How IBCS? would make your Excel and PowerBI impeccable

Some days ago I had the privilege to be invited to a presentation about IBCS? (International Business Communication Standards) in the modern and welcoming office of SBB Cargo in Olten. I was kindly asked to join by Michael Fritz, an IBCS? passionate, who enthusiastically introduced the creative mind behind the visual language of these standards to a dozen of Swiss CFOs and FP&A professionals. This person is Prof. Hichert who definitely caught our attention while showing us some of the logic behind his practical proposals for the design of reports.

If musicians are able to visualize a symphony with the help of sheet music, then business people should be able to find a standard notation for monthly sales.

I really appreciated the simple preliminary remarks: fact that musicians, architects, engineers have musical compositions, technical drawings and electrical circuits, while finance people don't have an identical notation to display the same detail (sales, income, costs, etc...), as simple as that. The talk carried on with plenty of examples from real-life reporting by companies following IBCS?, showcasing some charts, before and after the adjustments, and prove how these changes provide more transparency and therefore better understanding. The debate following the presentation showed how much interest this subject actually creates.

My personal take away

To be honest, this is actually a common pattern I've experienced in my professional life, both while working and going to business meetings. We used to be in a PowerPoint centric culture, now we're moving towards an app/website culture: since we're literally drowning in information and data, users of this documentation need visuals and reports that tell them a story they will remember.

There is science (and art too) behind apps, websites and data visualization. Everyone holding a presentation needs to realize that visual memory system takes up 70% of all sensors in the brain. Choice of colours, fonts, font weight, icons, etc. should aim to the best impact for the audience. Prof Hichert used the simple example of key figures shown in a financial statement, where graphs are usually showing time going from right to left, however, balance sheet and income statement tables have the most recent year on the left side. Some of the companies preparing public documents and following IBCS? notation are now displaying time consistently running from left to right, both in graphs and tables. Nothing revolutionary, but this simple reshape allows the brain and visual memory to work on the message, saving useful resources wondering what comes chronologically first.

Two practical examples came up to my mind while I was there, I'm a curious person and I like watching video tutorials about Excel and reporting. Moreover, I've been to many meetings and presentations, both as part of the audience and as the presenter, whose main topic was "Best Practices in Financial Reporting" and that is why I felt like Prof. Hichert was preaching to the choir with me.

The first example was an excel video tutorial by Leila Gharani, a Microsoft Excel MVP, who presented a three-part corporate reporting makeover using Excel on her Youtube channel.

I'm not going to steal Leila's thunder, so I strongly invite you to have a look at her youtube videos on Leila Gharani Corporate Report Makeover part 1, part 2 and part 3. She might not be following the IBCS? notation to the letter, but she plainly states that she wants to convey the message in the best way possible and that is to me the most important goal of reporting.

Another case I reminisced with similar features was the following: PowerBI seminar, one of the objectives was showing Sales by State in a more impactful way. While sorting the data in decreasing order was a good starting point to spot, I found the idea of identifying with a different colour the above average results made it easy to understand and sent a clear message to the reader of this report.

The trick here is creating a simple IF measure (that results in a 1 if Sales are greater than Average Sales, 0 if they are not) and using this measure in the colour saturation of a clustered column chart, a standard visualization on PowerBI. Then, to make a striking result, add an average line and position it in front of the columns together with their data label. The real magic of this chart comes when you toggle the data with a slicer.

A call to action

First of all, as mentioned above, feel free to have a look at Leila's Corporate Report Makeover Series and start following her if you're not doing it already, she produces great tutorials!

But most of all I warmly invite you to visit IBCS? website, become a member (that's free!) and download the Standards in PDF format. Whether you're an Excel, PowerBI, SAP Analytics, Qlik, Tableau, etc. die-hard fan, you'll find a lot of great ideas to move towards a better business reporting.

How about you? Ever been wondering what could be improved with your corporate reporting? And how? Any comments? Feel free to add your thoughts here below!

Disclaimer: I'm a passive member of IBCS?, I'm not affiliated with Microsoft in any way. Opinions are my own and not the views of anyone else. No spreadsheet (and pbix file) has been harmed in the writing of this article.