Recent TRG blog posts

In battle, strategic ambiguity can sometimes lead to disastrous results. At Gettysburg, for example, on the first day of the epic US Civil War battle, General Robert E. Lee ordered General Richard Ewell to take Cemetery Hill “if practicable.”

In planning, budgeting, and forecasting, numbers do not always represent a complete or accurate picture. As a budget rolls up, small errors can snowball into major miscalculations, which ultimately have to be explained to senior managers or, even worse, investors.

 The lowest performance is achieved by companies who only rely on spreadsheets for  end-to-end financial planning, budgeting and forecasting processes, including collecting information, data storage, and data analysis such as “what if” scenarios.

Best-in-class companies are almost twice as likely to have dedicated applications for planning and budgeting as to rely on features of their ERP solutions. However, notably, in some instances both standalone and separate solutions are used by top-performing businesses.

Best-in-class companies are almost twice as likely to have dedicated applications for planning and budgeting as to rely on features of their ERP solutions. However, notably, in some instances both standalone and separate solutions are used by top-performing businesses.

Today Best-in-class companies are refocusing attention on process efficiency. Specifically, their top two strategic actions are developing a formal planning/budgeting/forecasting workflow process and automating the process flows associated with the budget process. This reflects the top two pressures faced by companies nowadays – adapting to the ever changing environment and a need to align planning/budgeting with corporate strategies.

Today’s rapidly changing business conditions mean corporate management has to act on new strategies faster than ever. The shortcomings of fixed annual plans, budgets and forecasts are emerging, as they limit the power to adapt to change. No companies want to forecast just once a year. Many wish to revise forecasts monthly to ensure that financial planning remains continuous, dynamic and relevant.

In the current climate of business management, the role of CFOs has become increasingly significant. They not only own and manage financial data but also hold key performance management information. CFOs have a say in financial processes, such as planning, budgeting, forecasting and consolidation, which are inherently linked with each other to generate actionable insight for strategic decision-making.

Since the global economic meltdown, businesses have been forced to be more cautious in their decision making to ensure growth amid uncertainty. Processes such as planning and budgeting, more than ever, need to be fine-tuned and have a degree of flexibility to keep up with change.

Many companies rely on spreadsheets to prepare financial reports, do their planning, budgeting and consolidation. However, it is clear that this approach has shortcomings. Spreadsheets offer no reliable audit trail to ensure data integrity, not to mention they cause problems with version control. As a result, spreadsheets are difficult to audit, costing businesses more money. Hence, organisations should replace spreadsheet systems with planning solutions that eliminate the errors that may result from using spreadsheets and that have a familiar interface to ensure compliance, transparency and accuracy.