Enterprise Excel is a relatively new business concept that builds on the decades of time and money companies and individual financial analysts have invested in becoming proficient in Excel. It’s essentially Excel augmented with cloud consolidation database technology.

The benefits are two-fold. An Enterprise Excel solution allows analysts to continue working in a familiar Excel environment while eliminating the fragility and capacity limits of Excel. The magic is that Excel power users load their GL transactions into cloud “cubes” that they design and manage.

No more storing data in a bewildering maze of unsecured, redundant spreadsheet files. Now, financial analysts create templates that users request live off the cube for entering their budgets and forecasts. No more files, links, email, or macros. Consolidation is real-time. These models are unbreakable.

Enterprise Excel liberates highly skilled, yet overworked and underappreciated, financial analysts from the drudgery of maintaining spreadsheets and chasing down reconciliation errors by putting enterprise-scaled capacity at their fingertips.

This is an important point that is too often overlooked in all the hoopla over big data: It isn’t just about data. It’s about people.

People like Joe.

At least I’ll call him Joe. He represents numerous people I’ve talked to who have left their cubicles for a seat at the table in the executive suite thanks to Enterprise Excel.

Here’s his story …

Freeing the Financial Analyst to Provide Actionable Intelligence

I was a grunt in a cubicle. I spent my days and weekends reconciling and maintaining spreadsheets. I’m good at it. Really good. There was just never enough time for analysis and forecasting. And there was stress. Like worrying about errors. It’s a tough job and it felt like a never-ending grind. Plus it was lonely.

 But all that is gone. And, looking back now, I see that it really doesn’t have to be like that. I’m still the center of our spreadsheet world, managing these new models in Enterprise Excel. But the lonely work is gone. These models are deep and detailed, but they’re unbreakable. And they pretty much maintain themselves.

 It’s like I’m set free.

 Instead of reconciling spreadsheets alone in my cube, I’m in the meetings for decision support, often creating new scenarios and running what-ifs for the bosses right then and there!

Life changing. Career enhancing. That’s the power of Enterprise Excel.

Boosting Productivity by Empowering the People

There are a lot of Joes out there, hard-working MBAs who are skilled, knowledgeable, and extremely creative people who represent a major source of untapped talent in organizations across the nation. You may know some of them. You may even be one.

What too many business executives forget is that when it comes to big data, the tool is not going to do the work. The people are.

Empowering financial analysts with a tool that gets them out of their cubicles and into the executive offices supporting decision-making pays off in increased efficiency as well as job satisfaction. That’s our goal at A3—to multiply the effectiveness of financial analysts.

So, managers who adopt A3 get a huge productivity boost out of their finance teams.

And financial analysts discover that A3 can free them from the tedious work of maintaining spreadsheets so they can focus on analysis and forecasting—which in turn positions them to be valuable contributors to the decision-making process in the executive suite. Liberated from their lonely cubicles, their impact is now visible, which puts them on a completely accelerated career track.

Whether you’re in the C-Suite or a cubicle, Enterprise Excel is the ultimate win-win for your finance department.

See Enterprise Excel in Action

If you want to see what A3 Modeling looks like, you can request a live, custom demo. No risk, no obligation. Contact us today!