IBM talks about Financial Storytelling?

I am a frequent reader of Fast Company magazine and it doesn’t take me long to find something interesting. This month I only needed to get as far as the inside cover! This page was taken up by an advertisement for IBM. The headline grabbed my attention:

Insights by the numbers.

Reading down the page I was interested to read what could be described as a formal introduction to my Case Study in Financial Storytelling: Building a Success Story, One Country at a Time. This is what IBM said:

How exactly do you draw meaningful financial insights out of information that is scattered throughout your organization and the world? Information today can sit in different departments, in different countries, in different languages, in different formats. By the time information reaches decision makers in business, how much meaning is actually left?

Precisely, I thought. So much can be ‘lost in translation’. So what to do about it? The advertisement continued:

IBM is working with companies to integrate their financial and nonfinancial information to help them fuel better, more confident decisions. By enabling real transparency into a company’s information, executives can access and understand it in real time, achieving a “single version of the truth” across the business.

A “single version of the truth” ? That is what I would call the Financial Story. The process of integration, transparency etc. that IBM describe is what I would call Financial Storytelling. Integrating the numbers, the indicators, with the individuals; the people they represent. Bringing out the narrative, the non-financial story of what is really happening in a business. 

The IBM advertisement continues for a couple of sentences about how successful they’ve been with this approach before presenting an explanation of the value it gives their customers.

... So we can move the conversation from “Are these numbers right?” to “What can we do with this information to grow the business?” A more effective approach to financial management gives businesses far more than simple tactical levers - it offers a real strategic advantage. 

Instinctively you might think this is the language needed to communicate with IBM’s typical customer. I think this is equally relevant to smaller companies and even entrepreneurs. This is of course delivered not by IBM but by a Financial Storyteller. That is the real strategic advantage!