Corporate financial reports typically range widely in format and usability, and often fall somewhere between messy spreadsheets and ineffective dashboards, full of poorly labeled and inappropriate charts that do not get the desired message across to decision-makers.

This workshop explores the SUCCESS fundamentals from IBCS® for effective financial report design and creation, with powerful real-world examples and templates, and before and after examples from some of the world's most renowned companies. This hands-on workshop provides critical knowledge, skills and insights, to provide powerful report-creation capabilities for:

• Controllers and FP&A Professionals
• Business Analysts and Planners
• CFOs
• BI Professionals
• Consultants
• Anyone creating/consuming corporate financial reports

The workshop presents proven techniques for getting your reports read, understood and efficiently used for better decision-making. You will start creating understandable and visually compelling daily, monthly, annual and ad-hoc reports, dashboards and business presentations.

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Workshop Agenda

9:00 - The IBCS® Standard and Zebra BI Excel Charts

• Overview of the IBCS® rules and recommendations
• Zebra BI charts – how and when to use them
• Building reports and presentations with Zebra BI

10:30 - Break (15 min)

10:45 - Building Variance Reports

• Building standard Sales vs. Budget reports
• Building standard Cost vs. Budget reports
• Using Page Layouts, adding and writing comments
• Creating linked (updatable) PowerPoint presentations

12:15 - Lunch Break (45 min)

13:00 - Automating Reports with Pivot Tables

• Linking Zebra BI charts to Pivot tables
• Using Excel slicers for dynamic data filtering
• Synchronizing filters across multiple report pages
• Market share, benchmarking and other examples

14:30 - Break (15 min)

14:45 - Best Practice Examples

• Creating Income statement / Profit & Loss reports
• Using Small Multiples
• Cash Flow forecast
• Accounts receivable
• Product pricing
• Time-series analysis and other examples

17:00 - End of Workshop

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Included:

• Lunch and Refreshments
• Full-color Training Manual
• USB Stick with Electronic Materials
• Excel-only IBCS® Reporting Sample
• Fully-functioning Zebra BI Subscription License (6 months)
• Zebra BI Report Template Bonus Pack

Prerequisites:

• Solid undertanding of Microsoft Excel functionality including pivot tables and VLOOKUP function
• Attendees must bring their own laptop computers with up-to-date version of Microsoft Excel (Sorry, no Macs)

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Feedback from Past Workshop Attendees:

"We have been able to unify reports, presentations and dashboards across 10 countries within our group. Andrej conducted training for 50 analysts and managers at Coca-Cola. Good before/after examples were the key to getting the IBCS® standards accepted at the top management level. For us, this was a transformational experience!"

Ilkay Furmaz
Coca-Cola

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"I would recommend this workshop to any company struggling with messy and inefficient reporting tools."

Magnus Hoffritz
Senior Sales & Operations Manager, Danfoss

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"As a business intelligence professional, it was a really great learning experience to take part in the McKinsey Seminar & IBCS® Reporting/Dashboard Training in NYC hosted by Andrej Lapajne. Andrej’s passion for the language of data visualization and its capabilities in the business environment was apparent. Learning IBCS® and how it can improve reporting and presentation functions really made sense. But, more importantly, the training centered around communicating data so the recipient(s) spend less time interpreting multiple visual formats. These tools can circumvent much of the headache involved when trying to create and communicate complex business data. This will save me time and I’m eager to get started!"

Janet Macdonald
Senior Manager, American Express

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"The workshop far exceeded my expectations. I walked in expecting to learn a trick or two about Excel reporting. I walked away with a robust framework for financial reporting that is incredibly logical and applicable to my everyday work. Andrej is a wonderful instructor who takes the time to explain concepts and, more importantly, apply them to the real world. Immediately after the seminar, I had multiple ideas on how to apply the principles I learned in my job as a Finance Manager. I believe anyone interested in creating reports or presenting findings would benefit from this workshop. Thank you Andrej, for sharing all of your valuable knowledge."

Maria Vinokurov
Finance Manger at Contently, Inc.

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"I was very impressed by this workshop. Often these kind of workshops can be tedious and unfocused, but this was not the case. It was very well organized and all participants found it very fruitful. This was mainly thanks to the professionalism and friendliness of Andrej. I would recommend this to any company struggling with messy and inefficient reporting tools."

Magnus Hoffritz
Senior Sales & Operations Manager, Danfoss

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• 100+ Workshops Delivered
• 450+ Companies Attended
• 9.8 Average Attendee Satifaction Rating
  

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Workshop Instructors:

Andrej Lapajne
CEO, Zebra BI and IBCS® Founding Member

"Andrej Lapajne is a founding member of the IBCS® (International Business Communication Standards) Association and a Hichert-Certified Consultant. In his 15 years of experience as a consultant, Andrej has implemented reporting systems and business intelligence dashboards across a wide range of industries including pharma, telco, retail, FMCG, manufacturing, insurance, banking, energy, media, public sector and the high tech industry. His exprience includes helping Coca-Cola bottlers, Danfoss, SandvikCoromant and many other International companies achieve consistent and efficient reporting. Andrej is a frequent speaker at conferences around the world, and is a guest lecturer at Faculties of Economics and Computer Science and informatics in Ljubljana."

Rick Clazie
Managing Director, GRID Dynamics and IBCS® Advocate

As Managing Director and Owner of GRID Dynamics Inc., Rick brings 20+ years experience in software and professional services, with a focus on leveraging technology to solve business problems. In addition to being Jedox's original Certified Reseller and Implementation Partner in North America, GRID is also reseller of a range of other unique and time-saving technologies including Zebra BI for Excel. Rick is an expert in helping customers address "Excel Chaos" in their organizations and improving spreadsheet-based budgeting, planning, forecasting and analytics processes. His experience spans small to large sized organizations in both private and public sector, and across a wide range of industries. Rick is also a certified trainer for Jedox and Zebra BI.