Mention something about AFL and where we’ve come from and who uses our technology, but the reason we’re really here is to introduce you to a solution and present you with it. But keep the company ‘flag waving’ to a minimum at this point!

•Adopted in all market sectors by large and global companies as well as small and regional companies – Timeline products fit the bill.

Note: These issues relate to BOTH Reporting and Budgeting regardless of whether a company is using spreadsheets or another system currently. •Reliance of Key Individuals – They have built the systems and know the quirks e.g. extensive use of Macros, complex formulas, linked sheets, formatting different reports for different users etc.  This individual coordinates the whole thing and do all the maintenance. •Maintenance – database / linked spreadsheets; maintaining the system is a big problem as company requirements, reporting requirements change; Often many spreadsheets are linked together in order to product the relevant information,  the time and effort involved in the maintenance of these links can be substantial. Maintenance can also be an issue where there are changes made to the source database(s), many systems do not automatically reflect these changes in reports, leading to slow and time consuming maintenance of these links. •Re-keying of data / data integrity - Re-keying takes time and means that mistakes can creep into the reports, reliance tends to fall on a few key individuals– resource; takes time; bored staff, data integrity; can’t collect as much as you may want all due to lack of resource and time •Balances vs transaction detail – if they want a true distributed reporting system then they need to be able to provide different types of users with different levels of detail which is often not available, Many systems will only display balances and do not allow for drill down or access to transactional details •Distribution can be a problem. Often different people within the organisation require different reports, eg sales department vs the MD vs statutory reporting requirements etc, all of these need to be produced individually. Some people will not be authorised to view some of the information in reports. There may be a requirement to send sections of the reporting database to different divisions within the company for them to product their own reports from. There may be a requirement to publish the reports over the web. There are many different requirements for the delivery of the reports which need to be addressed and dealt with efficiently. The point about multiple workbooks is a point to be emphasised within a Budgeting presentation, workbooks can be sent out to the various cost centres or budget controllers. Distribution of reports, multiple workbooks – distribution of reports is a problem because of linked spreadsheets that need to be set in common area to enable them to work; someone has to copy files and send them across the network and this is a timely process and it is also a maintenance issue in terms of how you distribute it and collect it back again, particularly for budgeting •Inflexible formatting, variance analysis – if you need to change the format of a report using spreadsheet you can do it but lose all the data and links etc. so need to have a way of preserving that and having the flexibility to produce the reports in the right format; if you are a non-spreadsheet user then reporting can be a complex task. Excel offers the potential for powerful formatting which needs to be fully exploited to produce good reports.  •Model integrity vs end-user autonomy – how do you preserve your model integrity without restricting the users flexibility and right to add additional relevant information •Integrated, comparative reporting and analysis - There is often a need to integrate budget, actual and forecast information on the same spreadsheet. It is also often necessary to combine information from more than one source system to be included on the same reports.; •Accountants want reporting that is delivered on time, not a week or two weeks after ledger close. This means that the information contained within the reports can be used in a more proactive rather than reactive way.

As intro – take a step back to explain why we do what we do, what our view of the market is. The slides represents some of the extensive research done by us and others, as well as extensive client experience. This is what the market wants in an ‘ideal’ world and we then go on to what they actually get. Ask client which is most pressing for them and then link to case study relating to that point. Introduce / Conclude with what Reporting actually is or what all the above amounts to ie: It is the ‘whole process by which a company communicates it’s objectives and assesses performance against those objectives on an enterprise wide basis.’ Intuitive reporting – makes it clear that finance can easily own the software and will not have to rely on IT. Enterprise wide dist – paper, web, excel, entire workbooks, datamarts (offline reporting).

May want to mention that some approaches leave the spreadsheet overhead unaffected. Whether data is re-keyed or downloaded and re-formatted that is the same prob, people intervening and slowing things down and make possibility of errors.

MS launch in JHB – “ =ms excel is the largest db in the world – but was never designed as one” or something along those lines.