Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting

According to BARC, over 82% of companies do not use an appropriate tool for budgeting processes. In the vast majority of cases, spreadsheets prevail. BARC also found that more than 44% of companies do not have a structured approach to their financial planning process, and that over 30% of companies experienced problems connecting their strategic planning process with their operational budgets.

The average medium to large sized organisation takes four months per annum to manage the budget cycle. If this is extrapolated across the organisation this represents a huge cost in management time and resources.

Traditional Budgeting and Planning solutions rely heavily on a bottom-up approach driven by the submissions of reporting sites and based on broad brush edicts from head office.
With the advent of modern Budgeting and Planning software tools, a far greater degree of integration is possible between the strategic and operational planning cycles engendering a much more collaborative approach across the business and significantly reducing the time taken to manage planning processes. Most Planning Managers spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with errors resultant from spreadsheet inaccuracies, they experience submission delays due to a lack of version control and auditability, and often completely miss the opportunity to re-forecast actuals against plans, as by this stage they have often 'lost the will to live'.

The budgeting, planning and forecasting software products advocated by Concentric Solutions all address the key mantra of integrated financial and operational planning. They encourage collaborative approaches across the business, reduce inaccuracies, streamline the submission cycle, improve version control and provide for approval procedures, all of which results in measurable plans being produced in shorter timeframes, and the ability to manage rolling forecasts that ensure business decisions are made based on current and auditable data.

To speak with a subject matter expert, please contact us on +44(0)1795 892 058 for more information.