Thanks for your comment. What I often find is small and mid-sized businesses are often focused on specific pain points and they try to solve just for that concern versus stepping back and thinking about an overhaul. Much of the issues of getting at data is that it is scattered due to the evolution of thinking and adoption of systems without the reflection of the longer-term impact of taking immediate action to solve a problem.

You brought up spreadsheets and they are interesting. I like to think about spreadsheets in two dimensions: Projects or Operations. Spreadsheets are great when they are serving a project and they live only for the life of that project. But when a spreadsheet is used for an operation, it generally indicates that the enterprise system is weak (or was not fully implemented). Those operational spreadsheets represent another place that data is locked up preventing management from making meaningful business performance assessments.

I will be writing another article soon that goes into more detail.

“What information is needed, when?” and “What business decisions will that information support?”

All too often, we see this step missed, resulting in a large investment that has not eliminated the need for spreadsheet “gymnastics” that are based on individual “recipes” for capturing and analyzing data.

This impacts the cost of finance in a dramatic way. For every spreadsheet, consider that there is at least one person pushing it. Then toss in the “hit by a bus” factor when that employee and his/her recipe is no longer known, as it was never documented.

Try now the New Period button so you can define periods within the New Year. Does that do it?

Marty

I need to delete FY2010 yr and redo so I can have 2010 in periods (quarters).

Not finding out how to delete the year!