Workiva Wdesk Reviews

I use Workiva Wdesk primarily for creating and managing Board deck presentations. It allows multiple users, each responsible for specific sections, to collaborate efficiently. We can update our own comments and contributions in real time, making the process of preparing and maintaining our Board presentations more streamlined and collaborative.

Using Workiva Wdesk has provided significant benefits, especially in the context of quarterly board meetings with tight deadlines. We could efficiently create PowerPoint presentations with Excel add-ins for our financial data. As we made adjustments and tax entries throughout the month, any changes in the data, especially in categories like SG&A and net income, could be instantly updated in the presentation. This seamless flow of data eliminated the need for extensive discussions and allowed owners to adjust their comments as needed. Overall, Wdesk helped us effectively manage our financial data, ensuring everyone had accurate and up-to-date information for review during the board meetings.

The most valuable feature I have found in working with Wdesk is its ability to easily upload and update financial results, creating a dynamic data sheet. Whenever these numbers are used throughout the system, they are automatically updated, ensuring accuracy and saving time.

One area where Workiva Wdesk could improve is by ensuring that its cloud-based system is fully compatible with the most current versions of PowerPoint and Excel. Sometimes, the features available in their versions of these applications fell short of the company's standards, which could be limiting. Having access to the latest versions might increase costs, but it is essential to keep up with the evolving technology landscape and meet the demands of companies that require faster reporting processes. This would make it easier to handle custom requests and adjustments, like creating specific data categories in Excel and seamlessly transferring them into Wdesk for presentations without the need for time-consuming manual adjustments.

I have been working with Workiva Wdesk for two years.

In terms of stability, I had no issues with staying connected or accessing Workiva Wdesk. The only minor glitches I encountered were related to working from home and using a VPN to access it, but these were more about the VPN's capabilities rather than Wdesk's stability. Overall, the platform was consistently available and reliable.

The scalability of this solution is tremendous, especially for standard reports and dashboards that don't change much. It's excellent for quickly updating monthly reports by changing the name and having all the numbers readily available. It's ideal for P&Ls, balance sheets, project finances, and any constant, repetitive reporting. However, creating new or one-time reports may not be the best fit as Excel can handle those quickly and efficiently and you don't need to wait for updates. We had approximately 25 to 30 users with access rights to the solution. Usage was more focused on executive management and some mid-level managers who used it to review and provide input or accept comments rather than actively edit the content. Wdesk does not require much maintenance and it is used every month at our company.

I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten.

Positive

Before working with Workiva Wdesk, our company primarily used Excel and PowerPoint for our reporting needs. We decided to switch to WDesk primarily to maintain consistent and easily updatable numbers in our reports. Handling changes in a 150-page presentation, especially when many numbers are involved, was a high-maintenance task. WDesk's ability to streamline the update process and ensure data consistency was a key factor in our decision to switch.

The deployment process for Workiva WDesk faced challenges when it came to engaging the C-level executives, who preferred reviewing reports in a PDF format rather than using the tool directly. While this saved on paper, it limited the ease of making real-time changes or providing feedback electronically. For WDesk to work effectively, it requires full buy-in from top executives all the way down to accountants, ensuring that everyone involved has access to and utilizes the platform effectively. We started by granting access to everyone, but the challenge was getting people to log in and use the platform. We had two key reports in WDesk: the board presentation and a monthly financial update for the board. The latter was a condensed three-page version of the extensive quarterly report. This setup served as a trial to assess the platform's suitability for distributing these types of presentations. The deployment of Workiva Wdesk took around two to three weeks for the initial setup, including configuring tables and data download requirements. After that, it required an additional half a day or so to review and ensure data accuracy when changes were made to a slide. Some of the delays in this process were attributed to compatibility issues with older Excel versions being used.  My colleague and I handled all of the updates. Most of the changes involved text and verbiage, which we could easily manage by opening the report and making the necessary edits, including removing comments.

The return on investment from using this solution was mainly in the time savings, particularly the ability to create a new document within about an hour of having the financial results available in the system.

Wdesk is affordable and as far as I'm aware, there were no additional costs beyond the standard license increase. We didn't have to make any other changes; it primarily involved accessing the platform via the cloud and storing data there.

My advice to someone considering implementing Workiva Wdesk in their company would be to ensure they have compatible Excel and PowerPoint versions. Overall, I would rate the solution as an eight out of ten.