Hi all,
Apologies in advance if this is against KNIME community rules – I don’t know if there are any too as I just started. I’m new to the platform and my background is in FP&A.
I just want to know if there are of similar FP&A background and how are you finding KNIME integration and your role? To what extent has it automated the repetitive Excel/etc tasks?
@Ana914 welcome to the KNIME forum
Not sure if “FP&A” is some sort of Shibboleth - if you could explain further what you are looking for it will be easier to find relevant people 
In general KNIME is very well suited to automate some Excel tasks. There are usually events where you might find Excel and automation related topics.
This event might feature some talks about that and maybe offer connections to likeminded people:
The accompanying data talk board typically would feature participants with their company and profession (if they are willing to share that) and the possibility to contact them:
Hi. Not from that field. Anyhow this might give you an idea:
https://www.knime.com/finance-data-analysis
Welcome to the community!
Hello @Ana914,
From experience I find many users are using and finding KNIME to be helpful with repetitive data task. Regarding Excel there is even a book From Excel to KNIME (free of charge) you might find useful in your transition/evaluation:
https://www.knime.com/knimepress/download-from-excel-to-knime
And this is the right place to ask such questions so no apologies needed. Welcome to Community!
Br,
Ivan
Hello Ana…
I’ve used to work in accounting area around 15 year, since that work closing with Excel. During this time I could using VBA (Macro) from Excel and some features from Microsoft Acess in order avoid repetitive tasks. Those feature could attempt all my need, but when I met Alteryx and afterwards KNIME I could realize that some automation that I’d spend a lot of hours or days creating macros in excel or in Access at KNIME I can do it faster and more reliable (I preffer KNIME than alteryx ).
So if have you just start, go slowly step by step, start with easy things…maybe change a xlookup or vlookup you do in Excel for a joinner in KNIME…or a balance sheet you need to filter (using a filter row in KNIME) and export for more than one excel sheet by accounts groups (you can export for several excel sheets at the same time)…or some file you export from ERP and need to delete some columns than save (you can do it using filter columns)…
Just to summarize, start with easy task and don’t give up, at the beggining you will “waste” time but in the future you will saving your time
Hi Ana, we (Forest Grove) represent KNIME in the Australian region and have also been delivering budgeting, forecasting, reporting and consolidation models with an FP&A product for the last 15 years. I too come from an accounting and finance background and spent my life working with Excel.
It would be great to share thoughts on use of KNIME, use-cases, adoption hurdles, etc. I’d be very interested in understanding your specific challenges using KNIME.
I would be happy to provide a workflow that represents a good example of an FP&A use-case using our standard workflow template. Best practice styling, annotating, structuring, labelling, etc. It is relatively simple but allows users to interactively chart any line items across P&L / BS / CF at the same time. This means you can easily and visually compare balances vs cash releases, carrying amounts vs dep, identify missing data (if accidently deleted), notice Excel coding errors, etc, etc. Its a valuable way to conduct a top-down sense check.
If any interest please feel free to email me on ben.westphal@forestgt.com.au.
And of course welcome!
Thanks, Ben
This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
