Companies of all sizes are dealing with more complexity than ever before when it comes to budgeting and financial forecasting. With more informed consumers, global markets, and rapidly advancing technologies, it has become exponentially more important to use financial forecasting processes that are more efficient and adaptable to changing business conditions. A report published…
Zero-based budgeting has been the unwanted stepchild of the financial planning and analysis (FP&A) world for decades. Chief Financial Officers would lie to their friends about how they budget and say they do cool things like rolling forecasts, beyond budgeting or at the very least incremental budgeting at cocktail parties but NOT zero-based budgeting which was…
Your firm just completed a multi-million dollar Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project to consolidate the information system resources of two business entities. The project is seven months late with cost overruns of $800,000. Fingers are pointing everywhere as to who is to blame for the delay and extra costs. Management would now like to…
Fresh out after getting my MBA, I went to work for a large management consulting firm doing forensic and litigation consulting work. With the office located in downtown Washington D.C. many of the senior leaders were former Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) employees who had moved to representing various clients in regarding SEC filings. I had…
“People … operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage.” Michael Lewis Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Analytics married to Big Data these days must appear to many CEOs as a corporate fountain of youth, capable of shedding…
“A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.” Michel de Montaigne, French Renaissance Philosopher & Writer As finance holds the reins of the 2017 financial plan process, having a great deal of influence how the plan activities are presented and executed, it might be a good…
In many organizations, there exists a disconnect between strategy and execution with the missing piece being the lack of an effective budgeting and planning processes. The budgeting and planning process is the gear that converts the potential energy held with the strategy to the kinetic energy of execution within operations. However, the traditional budgeting and…
Discover Your Career Path Options At some point in your career, you pause to reflect on where you want your finance journey to take you. It may have been prompted by a headhunter call, asking you to consider a tantalizing opening outside your firm. It could have materialized as you look at your recent accomplishments…
Agility is a key feature of any successful organization. The ability to adapt to changing circumstances without compromising on efficiency or profitability can pave the way to long-term growth and sustainability. One effective way in which businesses can become more dynamic is adopting a rolling forecast. Generally, every business follows some model of projection when designing…