By CJ Occhipinti, VP of Financial Planning & Analysis, Workiva

I’ve been with Workiva a little over a year now. Before that, I was a Regional CFO with a Fortune 100 company whose life would have been made so much easier with the Workiva platform. One of the great things about Workiva is that we are our core customer, using the platform as often as we can internally and testing new features. This has allowed me to see firsthand the value of Workiva.

There are many reasons I've fallen in love with the Workiva platform—here are three that especially come to mind:

1. Statutory Reporting. One of the biggest pain points in international accounting is statutory reporting. It can be time intensive, especially given the ever-changing, complex requirements around the world. That's why a connected reporting platform is so helpful. It tracks data virtually in real time from the statutory audit reports all the way back to our source. Additionally, collaboration across multiple countries is so much easier with the ability to comment, track questions and answers, and ensure any questions or requests are closed out before finalizing.
   
   
2. Executive Presentations. Our FP&A team uses the Workiva platform to easily update an in-depth, monthly executive presentation that can quickly add up to 70 pages or more. When I was a regional CFO, creating a similar presentation required multiple analysts focusing mostly on getting data in the right place and ensuring it is accurate, while simultaneously trying to manage multiple versions. With the Workiva platform, updating data is a breeze! Reports, charts, and even data in conclusions are updated in real time in a single shared document. Analysts work simultaneously on the document, leveraging collaboration tools to simplify completion of the final product.
   
   
3. Working Remotely. The recent COVID-19 crisis really highlighted how important the Workiva platform is to collaborating with my team. Being able to collaborate with multiple team members working in several locations with directed comments is an efficient way to communicate, assign tasks, and ensure work gets completed on a report, presentation, or analysis—without having to stop by someone's desk. Additionally, the ability to access the data easily is critical to working together for a finance team.

Ultimately, what I love about the Workiva platform is it lets our analysts spend the vast majority of their time doing what they do best: analyzing data to drive value with insights, recommendations, and sound business decisions. And it helps our team easily collaborate on a single spreadsheet or presentation wherever they are.

I don’t know what we ever did without it!