Last Tulsa IMA Meeting Until September, Process Improvement with free software, and $1k for Passing a Test?
In the last Tulsa IMA Monthly technical until September, we heard from Mike Fritts, CFO of Paragon Films (not a movie studio) about how they improved their monthly close from 20 days to less than 2 through process improvement. A large portion of that improvement was through implementing Excel Macros to quickly generate reports needed to make decisions and reconcile for month close.
As an advocate for financial and ERP software for the small and midsized companies of Tulsa and the surrounding states it's always great to hear organizations making meaningful improvements through technology and processes. In this case, they use the saved time per month to make better strategic decisions (implementing a regular strategic meetings with business units outside of finance) and provide advanced reporting per business unit. The big takeaway here is that they made one of the most meaningful changes to their organization using a tool that is included in Microsoft Excel (macros). The reason this worked is because they did this as part of an overall improvement process. Every successful project requires the right tools and the right process improvements, or, skills.
As a closing note - if you are on the fence about getting your CMA certification and you're involved with Tulsa IMA, they will give anyone who passes their CMA exam $1,000.00. That's a great bonus to the outstanding knowledge provided through the work you’re putting in to pass that test.
Thanks, everyone, and see you at the Tulsa IMA 2018 Fall Conference August 22!
