Digital transformation projects should not start with finance

Finance teams almost always lead digital transformation projects, but should they?

This thought came to me while I was enduring a financial systems sales pitch that I’d accidentally ended up in. (I’m normally good at avoiding these now, I must have had my guard down).

As they droned on about how we could finally be free of spreadsheets, I started to think; what if we (finance) are the problem here?

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Using flags in financial modelling

Image shows example of flags in financial modelling.

I was going to write a detailed guide about using flags in financial modelling. However, there’s already a really good one here, as part of the ICAEW’s financial modelling good practice guide(s).

So instead I’ll just write something more simple to explain why you might want to use flags in financial modelling. And add a specific point about dynamic arrays, which are a newish development in Excel.

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Five tips for using Googlesheets if you’re used to Excel

Here are five tips for using Googlesheets if you normally use Excel.

1. Check your document is actually a Google Sheet

If you’ve imported it from Excel, it might still be an Excel file that’s being read by Google in compatibility mode. You can tell because name and file type of the workbook will end in XLSX. 

This is the worst of both worlds, as you are getting neither Excel nor Google functionality. Save the file as a Google sheet (in the file menu) 

A screenshot from Googlesheets showing an xlsx file
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Ten things I learned at the Global Excel Summit 2024

I attended the Global Excel Summit 2024 online earlier this month, and in no particular order, here are ten things I learned.

1. Power Query at Chanel

The most inspiring session was given by two people who work for Chanel, who explained how they had used Power Query to reduce thousands of hours of processing time.

In the middle of a day that was focussed on the theoretical uses of AI, it was fantastic to hear about a tried and tested but scandalously underused technology being used to deliver real business change.

More generally their approach to business process improvement sounded fascinating and I’d love to see this become more widely known.

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