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The Finance Check: Data integration

Questions about where finance gets its data from and how. A few minutes. Worth doing before any project, and especially before an ERP change.

At the end, if you’re based in the UK or Ireland, you can pick one area for a free hour of consulting time, such as a look at how your data gets from system to system. If you’re a charity, it’s two hours.

The result is a link you can bookmark or pass on.

About you

Which systems does finance take data from? Pick all that apply.
Are you changing accounting system or ERP in the next 18 months?
Roughly what’s the average salary of the people doing this work? It’s only used to put a £ figure on the time. We don’t keep it.

Data integration

How do actuals get from your accounting system into planning and reporting?
A new cost centre is added in the ledger. What happens downstream?
Roughly how many hours a month does someone spend moving data between systems?
How many lists of customers, products or cost centres are there, across all your systems?
After data’s loaded, how often does it need correcting?
A new system arrives (a new CRM, say). How long before finance sees its data?
Is it written down how each feed works?
If the person who built the feeds left tomorrow…

We’d like to add everyone’s answers up, to say things like how long a budget usually takes. We keep the answers and the month – nothing that says who you are – and only ever publish figures from ten or more people. Untick it if you’d rather not. There’s more in our privacy policy.