Once finance defines a number, every answer across the company uses the same definition

Finance writes down once what net sales, on-time dispatch and debtor days mean. The company assistant uses those definitions in every answer, for every team, and says which definition it used.

Used day to day by
  • CFO
  • Department heads
  • Analysts

What the assistant uses here

Answers from your systems, within each person's access.

  • Channels Reaches people where they already talk
  • Team memory What the team teaches it, kept and reused, with a name behind each rule

How it runs with AI

The CFO's team writes each key definition once, in plain words, and approves it into the company assistant's shared memory. Whenever anyone asks for that number on Slack, the assistant works it out from SAP by that definition and names the definition it used. When finance changes a definition, every answer changes with it.

How it is done today

Sales, finance and operations each work out the same number their own way. Net sales include returns in one report and not in another, and review meetings start with an argument about whose figure is right.

How the assistant works here

Where people ask, what it draws on, and what comes back.

Where people ask

  • Slack, steps 1 and 4

Who asks

  • CFO
  • Department heads
  • Analysts

What it draws on

Apps

  • SAP S/4HANA, step 3
  • Power BI

Context

  • Team memory, step 2
  • Regions and periods, step 1
  • Finance definitions, step 2

What comes back

  • An answer with its sources, step 4

How a request runs

  1. Step 1, the assistant: Takes a question about a number, asked on Slack

  2. Step 2, the assistant: Looks up how finance defines that number, in the company's shared memory

  3. Step 3, the assistant: Works out the figure from SAP, exactly as the definition says

  4. Step 4, the assistant: Answers on Slack and names the definition it used

The same flow works with the apps you use.

Who controls it

  • Access

    Answers use the asker's own access, so a definition never widens what someone can see

  • Approvals

    A person approves before it changes anything in your systems

  • Record

    Only finance can add or change a definition, and every change is dated and named

This fits you if

  • Teams report the same number in different ways
  • Your figures come from an ERP such as SAP and a reporting app such as Power BI
  • Finance is ready to own the definitions

What to watch for

  • When a question has no agreed definition, the assistant says so and names the person who owns it

Read more

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