Where Do You Assign the Greatest Value…With the Financial Report…or the Financial Reporter?

I am personally tied to this topic, because I have spent years lobbying for one side of this argument, where my battle is convincing everyone else that the contrary is not true. The modern-day financial executive is often asked to produce numerous reports by the 5th day following the month-end close that they just orchestrated, if not completed manually themselves. These poor folks get hammered if their rolling 3-month pro-forma forecast is a day or two late, even if the underlying reason is the scrutiny and tedious review that went into the month-end close, where material errors were discovered and thousands of dollars were saved because of that executive’s due diligence and detailed review. At this juncture, you have to ask yourself, should you really be reprimanding someone with the dedication and skill to find you an extra $100,000 in EBITDA, or is that forecast report so valuable, you lose sight of the intelligence and skillset present in the person who lives in your operations and actual results? This is where I take the opportunity to remind everyone that the process of preparing that forecast report is likely very routine, repetitive and ritualistic. Truth be told, a one-armed monkey could probably be taught to prepare that report, just like the 100 other reports due throughout the month. Reporting is a function…and usually a pretty darn repetitive and algorithmic one too. Making sure your month’s actual financials are accurately and fairly stated is a skill that many financial leaders actually lack or fall short on. If you have one that can spot errors and opportunities to fairly, ethically and legally report better results, please try to remember that the value is in that financial reporter…not the dozens of reports that they may submit a day or two late. One could even argue whether they should be preparing those reports at all…or simply reviewing them for accuracy and completeness, as brought to them by a subordinate? So much of the reporting function can be streamlined and automated anyway, because it always involves the same 10 steps to completion. Let an analyst run a group of queries or some macros and be done with it. Let the financial reporter review those, and then you will be best-utilizing your resources and maximizing your overall value. The greatest value does not lie in the skills required to build reports, but in the ability to interpret the information coming from those reports and making the proper call to action in the most timely way.