An unmistakable gap in Budgeting, Planning and Forecasting BPF competency continues between world-class companies and less stellar organizations. According to research conducted by Houston-based American Productivity and Quality Center APQC, a nonprofit process-improvement and benchmarking organization, top-flight businesses use leading practices such as the rolling forecast, a single instance of...
Even businesses that enjoy revenue growth and bottom-line profitability sometimes confuse planning with budgeting, a process performed by individual business units that takes a short-term view and does not consider the goals of the entire organization or the achievement of objectives beyond the current year. Too often it's only after...
The paper depicts about a survey of 778 finance staff, managers and executives conducted by consulting firm Ventana Research Inc., according to which big changes in budgeting and planning processes are on the horizon for most companies. The report states that more than 70 percent of respondents' companies intend to...
There may be some CFOs out there who feel deep affection for the traditional budget. But if such people do exist, they're a rare breed. Nearly everyone who's been involved with that process knows what an onerous ritual it is and how it hampers corporate performance by shackling managers to...
Compensating based on relative performance accounts for the external environment and motivates teams to always strive for improvement. Even if one's performance is up substantially from the year before, one must still work to reach the top of one's peer group. Relative measures make success more challenging because the target...
New survey data reveals problems in budgeting, planning and forecasting and ideas to strengthen those processes. Early movers are gaining competitive advantage. Article explains an example where the "Ultimately, management decisions are being made based on the answer to the question". "The more time one have to answer it, the...
Traditional budgets are odious to business managers and, worse, can undermine a company’s strategic objectives. Here’s how progressive companies are reengineering budgeting into a value-added process. Budgeting is, perhaps, the most despised task a company must face. It’s often a numbers exercise that is disconnected from overall objectives. It’s influenced...
If a sweeping overhaul of the budget sounds like too much too soon, phasing in small changes can get you where you want to go. Recessions often serve as a wake-up call. Before the current economic downturn, many companies didn't have reason to improve budgeting. Now companies that projected 20...
In other cases, senior management develops broad expectations but never connects those goals to the budget that dictates line managers' decisions. In a study completed last year, 66 percent of the companies surveyed felt they had little or no linkage between their planning and their budgeting. This article enhances on...
The budget has historically been considered a necessary evil. Rarely based on a company's strategies or reality, it establishes artificial timelines, is inflexible and doesn't do much to promote performance improvement. Yet as flawed as it is, so much is tied to the budget from cost control to long-term forecasting...
The financial managers can transform the budget from a meaningless document of fiction into a valuable exercise in continuous planning. The budget process can take one of two forms, One in which you spend all your time gathering data or one in which you use the fact that you have...
Companies skilled in performance measurement use their metrics to drive their budgeting and planning process, asking themselves what resources they need to deploy to hit their performance targets. However, if a company is just starting to recognize the importance of these metrics, proving their value to nonbelievers requires rigorous analysis,...
Companies keep driving into the same traps in the budgeting process. The fallout can be serious in boom times, in the current economic climate, foibles can take an organization so far off course that it never gets back into the game. The article provides the most common traps from...
Still far from mainstream, activity-based budgeting augments, rather than replacing, existing budgeting processes. When one look at the family of initiatives available for improving the budgeting process, activity-based budgeting ABB comes across as the uncle no one really understands. Even its name tends to throw people off.
From the executive summary: ‘It is hard to imagine that anything could affect most organizations more dramatically than changing the budgeting process. The benefits are unlikely to outweigh the pain of revamping such a key system. Introducing Web-based budgeting software into an established company usually creates more work for middle...
Study of consumers, retailers and manufacturers shows Americans consuming more healthy foods NEW YORK -- Penton Media's first annual Healthy Foods International Exposition and Conference (www.healthyfoodsintl.com), held June 18-19 at the Dallas Convention Center, offered top food manufacturers and retailers a chance to preview the...
NEW YORK -- Penton Media's American City & County([R]) magazine has selected Mitchell Lansdell, city manager of Gardena, Calif. as the 2007 "Municipal Leader of the Year" for his 10-year effort to lead the city out of financial crisis. The magazine presents the award annually, in recognition...
NEW YORK -- Penton's American City & County([R]) magazine today announced that eight cities have been selected as 2007 "America's Crown Communities." American City & County presents the awards annually in recognition of outstanding leadership in local government. This year's award winners are: Boston, Mass.; Buffalo, N.Y.;...
NEW YORK -- Penton Media's Business Finance([R]) magazine and SAS today announced the winners of the 2007 Vision Awards, recognizing excellence in business performance management. The winners are the American Red Cross Cleveland; BNSF Railway (Fort Worth, Texas); and Kansas City Southern (Kansas City, Mo.) This year's...
NEW YORK -- Penton Media's PROMO([R]) Magazine announced the winners of its 17th annual PRO Awards program on Sept. 18th at a gala party and presentation during PROMO LIVE! in Chicago. The PRO Awards recognize outstanding achievement in promotion marketing in the United States. Finalists and winners...
Articles 2007-09-26
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