Synopsis
Balancing Act is the story of Kip Twitchell’s journey from eager student to accomplished expert in reporting and analytics, focused on Business Event Based Insights. Worldwide financial crises continue to demonstrate all too clearly that the world's largest reporting systems do not provide adequate transparency. Twitchell argues that in many respects it’s no wonder: Our financial systems—the original and continued bedrock of all automated reporting systems—are simple automations of manual procedures codified centuries ago. Business events are the raw materials for all reporting processes. Yet these inputs often get lost in the automation shuffle, since the underlying manual procedures never had bandwidth to deal with them. Tracing the underlying principles of both accountancy and information systems, from his days in college through his experience as a CPA, systems developer, system architect and thought leader, Twitchell explains that focusing on inputs to reporting systems — the business events — has the potential to provide much greater flexibility, scalability and, most crucially, transparency. Doing so, however, requires scaling analytical processes, using billions of rows of data in short periods of time to produce controlled, consistent, and reconciled outputs. The book presents real world examples of such systems and the benefits achieved by very large organizations using them; systems based upon the IBM Scalable Architecture for Financial Reporting, or SAFR. The cold, hard facts of computers, data, and accounting are explained in an engaging narrative of a personal discovery guided by mentors and assisted by a tight-knit, single-minded team over two decades. The result is an enlightening perspective on the future of analytics, reporting and information systems.
About the Author
Kip Twitchell is a global subject matter expert with IBM Global Business Services (GBS) Financial Services Sector. He has extensive experience as a consultant in financial management and business intelligence systems, having consulted on or led construction of systems for numerous Fortune 500 companies and 12 of the top 25 banks in the world. He is a Certified Public Accountant in the US and expert in the field of business events-based reporting and financial systems He began his career as an auditor with Price Waterhouse in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1990, transferring to Chicago, Illinois and the Consulting Division in 1992. Price Waterhouse became PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1998, and the consulting division was acquired by IBM in 2002. He graduated with concurrent degrees of Bachelors of Science in Accounting and Masters of Accountancy emphasizing Information Systems Consulting from Brigham Young University in 1989.
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