in the last few years, statutory reporting and planning have been fiercely competing for the attention of the finance department. so far, statutory reporting seems to be winning. the legal and reputation implications of not complying with the ever-growing regulation requirements have left management with no other choice than to assign top priority status to their external accounts. providing the required level of control to the reporting of past events has turned to be an exceptionally taxing task, absorbing an incredible amount of time and money. even taking into consideration the savings that many organisations have realised from a more effective and automated transactional processing, the pressure on finance and it resources has been crippling. key management reporting activities, such as profitability analysis, planning and decision support have been de-prioritised until external compliance is dealt with; as a result, many organisations are uggs coquette slipper left to ugg classic mini boots cope with a manually intensive, disconnected and often irrelevant budgeting and forecasting process. conflicting objectives and separate accountability then again, competing for resources is not the only problem. diverging priorities have also exacerbated the disconnection of the two reporting processes. on the statutory side, the priority has been to provide evidence of fair play and of a tight grip on the internal financial processes. on ugg cardy boots the planning side, reporting has tried to step up to a more forward looking analysis, trying to unravel any sign hidden behind the data and to provide the business with a flexible tool to model the future behaviour of its profit drivers. the different goals seem to have pulled the finance team in two competing directions, so far that many organisations have set up separate teams, typically one responsible for actual data and the other for planning and performance data. while this organisational model seems to tackle the problem of providing sufficient focus, it doesnt resolve the fact that the user of the two streams of information is the same. with accuracy driving the actual reporting and flexibility driving planning, organisations are struggling to keep it simple and consistent for the confused end-user. reports are duplicated, analyses overlap and, not surprisingly, generate differing answers.