Organizations everywhere are looking for ways to be more efficient, more agile, and more strategic. The finance and accounting department–subject to the tyranny of the spreadsheet for so many years–is finally starting to look at ways to better manage their financial practices, automating a lot of the number-crunching.
But what about those accounting processes that require a bit more than number crunching and instead involve several layers of approval? For many large companies, the business processes involved in requesting a new account for the General Ledger poses exactly this kind of workflow dilemma.
On the one hand, you need to exercise control over an increasingly complex hierarchy of accounts—often dispersed across multiple GLs—for accurate and timely financial reporting and analysis.
On the other hand, that level of control requires a review and approval process that is still largely manual, involving forms that need to be printed out, filled in, and forwarded on.
Eventually, the requests end up on the desk of some unfortunate accountant whose job it is to consolidate them and then forward them on to an approval committee that meets once a month and spends hours reviewing the requests before making a decision.
It’s exactly the kind of repetitive, repeatable, and low-value task that automation was created to solve.
So imagine how thrilled I was to learn that we can help streamline this process with the flexible operating model, workflow, and collaboration capabilities in Collibra. Some customers I’ve spoken with are using those combined features to establish account hierarchies and custom roles, consolidate GL account request forms, and engage the appropriate reviewers for approval.
No more spreadsheets to create. No more email to track.
With our tools, requests for new accounts (as well as deletions and modification) can be handled more efficiently—and more transparently. If account requests meet established policy, they can be quickly approved and added to the GL. The committee can devote their monthly meeting to flagged exceptions, rather than the laundry list of new account requests. Work gets done faster. The decision-making path is easily traceable. And smart people are free focus on the challenges that really matter to your organization.
At Collibra, we believe in thinking differently about digitalization. If you’d like to talk to us about how these features can help you automate manual processes like GL account creation, please contact me anytime.
