Gather Around: Workiva – there’s more to it than just numbers…
Exploring the benefits Workiva is delivering for corporate reporting as well as broader stakeholder communications from digital to ESG reporting.
More of current and prospective clients want to talk about Workiva. The migration to this platform technology is the talk of finance departments and company secretariats around the country. So, for our most recent Gather Around event, ‘Workiva – there’s more to it than just numbers’, we invited Jessica Milligan from Intermediate Capital Group (ICG) and Sabine Holt, from Workiva, to join us and share their experience and expertise.
ICG are in their third year of using Workiva. Jessica took us through how the migration was planned, executed and where they are going from here.
Sabine, as an ex-auditor, knows exactly the challenges facing reporting teams to deliver content in a controlled environment, with maximum collaboration and deep traceability. We covered a lot of ground in an hour but here are my top ten takeaways.
Key learnings:
1. Workiva, come for the audit ready content; stay for the de-risked process, shorter turnaround time, one source of truth and reduced stress levels…
2. Start planning well in advance – and perhaps start with your interims rather than prelims
3. Bring your auditors with you from the start, make it a collaborative process and keep the team of people with editing access to a manageable size
4. It allows your very skilled team to do the value-add work by taking on a lot of the manual checking, cross checking, and inputting
5. Don’t underestimate how much it will support other areas – from ESG reporting to your wider communications output
6. It makes assurance much easier (and cheaper if you need to rely less heavily on external professional support) and can do a lot of the heavy lifting in ESG assurance
7. Sign off design earlier in the process and make sure your fonts are uploaded and style guide are built in
8. Look for cross functionality within other areas of your business – the single source of truth it creates can support other stakeholder communications – employee engagement, sustainability reporting, regulators, suppliers
9. It can underpin the digitisation of your corporate communications output – and create more consistent and ‘readable’ content in a generative AI world
10. It’s not just for public companies – if you are a large private company, or getting ‘show ready’ to IPO, think about moving to it ahead of time. It is a fantastic way of creating a de risked, controlled environment to handle sensitive information, often a big cultural shift for teams in the move from private to public
Get in touch:
If you are ‘Workiva-curious’, get in touch and we can take you through our experience of being a Workiva partner and how our clients are using it.