Ubiquitous spreadsheet software that revolutionized accounting hasn’t kept up, CFOs say
P.F. Chang’s finance chief said he switched the company to Adaptive Insights from Excel because it fosters collaboration and cuts down on administrative tasks.
P.F. Chang’s finance chief said he switched the company to Adaptive Insights from Excel because it fosters collaboration and cuts down on administrative tasks. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images
The process can take days and requires finance staff to pull data from disparate systems that house financial and human-resources information into Microsoft Corp.’s Excel spreadsheets. From there they can see which groups are hiring and how salary spending affects the budget.
“I don’t want financial planning people spending their time importing and exporting and manipulating data, I want them to focus on what is the data telling us,” Mr. Garrett said. He is working on cutting Excel out of this process, he said.