Do you trust your management information?
Is it secure?
Do you believe it is well controlled?
Is reconciled?
Do you find it to be consistent?
Your management information contains valuable competitive insights from your business. Securing who can access this rich data source is important, you wouldn’t want it getting into the wrong hands
Having adequate controls around the data helps you trust that it is the latest version and not out of date
We have all seen the naming of spreadsheets such as Management Accounts FY23 Period 10 – Final Final v2
How can you ever know that this really is the final version?
You need to be able to trust that the underlying data sources have been reconciled before being used in the reporting
A great way to do this is to have centralised reconciliation processes as part of quality control
Trust builds over time, but can be lost very quickly
Having consistent, accurate and controlled data helps build that trust
Well organised data, supported by good disciplines of control and timely updating makes it easier
If you don’t trust the underlying processes you cant trust the output can you
Rubbish in —> Rubbish Out
Questions to ask
People
Do your people spend too much time creating reports because they have to check the accuracy?
Do your departments and roles have controlled, but available access to the data they need?
Who is responsible for data quality and integrity in your organisation?
Processes
Do you have controlled processes which operate routinely and provide discrepancy alerts?
Can you review who has access to what information?
Is your user facing information in a single place where it can be governed?
Technology
Do your systems require you to log in to gain access?
Can a lot of the hard work of controlling the data be automated?
The chances are if a lot of your management information lives in spreadsheets then you will have a lot of concerns with trust, some of these concerns can be improved
by having robust data processes which feed the spreadsheets
A simple rule of thumb, Never store data in your spreadsheets, Instead connect them to the source where they can be updated
A lot can be achieved by having strong disciplines and using the technology you probably already have
You cannot blame the technology, only the people in control of it
Find Out about our health check
Management Information Health check
If you think your management information could be better trusted give us a call and lets talk about these key steps and remove some of these issues
Timeliness, Accuracy, People, Processes, Technology, and much more
