Before, we had five sets of eyes looking at the financials -- the executive team and maybe the board, but not the people who were actually managing the business day to day. But now, as soon as it's put in front of them, they're asking us about every little thing they see, and I think overall it has the impact of making our financial reporting much, much, much better because people are really interested in their part, and so they're looking at the reports in a lot of detail and trying to understand what's happening. Now we've got 30 people managing their parts instead of a smaller group who weren't doing it to nearly as much detail.

BPM: Does this kind of software generate a financial return on investment?

Dinsdale: It's hard to quantify that, but I believe it pays for itself almost immediately just because you're all of a sudden able to get information out to people who never had it, and they were basing their decisions on -- I don't know what, but not current information. Now it can be basically real time. We can schedule reports so that managers who are managing budgets can have their expense reports sent to them wherever they are throughout the month, every week, every day even. Before, it was history that they were managing to. It was already finished. I'm really a big fan of a) automating and b) getting information out to people that is as accurate and timely and relevant as possible. You also need relevant information. It's not just about getting out anything. It's about making sure you get out what people need to manage.

BPM: That raises the question of how you choose which information to include in your automated reports.

Dinsdale: There are two ways to decide that. One is basically taking from the executive what is important to the company, what has to be managed well, and pushing that out to people. On the flip side is the option to research what people want and what they believe will allow them to manage their departments well, and then to let them pull that back out. I think you have to do both. The reports have to be what line managers believe is important and what the company believes is important, and you should make sure that they at least are aligned. That's what we do with all our information systems.

BPM: What is the most important thing that other people can take away from your financial reporting experience?

Dinsdale: I went to a Visual Manufacturing user conference in July, and it really hit home that the majority of people don't implement financial reporting packages that are even close to what we're trying to do. They're still relying on Excel so much! It's just ridiculous to do that for any company that's over $10 million; it just doesn't make sense. You can automate these things, and they happen instantly. You touch a button instead of putting in hours and hours of work. I just couldn't believe what I was hearing when I was sitting in a room of other finance executives and they were talking about how long it takes to do things.

It is incredibly important to do something that really gets the information out and makes it available as you grow. You should set that up early, not late.