Budgeting & Forecasting

Budgeting, planning and forecasting (BP&F) is a three-step process for determining and detailing an organization's long- and short-term financial goals. The process is usually managed by an organization's finance department under the Chief Financial Officer's (CFO's) guidance. Planning - outlines the company's financial direction and expectations for the next three to five years. Budgeting - documents how the overall plan will be executed month to month, specifying expenditures.

Forecasting - uses accumulated historical data to predict financial outcomes for future months or years. BP&F models consolidates and centralizes financial information, which can make it easier for finance managers to produce more accurate budgets and perform what-if scenario analysis. Budgeting, planning and forecasting models can be purchased on its own or as part of an integrated enterprise performance management (CPM) system. Our planning consultants are experts in designing the business planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes. They bring real time experience and help our clients to eliminate practical difficulties in designing and deploying the planning processes.

HR Planning

Human resource managers face a variety of challenges in payroll management, people requirements, skills forecasting, performance planning and reporting. The HR tools to manage the payroll of employees are often used to provide analysis for the function of payroll and can also assist in making projections. Unfortunately, these analyses and projections are often limited because they do not provide “analytical view” in connection with the activity of the organization. The tools of the financial management team have other problems: they show an accounting view of salaries and it is not easy to analyze and forecast with this limited information. To analyze and plan the payroll, it is necessary to “cross” and ensure consistency between the data from the human resources department and those of the Finance department. The adoption of a common language between the CFO and HRD is crucial in order to forecast all the changes and understand the possible differences. During the budget process, for example the financial control is able to bring a vision to the FTE needs under the assumptions of activities. This information is valuable for the HRD who will be able to prepare his plans for hiring and give more accurate forecasts. Our experienced consultants understand human resource management processes and systems very well and can help our clients to design HR planning and performance models appropriately and support proper implementation.

Driver Based Planning

Driver-based planning is an approach to management that identifies an organization's key business drivers and creates a series of business plans that mathematically model how those things most necessary for the organization's success would be affected by different variables The goal of driver-based planning is to focus business plans upon the criteria that are most capable of driving success. Identifying those key business drivers can be tricky if done in a subjective manner, however, and individuals within the same organization may have very different perceptions about what the key drivers of success are. This is why forecasting business drivers objectively through a mathematical model can be helpful. The models may be created with spreadsheets or with more advanced data modeling software applications. Our experienced consultants understand the importance of business drivers very well and understand the importance of aligning them into the business planning, budgeting, and forecasting. We embed the drivers in planning models and ensure that the models truly reflect the business intent of the managers. Our rich experience in building models and project management helps our clients to successfully implement the driver based planning models.

Balance Scorecard

Balanced Scorecard framework translates an organization’s strategy into a set of objectives and measures, and aligns the organization to them though it’s planning and control processes. The key challenges through manual process include creating strategy maps, balanced scorecards, populating scorecards through multiple data sources, and providing necessary insights during strategy reviews. BSC solution solves all challenges and provides collaborated user experience to support strategy execution.

Financial Reporting

The world of the CFO has changed beyond recognition in the last two decades. From being a custodian of financial numbers, the CFO is now increasingly being considered as a valued business partner, who shapes the business strategies and works closely with the CEO to drive enterprise priorities. CFOs today need standardized, enterprise wide data to make more accurate and faster decisions. The CFO today gets to spend far less time on his routine finance and accounting processes than his predecessors. He has too often assumed an ambidextrous role between his stewardship responsibilities towards finance and strategist responsibilities towards the business. There is a clear mismatch between the expectations and enablers in the finance teams.

Organizations around the world are increasingly realizing the need to meet this gap through a host of initiatives and interventions such as process engineering, technology innovations and shared services, and outsourcing of transactional functions. CEOs, CFOs and their financial management teams are looking to optimize sales and operational budget planning, forecasting, and consolidation activities to gain critical visibility into changing business conditions. Too often, financial management teams operate with diminished capabilities. They invest a lot of time in compiling information instead of using it. Most often the information is inconsistent or errant, the process of collecting it is slow or it's unavailable. We help organizations to design and deploy financial planning and reporting models to enable finance managers and senior business leaders.

Financial Consolidation

Financial consolidation is the process of combining financial data from several departments or business entities within an organization, usually for reporting purposes. To consolidate is to join things together. In finance, the process includes importing data, mapping general ledgers to a single chart of accounts, normalizing the consolidated data and producing reports called consolidated financial statements. How often the finance department performs financial consolidation varies from company to company, often hinging on regulatory requirements.

Depending on the complexity of the process and the company's preference, finance managers can use Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, modules in corporate performance management or enterprise resource planning software suites, or specialty software for financial consolidation. Many experts advise against using Excel for the consolidation because spreadsheets don't facilitate collaboration, which in turn, can lead to a high probability of errors.

Activity Based Costing

Activity Based Costing: Activity Based Costing solution allocates indirect costs effectively and efficiently through robust interface with various systems and flexible user interfaces. Activity based costing (ABC) assigns overhead costs to products, customers, and services through well-defined activities. The ABC solution is integrated to other planning solutions and enables Activity Based Management.