Top-quartile finance organizations run at 45 per cent lower cost relative to revenue and deliver faster executive analyses and forecasts than peers, according to The Hackett Group’s 2025 Digital World Class Finance benchmark release.
For Microsoft Partners supporting Dynamics 365 Business Central environments, this creates a revenue opportunity by shaping how reporting workflows, controls, and close processes are built between ERP data and published financial results.
Separately, PwC’s 2024 Finance Effectiveness Benchmarking Study showed the differences between leading and mid-level organizations in automated controls and standardized reporting workflows.
When taken together, the research shows two conditions:
- Finance cost and performance dispersion are material
- Automation and standardized reporting levels differ widely across organizations
The three-layer reporting model in mid-market finance
Finance reporting usually runs in three layers:
- A core system that records and stores financial data
- An analytics layer that organizes and analyzes the data
- A reporting layer where teams adjust, format and finalize reports
In many Business Central environments:
- Business Central serves as the general ledger and system of record
- Power BI provides analytics and dashboards
- Spreadsheets are used to adjust and finalize reports
That third Business Central layer can be a source of revenue for Partners.
- Partners can design reconciliation rules, data flows and reporting structures, and bill for that work
- Clients that rely on unmanaged spreadsheets create extra work, scope creep and support load
- Partners can also provide ongoing control testing, data validation and documentation as managed services
Close cycle performance pressure
Close cycles can bottleneck the flow of financial information from ERPs to decision-makers. Until the close is complete, executives rely on provisional data.
In April 2025, CFO.com reported that 50 per cent of finance teams need six or more business days to close their books.
Gartner stated that by 2028, 30 per cent of finance organizations will achieve a 30 per cent faster financial close by using cloud ERP applications with embedded AI capabilities in a Feb. 24, 2026, newsroom release. By 2027, Gartner continued, 62 per cent of cloud ERP spending will be on AI-enabled solutions, up from 14 per cent in 2024.
That shows sustained pressure to shorten close cycles through automation and standardization. Meanwhile, manual reconciliations, fragmented data handoffs and unmanaged exception handling often extend the close. Those friction points build pressure inside the reporting layer.
Governance and spreadsheet error research
ISA 500 requires auditors to weigh the relevance and reliability of the “information produced by the entity” that will be used as audit evidence, including its accuracy and completeness.
Academic research shows that spreadsheet errors abound.
In “Spreadsheet Errors: What We Know. What We Think We Can Do,” Ray Panko digs into field audit research showing that operational spreadsheets often contain significant errors.
In “Errors in Operational Spreadsheets,” Stephen G. Powell, Kenneth R. Baker and Barry Lawson report formula-cell error rates ranging from 0.8 per cent to 1.8 per cent across audited operational spreadsheets.
Importantly, these studies do not evaluate ERP architecture. They do, however, establish that where spreadsheets remain in financial workflows, control design, testing, and documentation heavily impact governance.
For Partners, that turns spreadsheet-dependent workflows into auditable control surfaces they can package as recurring services.
Talent and tool persistence
Hiring data indicates spreadsheet fluency remains embedded in finance roles. A July 1, 2022, analysis by CFO Dive found that 76 per cent of open FP&A roles required advanced Excel skills, based on its review of job postings.
Microsoft 365 commercial seats passed the 400 million mark, the company reports. Excel is included in most commercial subscriptions, meaning that nearly all organizations that deploy Microsoft ERP and BI platforms already have access to the tool.
Excel’s presence, in other words, is practically ubiquitous.
Velixo interview: formalizing the Excel reporting layer
In a PartnerTalks interview, Duffy Cohen, vice-president of partnerships at Velixo, said organizations keep relying on Excel because they can format reports “in really the way that you need and want.”
Velixo is a live, Excel-based reporting solution that connects directly to Business Central to move data between ERPs and spreadsheets in real time. In the three-layer model we discussed above, Velixo and companies like it formalize and connect the end-user reporting layer. They’ve positioned their solutions within a governed ERP-to-Excel workflow rather than trying to circumvent it, and they’re profiting from it.
Impact for Microsoft Partners
The research describes layered reporting operating under measurable cost, close and control pressure.
For Business Central Partners, that pressure creates potential revenue in the reporting layer:
- Hackett’s cost gap sets a performance benchmark, and reporting design can influence where an organization falls within it.
- Faster close targets create a push for reconciliation and reporting redesign.
- Audit focus on “information produced by the entity” creates billable work in control design, testing and governance when spreadsheets or system reports are used in financial processes.
- Loose spreadsheets and informal data handoffs raise risk and reduce margins, while stronger financial reporting process design protects scope and supports managed services.
Partners can therefore either design it or absorb the risk.
