Products / 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, forecasting, and reporting models still used by most companies.
A Breakthrough New Approach
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 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 departments using the most current version of the plan.
By eliminating many of the low-level “clerical” 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 70% or more
- Decrease errors and improve accuracy by eliminating broken links & formulas
- Establish one version of the truth
- Deliver more complete and frequent forecasts, including rolling forecasts
- Enable timely what-if analyses
- Make faster, more informed decisions
- Enhance collaboration with, and ownership by, department managers
- Increase the strategic value of finance
Features:
- Complete Set of Planning Components and Financial Statements. Budget and forecast Personnel, Expenses, Sales, and Capital from the bottom up or the top down. Link these elements via formulas to create a complete set of dynamic financial statements, including Cash Flow, Balance Sheet, and Income Statement.
- Metrics. Extend your plan beyond your Chart of Accounts. Budget and forecast any data required for your model, including operational metrics.
- Automated Consolidation. Automatically consolidate changes at the department level into the corporate plan, eliminating the hassles of broken links and manual cut and paste exercises.
- Configurable Data Entry Sheets. Provide managers with intuitive, spreadsheet-like data entry sheets that are customized to show only the data relevant to specific managers.
- Dynamic Formulas. Create formulas in any data cell, just like a spreadsheet. Reference data and assumptions from other cells, including financial and operational accounts in other subplans, to create dynamic results and support driver-based planning. Formulas can be established centrally for easy modification across the model.
- Drill-Downs. Real-time drill-down capabilities allow users to see where data originated.
- Notations. Add notes to document budgeting and forecasting assumptions. The notes rollup with the sheets, so that managers with broader responsibility can see notes from all sub-plans in one place.
- Workflow. Automatically manage the plan submission and approval process. Department managers can submit their completed plans for approval, and their managers can then submit their plans, until the entire version is approved.
- Web-based Access. Perform budgeting, forecasting and reporting from any web browser, anytime, anywhere. No new software, hardware, or IT support is required to deploy or maintain the application. New users can be added at anytime.