Tag Archives: Banking & finance

Spotlight Interview with Josh Lewis, Solution Consultant at Blackline

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A Conversation with Josh Lewis, Solution Consultant at Blackline

 

Josh Lewis, Blackline Solutions Consultant is a former Continuous Improvement Manager for a Finance SSC with 500 staff, former EMEA Corporate Tax Manager for a global energy business & former Audit and Tax experience with KPMG and other firms.  He is a qualified Accountant (CPA United States) and a Lean Six Sigma Blackbelt.

Join Josh Lewis on the webinar entitled ‘How to Digitize your Financial Accounting Processes to Reduce Risk & Dramatically Increase Efficiency’ by Blackline on 3PM London/10AM New York

Register Here!

BRW: What do you hope the audience will learn from this webinar? 

The audience will gain a clear understanding of what  “better controls, automation, visibility and reporting” across the close processes delivers to them personally as an Accountant or Finance Manager and how this allows them to be better business partners.

BRW: What discussions do you look forward to having with the audience?

I’d expect to be answering audience questions such as:

  • How do we connect to your data?
  • How do we automatically certify reconciliations?
  • Where do we sit in the financial close process?

BRW: What do you enjoy most about your role? 

Challenging belief systems and inspiring change.

BRW: How did you get into the industry?

Having worked with BlackLine software at a client I was offered a job to join BlackLine and be an advocate for the use of Cloud Technology to improve close processes.

BRW: Where is your favourite place in the world and why? 

Top of any mountain because it takes both courage and grit to get there.  And very occasionally, a warm, flat and dry place to have a quick rest.

 

 

Why Accountants Want To Keep Using Excel Forever

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As human beings, we’re hardwired to not like change. For accountants, this is elevated because of what change means for Accounting.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not necessarily because old habits die hard—but rather, because we associate change in any process, system, and control with increased risk. This explains why, as accountants, we still rely on hundreds of spreadsheets to manage the month-end close.

Even if the close still takes us an agonizing 10+ days, even if we shudder every time we remember that we have to manually aggregate hundreds of files at the end of the quarter, we still love Excel—because it’s safe. In business, just keeping up, let alone staying competitive, now requires being flexible, creating new ideas, adopting and adapting to new technology.

For accountants, it’s no different. We know Excel, we understand it, and we’re really good at using it. But it’s holding us back in a multitude of ways: from improving efficiency, from increasing accuracy, and from contributing our best talents to the success of our company. All those hours and days we spend manually entering data, double-checking that data, and emailing, saving, and filing spreadsheets is simply lost time. We’re so busy doing rote work that we can’t do our real work: providing crucial insight, strategy, and analysis.

To that end, changing the way we close every month requires changing our habits. The first step? Start slowly and simply be open to Excel alternatives. Then begin to research how one of these alternatives might help you improve the accuracy, visibility, and efficiency of your close.

Here are a few resources to get you started:

Register to our Webinar to find out more and how your advisors can be supported through our solution to grow their business, both from existing or new clients.

Author: 

Join Blackline on a webinar entitled ‘How to Digitize your Financial Accounting Processes to Reduce Risk & Dramatically Increase Efficiency‘ by 3rd-eyes on 11th April at 3PM London/10AM New York.

Register Here!