THE CRITICAL X-FACTOR: COMPLIANCE & GOVERNANCE IN THE BUDGET PROCESS

Compliance and governance are becoming an increasing business-critical need that requires the right digital support. According to exacto partner Peter Jørgen Nørvig, it is thus not only better workflows, more robust and accurate forecasts, budgets and balance sheets that the clients want the implementation of exacto’s solutions to support.

GDPR

"One of the things we typically experience is that if the compliance managers have looked at the workflow in the budget process with swapping of Excel files in all directions, they have often found that there can be doubts about whether they are living up to legal requirements. Especially when it comes to GDPR.

The problem is that it is almost impossible to form an overview of where the various files are kept and that they are actually located in several places. In everything from email threads to local drives and shared drives. In various versions with more or less updated data. With one unified digital platform that everyone uses and works in, data exist in only one place”, explains Peter Jørgen Nørvig, and continues:

"It is not unusual that Excel files, especially concerning salary budgets, contain personally sensitive information. These must be made anonymous, but this will not necessarily be the case in the initial phases, and if you cannot be sure that there is not a version in another place – it could be in an older email thread – in which data are not yet anonymised, that constitutes a problem with compliance with the GDPR regulations”.

Audits

Another challenge is the possibility for being able to deliver the required documentation for compliance with the regulations:

"When there is no overview of where the various Excel files are stored and when, at the same time, one also cannot accurately state which data, for example, have been anonymised or who has contributed or made changes, our clients have experienced problems with being able to document that they are complying with the guidelines. Therefore, they have demanded that the platform has a detailed audit log for use in these audits. Fortunately, we have been able to comply with this, as the platform is fully integrated with the company’s AD and IAM, and you can therefore, at any time, pull out a full report of all of the activity and who has made changes along the way”.  

Governance

exacto’s digital platform exacto core® (including exacto budgeting) has been developed with a view to ensuring better workflows and collaboration, and, according to Peter Jørgen Nørvig, more clients also use the platform to support the governance frameworks they aim for:

"Something that is recurring is a desire to get support both for better establishment of ownership and access to continuous follow-up and control. With the implementation of the workflow that follows with the platform, it becomes possible to transfer the responsibility for local budgets, forecasts and subsequent follow-up from the central finance department out into the organisation to the local budget managers. That partly provides a completely different experience of ownership, but the full transparency also opens up the possibility that there can be more effective follow-up on the budget’s various elements and thus ensures that no mistakes have been made”, concludes Peter Jørgen Nørvig.