Agile Financial Reporting With Wdesk

Situation

• This private company was using Word® and Excel® to produce all of its financial reports. 
• Before hiring a financial reporting manager, the company’s chief accounting officer was handling a big share of the tedious, time-consuming financial reporting process. Even with the new manager on board, the company was still paying someone to do archaic accounting tasks and  then format Word documents—all  due to its outmoded report-development process. 
• The reporting system created version control problems, as the same information was repeated in multiple places throughout the firm’s financial documents. 
• The company asked its new financial reporting manager—who had previously used Wdesk at a public company—to bring her knowledge of public accounting and best-in-class processes to the private firm. Her first recommendation: get Wdesk.  

How Wdesk works for the financial reporting manager

• The powerful linking feature in Wdesk and one source of truth for the company’s financial data ensures accuracy and reduces the amount of time the financial reporting manager spends ticking and tying documents.
• The manager uses Wdesk to produce multiple reports on a quarterly basis for various internal and external stakeholders, including investors and options holders.
• The agile platform makes formatting easy, so the financial reporting manager can produce multiple outputs in different formats using the same linked data.
• Documents and data are always under the manager’s control—making changes is simple, and she can produce new document versions and send them for review in a matter of minutes.
• The cloud-based solution provides reliable access to the manager's documents and data anywhere, anytime. If a report request or edit comes in after work hours, she can do it from home.
• The manager uses Wdesk to pull information from her reports to produce presentations for the company’s board of directors and audit committee.

Results

• When the CFO asks the financial reporting manager for a specific report, a different document format, or a new set of slides, she can fulfill the request quickly and easily.
• Linked data in Wdesk ensures accuracy and creates a seamless experience across all documents and reports.
• Even as a team of one, the manager feels she’s an effective employee because of Wdesk. With the solution streamlining time-consuming tasks, including formatting and adding tables in documents, she can focus on value-added work such as reviewing files and responding to report requests from the C-suite.
• Once the company’s books are closed and the financial statements are complete, the manager rolls her files forward in Wdesk and performs a single annual update. Data automatically populates in her reports saving her even more time.
• Thanks to her helpful Workiva Customer Success Manager, the financial reporting manager says she looks "like a rock star” to her management team.

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