With accounting mandates on the rise, financial executives in the U.S. report spending an average 25 days to complete quarterly reports and a whopping 55 days to prepare annual 10Ks, he says, and most companies expect this compliance-driven burden to increase, especially if IFRS is eventually adopted.

Castonguay notes that his company, like other public Canadian firms, began having to use IFRS, as opposed to local GAAP, for interim statements starting last year.

Morneau Shepell, he says, is "definitely an Excel user, but we're moving to a new ERP platform." Given the growth of his company and the need to comply with the new accounting, "we need to move away from Excel to an integrated system."

In addition to Excel, Castonguay says, he is using "one of the Oracle tools," and is also in the process of installing a solution from J.D. Edwards, which is "very flexible" and "not overly complicated to implement."