Chief Executive Report Intelligence

A finance intelligence product that helps the CER team turn monthly source artifacts into source-backed executive commentary, starting with the Mike Backup flow and Net POS.

Use Case Type	Internal
Concept Name	Chief Executive Report Intelligence
Current Focus	Initial alpha: Mike Backup analytical commentary, Net POS first

Problem Statement

The finance team needs a way to create and refine CER commentary without manually reconstructing the story from Excel workbooks, PowerPoint decks, BU CER submissions, and review conversations each month. The current process compresses analysis, commentary writing, review, and executive follow-up into a short end-of-month window.

The near-term pain is clearest in the Mike Backup preparation flow, with the same pattern expected to matter for Sean-oriented readouts later. Kris, Andy F, and the finance team need to identify what is materially off, understand the business driver, explain what the business is doing, and show whether the action is working. Mike needs to read that output, ask precise questions, and get answers without waiting for the whole artifact cycle to finish.

The CER cycle produces four artifacts in a pyramid: BU CERs feed the Mike Backup and Sean CER executive readouts, which in turn support the formal RELX CER. Andy Mc described the monthly preparation as a layered set of review meetings and prep steps across that cycle, and identified the compressed work as the prep for the Sean and Mike readouts, where the team does not have enough time to run the meetings and prepare in parallel. Source: Andy Mc email captured in `inputs/discovery-notes/email-mark-danielle-cer-entry-point-2026-05-20.md`.

Details

The first alpha should start with Net POS. Andy F identified Net POS as a critical executive focus area, and it is the most important metric for assessing overall revenue performance. It is also a strong starting point because, unlike pure revenue, it has definable business contributors: New POS, Renewal POS, and Cancel POS. That combination makes it both executive-critical and concrete enough to model clearly in the first alpha. The May 21 workbook then gives practical rules for how the data should be shown. The modeled structure is: selected period view first, variance evidence second, commentary third.

For Net POS, the period views are YTD, Rolling 12 Months, and In Month. Under the selected period view, the alpha should show both vs Prior Year and vs Budget at the same time. The parent Net POS metric decomposes into New POS, Renewal POS, and Cancel POS.

The underperformer tables should include all segment rows where the relevant variance divided by Subscription Base FY26 Actual is less than or equal to -1.5%. In the current P4 workbook, Subscription Base FY26 Actual is column F, and the variance fields are columns K and L. The engineering contract should use semantic field names, not assume those column letters remain permanent.

Commentary has two layers in the first alpha. The Net POS summary is an editable metric-level comment. The component commentary for New POS, Renewal POS, and Cancel POS is lifted from Kris's P4 Metrics Flag Summary deck. That commentary is currently written against prior-year variance, but actions are the same across prior-year and budget views and drivers are usually the same. The UI must make the basis honest while keeping the commentary editable.

Target Audience

The primary working users are Kris, Andy F, and the finance team. They create, validate, and refine the commentary that accompanies the metric analysis. The product should reduce the transactional work of producing comments, not simply display finished commentary after the team has already done the work elsewhere.

The first executive reader is Mike. He needs to read the analysis, understand the material movements, and ask targeted questions on the quantitative evidence or commentary. Those questions should route back into the finance working surface so answers can be produced while the monthly cycle is still moving.

Sean is an adjacent executive-reader pattern rather than the first alpha's primary surface. A later Sean view should use the same analytical-commentary pattern, with access scoped by business-unit ownership rather than a visible filter.

Proposed Solution

Build the initial alpha as an analytical-commentary product for the Mike Backup flow, with Net POS fully modeled and the rest of the metric scaffold represented as not-yet-modeled placeholders. The alpha should feel like a working product, not a demo-only dashboard.

Layer	Definition	First Alpha Treatment
Active Metric scaffold	The set of Mike Backup metric tiles, including Revenue, AOP, Net POS %, FTEs, Acquisitions / Disposals, and POS components.	Show the scaffold, but fully model Net POS only. Other cards should be visibly not yet modeled.
Active Net POS analytical lens	Period view plus both variance bases, with ranked underperforming segments and component decomposition.	Implement YTD / R12M / In Month period views and always-visible vs Prior Year and vs Budget evidence.
Active Commentary creation and review	The working layer where Kris / Andy F generate, edit, validate, and answer questions about commentary.	Attach editable commentary to the Net POS metric and component metrics. Capture Mike questions as routed items for the finance working view.
Later Cross-metric executive summary	The future "Mike's brain" layer: top 7-10 priorities across all modeled metrics.	Document as future. Do not conflate this with the Net POS summary.
Stack expansion CER source-to-artifact stack	The broader CER ecosystem has upstream, midstream, and downstream needs: BU CER generation and collation; Kris-to-BU comment request, review, and iteration; source-data ingestion; commentary generation; and reuse of that source-backed commentary into feeder artifacts.	Preserve the stack explicitly. The first alpha focuses on Mike Backup / Net POS, but the same source and commentary substrate should later support the Mike Backup PowerPoint, Sean-oriented readouts, BU CER workflows, and the RELX CER document/PDF path.

Data Sources

All Metrics Flag P4 with notes.xlsx

Primary requirements source for the first alpha. Defines the Net POS period views, ordering, variance evidence, segment rows, and -1.5% materiality rule reviewed with Kris on May 21.

All Metrics Flag P4.xlsx

Clean/current workbook with more complete data than the older consolidated action commentary workbook. Use alongside the notes workbook for extraction and validation.

P4 Metrics Flag - Summary Table.pptx

Source for current New POS, Renewal POS, and Cancel POS commentary. The slide label "BU" represents segment within Business Unit and must not be interpreted as BU ownership.

Mike Backup artifact

Near-term artifact scaffold for the first alpha. The alpha should preserve the metric-tile shape while making Net POS the fully modeled slice.

BU CERs, Sean Global Legal, RELX CEO Report

Supporting context for the CER stack: BU inputs, upstream commentary flow, source hierarchy, Sean-oriented readouts, Mike Backup packaging, and the RELX CER generation path. Sean-specific views should later be permissioned by a lightweight user-to-business-unit access table rather than a visible filter.

Future Kris-owned SharePoint source location

Potential monthly source-of-truth location for period artifacts. Engineering may be able to reuse Allen/Murali SharePoint ingestion patterns, but this is not yet scoped as the current source of truth.

Risks, Gaps, and Unknowns

Source traceability must be defined before alpha build. The UI may show source details on hover or drill-down, but the data packet must carry source trace metadata for every displayed number, calculated row, underperformer entry, and lifted commentary item.
Only Net POS is requirements-ready now. Other metric cards should remain as not-yet-modeled scaffold until their fields, rules, commentary sources, and executive questions are separately sourced.
The alpha must not become a generic dashboard. The value is the analytical lens plus commentary creation/review loop. A read-only metric surface would miss the work Kris / Andy F need help doing.
The CER stack is broader than the first alpha. Upstream BU CER generation/collation, Kris-to-BU comment iteration, source ingestion, Mike Backup packaging, Sean-oriented readouts, and RELX CER document/PDF generation are related needs, but they have different workflow and artifact requirements. The first alpha should not pretend to solve the whole stack.
Notification runtime is not solved by the local prototype. Stage 3 can show notification preferences and message examples. Real Teams/email delivery needs an approved Graph, bot, or Power Automate path with service identity and audit logging.
SharePoint ingestion is promising but unscoped. The team still needs to confirm source folder ownership, permissions, file naming, version handling, refresh cadence, and how Allen/Murali patterns apply.