with financial reporting.
• Higher Productivity: Automation lets highly skilled finance professionals redirect their time to higher-level objectives, improving overall productivity.
• Transparency and Audit Trail: Automated reporting platforms retain all data and version changes, providing a transparent audit trail for all financial figures. This makes reviews and compliance checks much easier than with siloed spreadsheets.
• Regulatory Compliance: High-quality financial reporting software is built to adhere to accounting standards. This simplifies your company’s efforts to conform to reporting obligations such as XBRL. These platforms can also proactively flag potential compliance issues.

In short, automating financial reporting accelerates turnaround, improves accuracy, and supports compliance, all of which are critical for CFOs and finance teams in today’s fast-paced, regulatory-heavy environment.

Workiva: A Platform for Financial Reporting Automation

Achieving the above automation requires a robust platform. Workiva is one of the leading cloud solutions for financial reporting automation, used by companies worldwide to streamline everything from SEC filings to management reports. Workiva offers a comprehensive set of features that cater to CFOs, controllers, and reporting teams looking to modernize their process:

• Single Source of Truth: Workiva allows you to manage all financial data in one central repository and link that data across multiple documents and reports. .
• Collaboration and Version Control: As a cloud-based solution, multiple users can simultaneously work on different sections of a report or presentation without creating versioning issues.
• Compliance and Controls: Workiva includes robust SOC2 security, permissions, and audit trail features. The platform also supports XBRL tagging (in IFRS and US GAAP) for regulatory filings, and updates its taxonomy as standards evolve.
• Data Integration & Connectivity: Modern financial reporting doesn’t happen in isolation – data comes from various sources. Workiva offers integration capabilities to connect with ERP systems, general ledgers, and other financial databases, allowing for direct data pulls into the reporting platform.
• Cost Savings for SEC Filers: Users can file directly to EDGAR from the Workiva platform, rather than going through a third party. These savings alone often offset the cost of the software.

Properly Implemented, Workiva Empowers Finance Teams

Properly implemented, Workiva provides the backbone to automate and manage the entire financial reporting lifecycle – from data collection and consolidation, to drafting reports, performing analysis, and publishing the final documents. With its single-source linking, built-in compliance checks, and collaborative features, Workiva is a powerful tool to transform how financial reports are produced.

The Risks of a Dead Workiva Implementation

As powerful as Workiva is as a platform, it is only as useful as the quality of its implementation. Workiva provides customers with a very basic initial set-up that is based on the templates of the customer’s previous quarterly and annual filings. This is only a starting point for a successful implementation. From here, the initial set-up needs to be built out further to ensure the foundation exists for ongoing reporting quarter after quarter.

Financial Reporting teams, accustomed to producing individual reports every quarter, often miss the key elements required to ensure the initial Workiva template is built to roll forward from quarter to quarter, carrying with it all the work of previous quarters. MCI estimates that more than 50% of Workiva customers operate with underutilized implementations that fail to maximize the platform’s value.

Workiva Implementation with MCI: Ensuring a Successful Automation Journey

MCI specializes in implementing Workiva for organizations reporting under IFRS or US GAAP. We help finance teams transition from manual processes to an automated, efficient workflow. Our approach addresses both the technical and human elements of this transformation:

• Expert Guidance & Planning: MCI enables a low-risk incremental adoption strategy.  
• Customized Configuration: MCI will configure Workiva to match your specific needs and deliver investment-grade reporting materials.
• Easy Roll Implementation: MCI implements an architecture in Workiva that supports an effortless roll forward, quarter after quarter, that builds on the work of previous quarters to enhance reporting accuracy.
• Variance Analysis and Narrative Capture: MCI’s architecture takes the guesswork out of narrative development that accurately explains quarter over quarter and year over year variations.
• Training and Change Management: MCI doesn’t just set up the software and leave. We provide comprehensive training, support, and oversight to ensure your team is effectively using Workiva.
• Ongoing Support & Optimization: Financial reporting needs will evolve over time, and MCI remains a partner to your organization even after the initial implementation.

By partnering with MCI for Workiva implementation, companies get a guided, hands-on approach to automation that is useful for the lifetime of the product’s use. We take care of the heavy lifting in setup and best practices, so your financial reporting team can confidently embrace the new system. The end result is a seamless process where producing a quarterly report package (financials, MD&A, news release, call script, decks, factsheets) becomes far less labor-intensive and error prone.

Conclusion: Embrace the Future and Automate Your Financial Reporting

Automating financial reporting is a necessity for modern finance teams. The benefits of faster report turnaround, improved accuracy, cost savings, and investment grade reporting materials are too significant to ignore. By implementing a powerful platform like Workiva with the help of experienced partners like MCI, organizations can transform their reporting process from a manual grind into a streamlined, intelligent workflow. This applies whether your organization reports under US GAAP, IFRS, or another recognized standard.

With MCI as your partner, you gain more than a platform… you gain a scalable, future-ready reporting framework. If you are interested in MCI’s Financial Reporting Services, please don’t hesitate to contact us!