Infor users often face challenges throughout the financial reporting process—from static exports and clunky report building to broken formulas and endless spreadsheet wrangling. In this episode of RPI Tech Connect, host Chris Arey is joined by Chris Gordon, RPI’s Finance Practice Manager, and Mike Wiley, Senior Product Manager at insightsoftware, to talk about a better way.
They explore how Spreadsheet Server brings real-time, drillable data directly into Excel, transforming financial reporting into a faster, more accurate, and far less frustrating process. You’ll hear about practical use cases, automation capabilities, and upcoming enhancements like browser-based dashboards and cloud file storage.
If you’re looking to streamline your reporting in Infor, this episode is a must-listen.
Interested in listening to this episode on another streaming platform? Check out our directories or watch the YouTube video below.
Meet Today’s Guest, Chris Gordon
Chris Gordon is RPI’s Finance Practice Manager. An accomplished professional with a wealth of experience in the field of finance and technology, Chris leads a highly skilled team of ten consultants, overseeing their operations and ensuring the successful delivery of financial solutions to clients.
Before taking on the role of team manager, Chris dedicated ten years to becoming an expert in Infor software solutions. As an Infor-certified consultant, Chris demonstrated an exceptional understanding of Infor CloudSuite Financials and Supply Management and previous versions of the software.
Leveraging this expertise, Chris successfully implemented Infor solutions for numerous clients across diverse industries, including financial services, healthcare, public sector, retail, and K-12 education.
Meet Today’s Guest, Mike Wiley
Mike Wiley has spent the last decade immersed in the software industry, with a strong focus on ERP systems and the applications that integrate with them. He spent four years as a Solution Engineer for Spreadsheet Server before moving into product management, where he has spent the past year and a half.
In his current role as Senior Product Manager, Mike helps organizations improve their reporting processes by delivering high-quality software solutions tailored to their ERP environments.
Meet Your Host, Chris Arey
Chris Arey is a B2B marketing professional with nearly a decade of experience working in content creation, copywriting, SEO, website architecture, corporate branding, and social media. Beginning his career as an analyst before making a lateral move into marketing, he combines analytical thinking with creative flair—two fundamental qualities required in marketing.
With a Bachelor’s degree in English and certifications from the Digital Marketing Institute and HubSpot, Chris has spearheaded impactful content marketing initiatives, participated in corporate re-branding efforts, and collaborated with celebrity influencers. He has also worked with award-winning PR professionals to create unique, compelling campaigns that drove brand recognition and revenue growth for his previous employers.
Chris’ versatility is highlighted by his experience working across different industries, including HR, Tech, SaaS, and Consulting.
About RPI Tech Connect
RPI Tech Connect is the go-to podcast for catching up on the dynamic world of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Join us as we discuss the future of ERPs, covering everything from best practices and organizational change to seamless cloud migration and optimizing applications. Plus, we’ll share predictions and insights of what to expect in the future world of ERPs.
RPI Tech Connect delivers relevant, valuable information in a digestible format. Through candid, genuine conversations and stories from the world of consulting, we aim to provide actionable steps to help you elevate your organization’s ERP. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the ERP scene, our podcast ensures you’re well-equipped for success.
Tune in as we explore tips and tricks in the field of ERP consulting each week and subscribe below.
Transcript
Chris Arey
Welcome back to another episode of RPI Tech Connect. I’m your host, Chris Arey. Today we’re going to be talking about Spreadsheet Server, a partner solution that’s improving financial reporting for Infor users.
Spreadsheet Server enhances workflows and visibility through the familiar and flexible Excel interface. Joining me today to talk all about it is RPI’s finance practice manager, Chris Gordon, and senior product manager of Spreadsheet Server, Mike Wiley. Chris, Mike, welcome to the program.
Chris Gordon
Thanks for having me, Chris.
Mike Wiley
Yeah, happy to be here.
Chris Arey
Cool, before we jump in and get into the good stuff here, is there anything else you guys would like to share about yourselves?
Chris Gordon
Sure, yeah. I joined RPI coming up on 13 years ago. So I lived my life as a consultant for a long time. Actually helped implement Spreadsheet Server back in 2016 for a client. So it’s been nice to see how that product’s developed and progressed since my time here.
Chris Arey
Wow, that’s fantastic. I didn’t know that we were using it that far back. Cool, I’d love to hear more. Mike?
Mike Wiley
Yeah, sure thing. So I’ve been with insightsoftware now for just over five years. Four of those years, I was a solution engineer working on the sales side of the house and even working with our partner team.
I’ve done everything from training and enablement to product demos to custom tailored setups and configurations to various different ways to utilize the solution. Really done just about everything with it, as for those four years I was using it heavily every day.
So while I’m not an accountant and don’t have the accounting background, I very much have learned through utilizing the software and learning from many of our other in-house accountants and CPAs. But over this past year and a half, I’ve transitioned into the product management role.
So now my responsibilities are more about driving the roadmap, helping the product to innovate and grow and satisfying customer needs, and just driving that vision for where it can go from here.
Chris Arey
Awesome. Thanks for sharing that, Mike. I look forward to hearing about some of the exciting developments coming from Spreadsheet Server down the road here. But let’s go ahead and change gears here and get right into the meat of today’s episode. Chris, I’d like to start with you. I have a question here. Why has our partnership with insightsoftware been such a key factor for helping our clients here at RPI?
Chris Gordon
Yeah, our clients have unique reporting requirements and Spreadsheet Server is a really good fit for them. And I think RPI, what we bring to the table here is a bridge. We can be a bridge that connects the client side reporting requirements to the product.
In many cases, RPI has done the implementation for that client. We’re familiar with their GL, with how their charts are set up, their different hierarchies and dimensions, and all of that feeds into how you build your report.
So, I think we can be that bridge to take the client side reporting requirements to get into Spreadsheet Server and quickly understand what the client wants and how to get them there.
Chris Arey
Awesome. And Mike, from your perspective, what makes Spreadsheet Server such a great fit for Infor systems?
Mike Wiley
Yeah, certainly. I think kind of along those same lines that Chris was mentioning, Spreadsheet Server really bridges that gap. Accountants love to work in Excel, and everyone wants to report out of Excel.
But, if you’re just leveraging an export, it’s now static. It’s old. It’s not up-to-date data. And from there, it becomes a continued process of refreshing that, exporting it again, and it’s just tedious and time consuming.
So that’s where it really bridges that gap to connect to your Infor system in Excel in real-time and give you that dynamic feed where you can refresh reports, drill into it, and spend that time analyzing it.
And ultimately, that’s where having a partner like RPI and working with someone like Chris is really that perfect marriage. You get the product through Spreadsheet Server, but you get the expertise and the knowledge and the depth through, you know, working with Chris and his team.
Chris Arey
Awesome. You kind of answered this next question here, but I’m wondering if we can go a level deeper here. Spreadsheet server enhances Infor users’ existing reporting workflows. Does it do that because it offers real-time visibility or what can you share there?
Mike Wiley
Yeah, absolutely. Again, Spreadsheet Server is an Excel add-on. So it lives and breathes inside of the Excel desktop application. And what it does, connecting to your source system, to your Infor data, means that you can now have refreshable and drillable reports right there in the comfort of Excel.
So it really is just as easy as changing your month, changing your company code, whatever branch, whatever department, location, any other definition of your GL or your hierarchy, you can now just insert that in and have your reports dynamically update.
So that’s really where Spreadsheet Server fits in. It’s really looking to make your current reporting process dynamic within Excel. And that’s where, you know, if anyone’s using Excel within their reporting and accounting lifecycle, that’s really the kind of measure of: is that a fit for Spreadsheet Server? Absolutely. That’s kind of our bread and butter.
Chris Arey
Nice. And using Spreadsheet Server, is that Excel desktop in the browser or both?
Mike Wiley
Yeah, yeah, so it is right now limited to the desktop version of Excel. I know we’re going to talk about some future direction and things like that coming up, so we can maybe save some more for there.
But we do generally know that a lot of the direction is going towards using the browser and all those things. So we’re not there yet, but it’s definitely something we’re looking towards.
Chris Arey
Cool, thanks for sharing. Spoiler alert for those listening in, we might be talking about that here in a bit. Chris, a question for you now. I know from our side of the house, we usually advocate for reducing the number of point solutions. I know that’s one of the benefits of moving to the cloud. Why is Spreadsheet Server an exception here?
Chris Gordon
I would say Chris, do you consider Excel a point solution? Probably not, right? It’s a product that almost every organization we work with has. To the best of my knowledge, it’ll always be there. And like Mike mentioned earlier, it’s an add-in to Excel. It’s Excel on steroids.
Chris Arey
Haha. Touché.
Chris Gordon
You know, when I think of a point solution, I think of a separate application that you need to log into. And it’s sort of a departure from your core ERP experience. But that’s not the case here, right? It’s not another system that you need to, you know, get trained on for months to learn how to build reports. It’s, if you know Excel, you’re halfway there.
Chris Arey
Okay. That was a great answer, truthfully. Thank you. Okay, Mike, let’s talk about some specific financial reporting use cases that you think Spreadsheet Server excels at.
Mike Wiley
Yeah, sure. Part of my experience means that in just the past several years, I’ve gotten to work with a lot of different clients and customers, and I’ve seen all kinds of different report types. And it’s just truly amazing all the things you can do within Excel alone.
I’m always amazed and impressed with what our clients come up with. But I think some general use cases I’ve seen, one of the benefits you get out of having Spreadsheet Server is that you can now use parameters dynamically to update your current report.
So, you may have 15 different tabs today showing your 15 departments broken out. That can all be consolidated to one report now, and you’re just flipping that different department in there and it just updates for you. Even further, you can now distribute that to an end user who needs it, who may not even have a license or access to Spreadsheet Server.
And that’s okay, you can send them a copy of that through our distribution manager that just kind of dynamically pushes that out to the user, based on the parameters you’ve defined for them. And even further, you can automate it.
If you’ve got 30 different investors or different members or leaders that have to receive those reports or those report packs on a recurrent ongoing basis, you can set up a job that’ll do all of that for you.
So rather than having to save those 30 versions of the report, manually email all of that out, that can be totally automated through Spreadsheet Server. So more than anything, Spreadsheet Server just saves you time, but it can also reduce some of the complexity by also reducing the amount of reports you have and kind of trimming down your size of workbooks. It can really be helpful in many, many different ways.
Chris Arey
Cool, love to hear that. And then the one example you gave there about 15 tabs open, consolidated into one. Is that like a quick consolidation process? What does that, in your experience, look like?
Mike Wiley
Yeah, it absolutely is. we have, there’s, I guess I’ll call it some syntax or different ways you can define what you’re looking for within Spreadsheet Server.
We have something called the wild card, which is just the asterisk symbol or the multiplication button on your keyboard that says, hey, give me everything. So if you put that in for department, that’s going to just go grab all of your data for all of your departments and consolidate.
Chris Arey
Yeah.
Mike Wiley
So that’s where you can get a very high-level view of your data. But then if you put in further parameters like a division, a cost center, a location, you can also get very granular very quickly. You can even get more specific with ranges of accounts or departments or other flavors to group things from there.
We even have segment lists that you can almost create custom roll-ups or groupings that can be named so you can use it for all users going forward. So instead of your users having to know that these eight different accounts are defining my revenue, you can just have revenue in place of that. And now it’s a more predictable, reliable, consistent process from there.
Chris Arey
Awesome. It sounds like there are a lot of possibilities and a high degree of customization that can go on with this application. Chris, I would love to hear how Spreadsheet Server helps Infor users with their financial needs. What kind of challenges from your perspective have you seen this tool solve?
Chris Gordon
Yeah, there’s a few that come to mind. One of which is a lot of times we see organizations spend a lot of time pulling data out of the system manually, mashing reports together to feed into like a master workbook. That all goes away. You have a direct hook into Infor there. You’re getting data directly from Infor and…
The old process of doing the manual export data manipulation into your report is prone to errors. Not only is it timely and costly, it’s prone to errors and you’re not dealing with the most current data. So that data can quickly become outdated. It’s a static data set, but no longer with Spreadsheet Server. So that’s a big win there.
And I think Mike alluded to it earlier too. It’s, you know, building reports in Excel if you’re starting from scratch without Spreadsheet Server takes a lot of time.
That’s one component. The other is how many times do those reports that you’ve had for over a decade break? And there are all these cell references to different worksheets and different workbooks. Those break, and you’re now spending four hours trying to stitch it together and you’re like, I don’t know how this was even formulated to begin with.
So there’s all that indirect cost to build into, you know, coming to a decision on whether or not Spreadsheet Server is the right tool, but it definitely saves you time on the report creation and maintenance front.
Chris Arey
Nice. Does Spreadsheet Server come with like standard report templates that folks can start from and kind of customized for their own business? That’s an open-ended question. Either one of you can answer that.
Mike Wiley
Yeah, I can jump in on that one. So we can provide example reports or example templates, but we don’t have out of the box canned reports that just work right away. Part of that is also just in the inherent design of Spreadsheet Server. It’s really meant to be specific to each user or each customer’s general ledger, their account structure.
And generally, no two are quite alike. And so that’s where we stand on pre-defining out of the box reports. We can do some of that, but it then gives you a more limited set of your data.
We want to give you that customization, put those ERP smarts into spreadsheet servers so it works for your data. If you’ve got custom fields, custom values, we can take care of all of that and you’ll be able to report on it.
So we don’t provide out of the box templates, but it’s mainly more because we want to provide that customization for you.
Chris Arey
That makes sense.
Chris Gordon
One thing, Chris, if I can add there, we love working with the client’s real reports and then making them come to life with Spreadsheet Server. So yeah, we might not have a template per se in Excel, but the client does. They’ve got the real report. You add Spreadsheet Server on top of it and you bring it to life.
Chris Arey
Yeah.Nice. Okay. So, Chris, you’ll come in and work with a client who’s been using out of the box reporting from Infor and you take that report and kind of replicate it or build it within Spreadsheet Server. Am I understanding?
Chris Gordon
Maybe usually the report lives in Excel first and it’s not like an in for delivered report. Maybe they’re using some Infor data to facilitate or build that report in Excel, but that could be like one of many different data sources to feed that report. So you start there in Excel and then you say, okay, like this range for this report row is actually these accounts from your chart. Let’s make that a live dynamic cell that is linkedIn to Infor.
Chris Arey
And so then that updates like every so often? Can you set the parameters for how often it updates in that range?
Mike Wiley
It’s really just up to the user in terms of how often they click refresh. So we’ve got a data refresh button where you can refresh the current cell, the sheet, the whole workbook, or all open workbooks. But it’s just however often you want to refresh, you can. Yeah.
Chris Arey
Nice. Is there like an automated refresh button or like a rule you can write where every 12 hours it’s going to refresh type thing?
Mike Wiley
No, but maybe that’s a good enhancement idea, something we could look at. Generally, it just refreshes every time you open Excel. So whenever you close and open it, it gives you the latest and greatest data. And then from there, you just refresh it as much as you want for more updates.
Chris Arey
Okay, thank you. I know I’m asking lots of questions here. So the next question is for you, Mike. We talked about this a little bit earlier, but right now it sounds like Spreadsheet Server is built for the desktop application of Excel only. Is there a reason behind that and what does the future hold?
Mike Wiley
Yeah, so the main reason I’d say behind that is that Spreadsheet Server has been around for well over 30 years. And so it’s been in the market a long time and has built a strong customer base.
We have many happy customers for lots and lots of years at this point. But the biggest reason is that it didn’t exist when Spreadsheet Server was first built, so that’s why it was built originally on the desktop.
Chris Arey
Okay.
Mike Wiley
But it’s certainly something we’re looking at. And we’ve got some kind of features that we’re looking towards that will be building blocks to helping us get towards that cloud or web-based version of Excel.
Both Excel and Microsoft in general, they’ve made a lot of improvements to the browser version of Excel over the past several years. For a while, it didn’t have a lot of the capabilities that you needed. But they’ve definitely closed that gap.
I think the biggest thing is just making sure that customers can use their reports. And oftentimes, if you’re using a workbook that’s got any kind of size or scale to it, I tend to find that I personally still go to the desktop. And I know accountants tend to go towards the desktop as well, primarily. Performance and just the use of a really large workbook is always going to be better in the desktop. That’s the experience I’ve got. I don’t know if, Chris, you have any other thoughts on that.
That’s how I approach it.
Chris Gordon
Yeah, I’m sort of the creature of habit. I’ve always, if I open it on the web, I’m going to the desktop right away, but who knows? Maybe in the future it’ll be basically the same functionality, same experience. But I know three, four or five years ago, it wasn’t.
Chris Arey
That makes sense actually, especially like I think of a lot of apps where they have a web browser version and a lot of times performance-wise, it isn’t as fast as the desktop. So that’s hearing that makes total sense. but I look forward to the possibility of it maybe being on the web in the future.
And on that note, Mike, hoping you can share, you know, give us a sneak peek into some of the upcoming features that are coming to Spreadsheet Server. What can you share?
Chris Gordon
Mm-hmm.
Mike Wiley
Yeah, absolutely. So I guess I’ll set the foundation for it a bit. Spreadsheet Server is one of many solutions in the insightsoftware portfolio. That’s the company I work for and that’s where Spreadsheet Server comes from as well.
A lot of our vision is consolidating things on our platform. Once it’s there, you can access a lot of other solutions that we provide. So we really exist to bring solutions forward for the office of the CFO and help facilitate just anything that comes across the CFO’s desk.
So with that said, just a bit to be more specific, one of our other solutions that we have is called Angles Professional, and it’s a web-based visualization and dashboarding solution. And so what we’re working towards currently, actually, just starting in this quarter, is an integration between your Spreadsheet Server queries and this angles or web-based visualization.
So imagine all the custom queries you’ve built through our designer, being able to push those up to a web browser. And now you can look at the same set of data, the same reports, and a more visual interactive interface. So now you get the best of both worlds. You can use your reports in Excel. You can see it in a browser. You can drill down in either application and share that same set of data. So that’s an integration feature we’re working on now.
Apart from that, we also want to continue to just modernize and improve the UX and interface of Spreadsheet Server, being that it is a very old product in general, we’re always looking to modernize it, improve it, and simplify it. So we’ve got some updates coming to just improve the way you can do things, making it easier to find different buttons or functions.
This will just make the whole onboarding experience more seamless as well. And then apart from that, we’re also looking to solve some of our cloud storage challenges that we see in the market.
One of the growing trends that’s been going on for a while now, but we’re starting to see more and more of it is customers are moving away from local network file storage and putting all of that in a cloud. And today we don’t exactly have the best straightforward solution for that.
So, one of the ways we’re going to solve that is through being able to store our files on our platform. Imagine your queries and potentially even your Excel files can now be stored through our insightsoftware platform.
In the future, you could potentially then distribute and send out those reports through the platform, maybe even add commentary there, put approvals and processes in place there. That’s the higher level vision of where we’re heading.
But we’ll also keep in mind other trends and things like that, where a lot of the demand is coming for, say, SharePoint and OneDrive integration, and that’s been on our roadmap for a while. So that’s another area we’ll look at.
We’re always going to try to push for our platform where we can integrate to other things, but we also want to keep the customer’s core needs in mind. That’s why we’re also going to cater towards the SharePoint and OneDrive integration as well.
Chris Arey
Those all sound like really great developments coming hopefully soon. Chris Gordon, I’d like to hear from your perspective the kind of impact you think these updates and stuff will have for our user base.
Chris Gordon
Well, yeah, I love the fact that the queries that users build can now be shared and it’s easier to get to. I’ve come across situations where you say you take a person that’s either left the organization or moved to a different department and their individual queries might leave with them if they don’t save them in the right place. So having all that shared on a cloud storage, which allows access for the entire team, I think that’s great.
That’ll be very helpful.
Chris Arey
And Mike, the dashboard, it’s called Angle? The name again, please.
Mike Wiley
It’s called Angles Professional.
Chris Arey
Okay. So that’s like bringing that data on a desktop to life in a web browser that then you can share with people. Is that right? That sounds like a great collaboration tool too, especially for like design and visualizations and stuff, as opposed to like a file on your computer. Right.
Mike Wiley
Correct. Yes, correct. And just sharing in general, we can share reports through Excel-based reports through that distribution manager tool that I mentioned earlier.
Sometimes maybe it’s the leadership, maybe it’s different board members, maybe it’s other investors or just managers even, they want it in a browser or something quick. They can refresh and view it. They don’t necessarily always want the Excel file. So that’s where you can get the best of both worlds.
You can send the Excel files out still, but you could also view it in that browser. But like Chris was saying too, just the whole nature of storing your queries or files in a centralized cloud location, that is going to be a huge advantage because you’re right, today if that person has them saved locally, that’s certainly a challenge.
Putting it in a more centralized area where all users point back to that same spot, it’s going to make it a whole lot easier to share reports, templates, and the underlying queries. It’s going to make the whole process a lot smoother.
Chris Arey
Yeah, that sounds super convenient. Thank you for sharing that with us. For those of you who are using Spreadsheet Server or, you know, considering it, there are some great developments to look forward to.
So we are getting close to time here today, guys. But before we wrap up, I always like to ask my guests if they could share one actionable takeaway for today’s audience, what it would be. So I would love to hear what you guys have to share there. Mike, we can start with you.
Mike Wiley
Yeah, sure. I guess I’ll start at a high level, just to paint a picture. For those of you who may not be users of Spreadsheet Server today, just want you to think, what if you could have dynamic reports in Excel today that you can refresh or even drill into? How often are you chasing down different journal entries, trying to reconcile it? How often do you want to just quickly get to the sub ledgers even and drilling through all the clicks it usually takes?
What if you had a a solution today that you could do all of that right in Excel with a couple clicks? You have your answer. That’s what Spreadsheet Server is all about. And so if you’d love to learn more about that, certainly reach out to us, follow up, and we’d love to continue that conversation with you.
Chris Arey
Awesome. Chris?
Chris Gordon
Yeah, so I would say two things that are related. Ask and listen. So ask your team what challenges they’re experiencing today with financial report development. What bottlenecks do they have? What pain points do they have? What are they struggling with getting that they can’t get today? And then listen. Listen to their feedback and connect with us. See if we can guide you in bridging any of those gaps.
Chris Arey
That’s fantastic advice, period, I think. Ask and listen, right?
Chris Gordon
Listening is hard. It’s really hard.
Chris Arey
Honestly, underrated skill, and I agree. It can make all the difference.
Well, thank you both for sharing that with me today. And for those of you listening in, if you have any questions about today’s discussion, you want to learn more about Spreadsheet Server, or you need help with your financial reporting, we encourage you to contact us. You can do so by emailing us at podcast@rpic.com. Again, that’s podcast@rpic.com. Until next time, this is RPI Tech Connect and you take care. See you guys.
