The Ledger

Curated content for
analytical business leaders

CFO Magazine: Can Excel Survive?

“But old dogs can’t always learn new tricks. While Excel has shown remarkable staying power, some experts believe it may now be challenged beyond its reach. Companies big and small increasingly need to automatically pull their financial data from multiple cloud-based systems and utilize more advanced data analytics. Excel may be a roadblock to that…While Excel is often used as a collection point for data from other systems, it is still a “manual and largely siloed vehicle”…Excel’s limited ability to handle massive data sets “can lead to long processing times and more steps than other database tools.””

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CFO Journal: For Controllers, a New Agenda: Delivering More Value

“Controllers, as independent observers, are in an ideal position to bring more structure and discipline to decision-making processes, ensuring value is realized from capital allocation. They can review the efficacy of past business decisions that relied on assumptions that may no longer be valid and help develop a disciplined, yet agile, process for adjusting future capital allocations. Ensuring there is an evaluation and feedback loop for decisions in the event conditions or facts have changed, as well as a process for course-correcting, falls squarely in the controller’s domain. In fact, this responsibility is one the controllership should own as an unbiased, independent arbitrator of the decision-making process in the organization.”

Read More at Wall Street Journal >

CFO Journal: Navigating a Better Route to Supply Chain Resilience

“By applying the framework of risk-adjusted cost optimization to their decisions, CFOs can simultaneously increase the supply chain’s resilience—and boost their own.”

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SF Magazine: Data as a Strategic Asset

“As accounting leaders, we must actively contribute to the discussions around data management, valuation of data, and recognition of enterprise data value as an asset on the financial reports. We must focus on providing value by producing high-quality, data-driven insights through applying data analytics to ensure organizational success.”

Read More at SF Magazine >