What To Expect During the Demo Process
Before the Demo
Demos can be booked as early as two weeks in advance. The most common format for a demo is in-person at your place of business. All demos are provided by David. The demo is designed to be attended by your finance department or your full senior management team.
Typically before scheduling the demo, we'll schedule a one hour call to gain an understanding of your business, what your main objectives are for your FP&A system, and which FP&A activities are currently in place at your organization.
The recommended data to be provided to us for the demo is your most current set of financial statements, along with the same information for any other time period (most commonly the prior calendar year). If you prefer, only the account structure of your financial statements can be provided, and we can apply mock financial data under that account structure for the purposes of the demo.
If you organization is currently preparing budgets and/or forecasts, and they are prepared on the same basis as your financial statements, they can also be incorporated into the demo.
While booking the demo, you will be prompted with optional questions that can be used to tailor the content of the demo, or you can leave the content of the demo up to us.
We are willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement prior to receiving your financial information.
During the Demo
We will present three reporting packages during the demo.
Package #1
What to Expect During Implementation
This is a reporting package will present FP&A objectives and views that are based on the historical data that you provided, and if applicable your budget or forecast data.
The intent of this package is to show what DHAC can provide to you in as little as one month, with only slightly more data than what you have already provided for the demo (usually only by adding the monthly breakdown of your data).
Although this package can be viewed as graphing data that is already available within your organization, it also demonstrates of how quickly your newly outsourced FP&A system can be put into place, and lay the foundation as a starting point to strengthen your FP&A processes over time.
Also, it provides a structure to bring your team together to review FP&A at regularly scheduled monthly meetings, and provides a consistent format of reporting that you can rely on for the future.
Package #2
What to Expect in the Short Term
This second reporting package presented will cover most if not all your submitted FP&A objectives (if applicable), or the FP&A objectives that we have suggested. The reporting pack will be typical-length that can be comfortably presented in a 2-3 hour monthly meeting that you can expect to receive while working with DHAC. The time periods presented will typically include: historical, forecast and budget for the current calendar year, and forecast for the next fiscal year. We will keep your highest level balances for the financial data that you submitted (ie: Total Revenue, Total Net Income etc...), but if your chosen objectives require more data than what was provided, we will generate the required data for the purposes of the demo. At the time of the demo, DHAC will not have full visibility into the extent of the detailed financial data that is currently available in your organization, but we will show what data is needed to generate the reporting package that answers your summitted FP&A objectives. If there is a gap between the data that is currently available in your organization, and what is required to answer your submitted FP&A objectives, you will leave the demo with an understanding of this gap, and the decision as to whether or not to proceed with those objectives, or if new or different data should be tracked to support the FP&A process. It is important to note that the purpose of this second reporting package is not to present the exact reporting package that will be developed over the first few months of working with DHAC. But rather to show the the process that we will use to build out your customized FP&A reporting package, where new objectives and views are added at your request, and the data request is changed accordingly, How quickly a reporting package of this kind can be developed for your organization will depend on what data is currently available within your organization, which FP&A activities are currently in place, and how quickly you would like to move your FP&A processes forward.
Package #3
An "up-to, not-to-exceed" level of detail in the reporting package
Less time will be spent presenting this reporting package as compared to the first two reporting packages.
The intent of this third package is to show the upper limit of how much detail can be presented in a reporting package while still being effectively presented in a 2-3 hour monthly meeting.
Going into this increased level of detail can be expected in situations such as answering ad-hoc requests, setting the budget for the upcoming year, or other FP&A activities that are not preformed on a regular monthly basis.
It will also demonstrate how bringing in more data into the FP&A process can usually answer most FP&A objectives, but comes with the added burden of a larger data request.
Also, some of the more complex FP&A approaches will be shown in this package.
Q&A and After the Demo
Roughly half of the time scheduled for the demo is set aside for the Q&A, and to present features that are of interest to your team.
We will leave you with access to the three reporting packages, copies of the three data requests, and access to see this data live in the data entry tool for as long as you need them.