What are the IT Skills needed to work in Financial Careers?

Naturally, a wide range of IT skills are required to be a successful Financial professional. We will focus on the Microsoft Office skills required for Finance jobs. Financial professionals should consider a wide range of Microsoft Office skills to ensure they can deliver their jobs efficiently. The main programs to consider are Excel, PowerPoint Power BI, Office 365, SharePoint, Teams, Visio and potentially Microsoft Access.

Excel for Financial Jobs

The most fundamental is Excel. People working in Finance will likely deal with large amounts of data, requiring data analysis, manipulation and similar functions. For example, Financial Controllers and Financial Planning and Analysis jobs will likely have large datasets exported from ERP systems like SAP, Oracle or Sage. This data is often exported to CSV files, which will be worked on and manipulated in Excel. Often, big data in Finance jobs require lots of functions within Excel.

If we focus on a Financial Control job, you must reconcile data and justify financial journals. This task and many of the types of standard financial or accounting tasks will be carried out in Excel spreadsheets. Finance analysts will likely use Excel to ensure they can manipulate data and present management information or Financial Reports. Excel is the core program for any Finance professional. Anyone who is looking to work in Finance, Accounting, Bookkeeping or other areas should consider building Financial Excel skills. Our CPD Accredited Excel for Finance Course has been designed by a team of experienced Finance trainers and professionals.

IT Skills needed to work in Financial Careers

PowerPoint is a fundamental skill for Finance professionals. PowerPoint is a core skill for a wide range of professionals. In Financial Careers, PowerPoint is the preferred method for visual presentations of Financial Reports and Management Information if we focus on Finance. Banking, Accounting, Financial Planning and Analysis and numerous other jobs require PowerPoint skills. Financial professionals will need to be able to integrate PowerPoint with Excel data. Therefore, PowerPoint is one of the most important skills you should consider when taking Microsoft Office training courses.

Running summaries for management data and CFO dashboards are very common in the Finance world now. This can be achieved through advanced Excel skills.  A relatively new program called Power BI is increasingly popular and seen as a necessary skill for Financial professionals. Power BI is relevant to Finance because of its ability to quickly create real-time summaries and management presentations in a flexible format that suits you. It does not require the manual updates that are needed in Excel. We offer Power BI Courses that are CPD Accredited.

SharePoint and Microsoft Office 365

People are increasingly working remotely in the business world, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. This applies to the finance industry where Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and all the main providers offer cloud-based subscription models for their finance-related programs. This means that the use of Office 365 Teams and SharePoint are incredibly important. Office 365, of course, is the cloud version of Microsoft Office, and you will need to adapt to be able to use Excel or PowerPoint within Office 365’s cloud functionality.

SharePoint is the main way that organisations will share documents within the cloud. Sharepoint is vital for enabling people to work remotely and also to collaborate with remote teams. SharePoint is now increasingly the preferred way of filing and sharing your information. Of course, finance people could be responsible for looking after the site within SharePoint and keeping your records. The filing of financial data is very commonly done through SharePoint, which adds to its importance.

Microsoft Teams is also very important. Teams is the main way that we manage virtual meetings. Finance people are likely to attend and run virtual meetings. It is important that you understand how to share things through Teams and how to interact. It is one of the best ways of communicating in the modern business world. In a Finance job, Teams is a fundamental part of your job. It could be possible that you do not use Teams and possibly Zoom or WebEx or another program. However, the principles of how these different systems work are relatively similar.

Visio and Databases

Another system which is sometimes used by Finance professionals is Visio. This program creates flowchart diagrams and process charts, and it helps you understand how financial processes work. These charts are a very good way of presenting to a team. Anyone who would like to present their financial processes can benefit from using Visio.

Finally, Microsoft Access was used more in the past, and it is still used by some finance teams. This is because Microsoft Access is a database that has been used to create bespoke systems, including financial systems. A working knowledge of how Microsoft Access works can potentially be useful.

ERP Systems

Naturally, the skillset required in Finance and IT systems do not have to be limited to Microsoft Office. You should also be thinking about gaining knowledge of ERP systems. Common brand names for ERPs include SAP, Oracle, Sage Workday, and the list goes on. Naturally, this will be one of the most important areas, and it’s essentially what we often refer to as the computerised accounting skillset for a Finance professional. A related system to the ERP, is the EPM system. These can also be vital for a Financial person.