The Nightmare Financial Model
June 23, 2021 | by: David Phillips
The Nightmare Financial Model. Just about every company has a least one. It causes people to work overtime. It leads them to make questionable decisions. Sometimes, it makes them wake up in the middle of the night, gripped by fear and doubt. But you can’t get rid of the model. It’s critical to a part of your business.
Sound familiar?
Our clients often come to us to help with nightmare models. They’ve endured so much pain over the years, or something disruptive like getting acquired, or getting audited, or finding a huge material error happens and they have no choice but to act.
Part of the issue is the inherent limitations and risks posed by spreadsheets. We push and extend them beyond their design limits. Spreadsheet fluency is a traditionally core skillset for finance and FP&A professionals. However, we have seen movement away from spreadsheets as cloud technologies have matured. Take for example, the accelerated adoption of corporate performance management solutions like Workday Adaptive Planning, Vena and Planful. These solutions have proven their value for scalability and collaborative budgeting, forecasting and planning.
However, these solutions aren’t necessarily designed for modeling specific multi-dimensional, highly variable activities. A better choice is Quantrix Modeler, the enterprise business and financial modeling platform.
At Model Metrix, we cost-effectively design, build and deploy financial models and deliver them on a secure cloud server. These models are either stand alone or integrated with other financial systems (e.g. Adaptive Planning), data warehouses, BI tools, and more. With Modeling-as-a-Service, teams can focus on growth and strategic initiatives while we manage the models and train end users.
By targeting those nightmare spreadsheet models and replacing with “point solution” models from Model Metrix, organizations eliminate weak links in high value processes and decision-making. They also allow finance teams to get a better night’s rest.
Ready to eliminate nightmare spreadsheet models in your organization, contact us for a discovery call.