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"We were wasting too much time debating the accuracy of numbers as opposed to using that time to make decisions." That's how Satty Saha, Group CEO of CreditInfo-a credit bureau operating across 30+ countries-described the moment he realized his organization had a data problem. Not the kind of data problem you'd expect from a company whose business is data and analytics. An internal data problem.

It's 9 PM on Day 5 of the month-end close. Your controller is still at their desk, squinting at the intercompany reconciliation spreadsheet that refuses to balance. The German subsidiary's numbers came in late (again). The currency conversion formulas broke when someone accidentally sorted column B. And tomorrow morning, the CFO needs consolidated financials for the board meeting.

It starts innocuously. Marketing signs up for a new analytics platform. IT renews that enterprise license even though only 40% of seats are used. HR adds another recruiter. Travel spending creeps back to pre-pandemic levels despite hybrid work. Then one day: SG&A as percentage of revenue climbed from 22% to 28% over three years. Your margins are compressed. The board is asking questions.

Here's a statistic that should concern every CFO: according to 2024 research from Accenture, finance teams spend 85% of their time on data triage-gathering, validating, and reconciling numbers. Only 15% of their time goes to the strategic work they were actually hired to do. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. The reality is that most CFOs today can't confidently answer a deceptively simple question: "Where did this number come from?".