Budgeting & Forecasting

According to Jack Welch, “The budgeting process at most companies has to be the most ineffective practice in management. It sucks the energy, time, fun and big dreams out of an organization. It hides opportunity and stunts growth. In fact when companies win, in most cases it is despite their budgets, not because of them.”

The Beyond Budgeting Round Table, an industry research organization, estimates that the average corporation spends four months and 20-30% of senior executives' and financial managers' time on the budget, and that larger companies, with annual revenues over $1 billion, spend as many as 25,000 person-days per year budgeting.

And to what end? Among many companies, the consensus view is that the cost of budgeting -- in terms of time and resources -- is far greater than the value it creates. And the primary culprit is the inefficient, spreadsheet-based budgeting and forecasting models still used by most companies.

Budgeting & Forecasting — Made Easy

Fortunately, it doesn't have to be that way — rather than being a drain on resources, budgeting and forecasting can form the foundation for superior financial management and performance.

Adaptive Planning provides a breakthrough solution that is an alternative to both manual, spreadsheet-based processes and costly, complex enterprise software.

Thousands of organizations worldwide, from small businesses and nonprofits to multi-billion dollar corporations, are benefiting from Adaptive Planning's solutions. Adaptive Planning makes it easy for companies to elevate their financial management. With Adaptive Planning's centralized, web-based solution, you no longer need to send out multiple versions of spreadsheets, manage complex consolidations of data, or worry about how to make sure departments are using the most current version of the plan.

By eliminating many of the low-level process management tasks associated with spreadsheet-based budgeting and forecasting, your staff is able to focus on strategic analysis and higher-level business decisions — turning a low-value process into a true competitive differentiator.

Benefits:

• Dramatically reduce budgeting and forecasting cycle times-by up to 90%
• Simplify and standardize data collection across the organization
• Decrease errors and improve accuracy by eliminating broken links and formulas
• Deliver more complete and frequent forecasts, including rolling forecasts
• Enable timely and thorough what-if analyses
• Establish one version of the truth
• Make faster, more informed decisions
• Enhance collaboration with, and ownership by, department managers
• Increase participation in FP&A processes, improving companywide alignment
• Drive better business decisions through improved reporting and analysis
• Elevate the strategic value of finance

Product Features:

• Complete Set of Planning Elements. Plan personnel, expenses, capital spending, sales, assets, liabilities and equity.
• Integrated Financial Statements. Link elements to create a complete set of dynamic financial statements, including Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow.
• Rolling Forecasts. Incorporate actual data into a forecast to view past months of historical data combined with future months of forecast data.
• Driver-Based Planning/Operational Metrics. Use drivers or metrics such as headcount, units, prices, costs per unit, hours, square footage, working days, etc. to plan spending, revenue, and balance sheet items.
• Unlimited Custom Dimensions. Create unlimited number of fully customizable dimensions to identify data, e.g., departments, business units, functions, geographic locations, projects, products, customers, channels, regions, sales reps, employee types, etc.
• Automated Consolidation. Automatically consolidate data across entities, projects, products, etc. into the total company plan.
• Automatic Rollups. Roll data up by chart of accounts, organizational structure, custom dimensions, and time periods, all without any formula writing.
• Configurable and Customizable Data Entry Sheets. Provide managers with intuitive, spreadsheet-like data entry sheets that are customized to show only relevant data.
• Sheet Templates. Use pre-configured sheet building templates for certain planning elements, such as personnel and capital, to speed up creation of sheets and related formulas.
• Multiple Line Item Detail. Split any account into as many rows as desired, each with its own notes and descriptions, providing detailed support behind numbers.
• Global Assumptions. Create centralized assumptions that can be managed in one place and used across the organization, e.g., payroll tax rates, salary raise percentage, travel spending per head, etc.
• Dynamic Formulas. Create formulas in any data cell, just like in a spreadsheet. Formula Assistant makes this point-and-click. Reference data and assumptions from anywhere else in the model, subject to user security. Formulas can also be established centrally to speed up deployment and ensure consistency where appropriate.
• Workflow. Automatically manage the plan submission and approval process. As department managers complete their plans, they can submit them to their managers for approval, until the entire version is approved.
• Notation. Use notation throughout the application, in specific cells, on sheets, and in workflow. Notes roll up and consolidate along with data, so that managers can view notes from staff.
• Audit Trail. Search to find changes to data, filtering on such fields as users, time ranges, departments, accounts, custom dimensions, etc.
• Multiple Currencies & International Users. Use multiple currencies in planning, integrating data from other systems, and reporting, with automatic currency conversion. Use multiple languages and locale-specific number and date formatting.
• Document Repository. Collaborate with other users by storing and sharing documents (e.g., Powerpoint, Excel, Word, or PDF files) related to budgeting, forecasting, and other corporate performance management activities.