Both Sonum International and Swap Support had the pleasure of sponsoring the fourth edition of the Finance Meeting, organized by IFAES, which was held in the executive box of the Metropolitan Wanda Stadium. We held our second roundtable at the 2019 Finance Meeting by talking about the future of Excel and its usefulness as the main tool for planning, budgeting and consolidation processes in financial departments with three distinguished industry leaders.

• Diego Lías (Loewe)
• Juan Jiménez (Mahou San Miguel)
• José Luis Franco (MTU Ibérica)

We all agreed that Excel is a very powerful and flexible tool. However, we also recognised its weaknesses and limitations in financial processes, especially regarding data security and traceability. Since it is the norm for several users to be using the same Excel, we end up with several final versions of the same file and consequently a loss of unique data.

When asked “Do you think Excel will disappear in the near future? All three firmly responded “No”, as it is the main tool used by financial departments. The speakers were asked how they thought an EPM tool could help with the current challenges found with Excel. The speakers agreed that one of the most important features they provide is the assurance of having a single source of truth, traceability of the data and security.

We would like to personally thank our speakers Diego Lías (Loewe), Juan Jiménez (Mahou San Miguel) and José Luis Franco (MTU Ibérica), and finally the event organisers IFAES for the fantastic venue and day with the finance professionals.