What Business Leaders are Doing Now Versus What They Need to be Doing

Slow and Manual Financial Processes vs. Scenario Planning

The ability to explore the financial consequences of alternative business growth and funding strategies is critical, especially in fluid or volatile markets. But, this type of what-if-analysis isn’t possible within spreadsheet budgeting. Changing data at a detail data level and have it dynamically “ripple through” to the cash flow analysis, or quickly make a percentage adjustment on a group of data to drive a different cash flow scenario becomes a large and often imprecise task.

High-Growth Mode vs. Capital Efficiency

All businesses need to plan for strategic change, such as office expansion or acquisitions, or to act on risks introduced by market dynamics. With Planning Maestro, our scenario planning software, the dynamic link between all key financial statements (profit & loss, balance sheet and cash flow), means all related reports can be created quickly and easily, so you – and your executive team – can immediately quantify your assumptions and understand how they will affect your financial statements.

Lack of Personnel Planning vs. Automated Workforce Planning

Today’s environment requires business leaders to plan for workforce expenses at a level of granularity that is difficult, if not impossible, with Excel. Personnel planning with Planning Maestro means you can control your expenses across different operational centers, shifts and products, adjust payroll numbers for high turnover departments such as call centers, and even budget at an individual employee level to see the cash flow implications of each employee’s taxes and benefits throughout the year.

Reporting on Actuals vs. Forecasting

Finance leaders know that budgets are never set in stone. The dynamic nature of business means a budget that looked great in January can require a major overhaul in April. It can cause havoc in an organization that does not have an efficient process for adjusting budgets and plans accordingly. Planning Maestro streamlines budget to actual variance analysis and eliminates the time consuming and error-prone manual work typically needed to reference and compare budgets and forecasts.

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Top-Down Budgeting vs. Driver-Based Budgeting

With driver-based budgeting, it is easy to link corporate goals and financial metrics to operational activities. This allows your business to track performance and progress while offering the flexibility to course correct whenever necessary.

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Link to: Scenario Planning

Cash Flow Planning

Small and mid-size businesses are often the first ones to be hit, and often hit the hardest, during “tough and uncertain times”. The ability for a company to develop an insightful, strategic, and accurate cash flow budget or forecast allows you to manage scarce resources effectively, as well as provide investors with greater insight.

With less cash to count on, knowing your cash flow position has never been more important: how much is really in the bank, how much is available on short notice, what revenues are coming in when, and what resources are going out and when. Managing your cash flow as tightly as possible is perhaps the most important tool you have to withstand the down economy and come out on the other side intact and poised for growth.

Link to: Financial Reporting

Profitability Analysis

All companies strive for growth and earnings, no matter what market conditions look like. It is known that three-quarters of companies will experience a revenue decline during a recession, yet 14% actually experience revenue and profitability growth.

Companies that remain strong during uncertain times are often those that have the ability to forecast with accuracy, pivot budgets easily, and analyze how to reduce costs using robust what-if scenario planning.

Link to: Forecasting

Personnel Planning

Many small and midsize businesses operate on a low profit margin and, therefore, become very sensitive to any market fluctuations. Even during times of immense growth, your employees are often your biggest expense. Forecasting workforce expenses accordingly will help prepare your business for even the worst market conditions.

Link to: Consolidation

Business Volatility

For most small to medium sized companies the management of cash inflows and outflows is critical. Your company may have limited resources for borrowing capital quickly. An accurate cash flow statement developed during the plan or forecast process can serve as an alert mechanism for any future problems caused by an unfavorable cash position.

Making the Shift:
Cash Flow Forecasting Tips for Turbulent Times

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Your Cash-Flow Forecasting Options

The challenge for most companies in developing accurate and timely cash flow plans, reports, and analysis is the limited availability of capable software for supporting this effort. The lack of viable software has ensured that spreadsheet technology remains the go-to method for developing cash flow models and statements and had led to inability to forecast at all.

Rating: C

Limitations: 

  • Inherent spreadsheet limitations do not effectively support planning or forecasting of cash flow
  • Difficult to develop and maintain versions, dynamic financial statement links, and what-if analysis

Rating: D+

Limitations: 

  • Most ERP systems do not support best-in-class planning and forecast modules
  • Inflexible cash flow functionality
  • Implementation and modeling efforts can be costly

Rating: B

Limitations: 

  • Business Performance Management (BPM) solutions can be very expensive, often more than $100,000, requires significant IT support and may take up to years to implement.
  • Difficult to find a solution that offers inherent dynamic links between financial statements

Rating: B+

Limitations: 

  • Cash flow point solutions will usually offer robust functionality for creating effective cash flow models but are not integrated planning & forecasting applications. As a result, there is a disconnect between the operational and high-level planning activities that companies need to prepare a realistic cash flow projection.
  • Insight and visibility into the underlying components of cash flow reporting is difficult to maintain

Rating: A+

Advantages: 

  • Support for purpose-built cash flow reporting and analysis planning capabilities
  • Minimal implementation costs with out-the-box cash flow statements
  • Support for automatic, dynamic links between key financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow)
  • Support for cash flow versioning and what-if analysis
  • Drill-down capabilities to provide visibility to underlying cash flow components
  • Dynamic synchronization between cash flow and planning/forecasting activities

Learn more about Planning Maestro

See what our customers are saying

 
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“I have used other budgeting software in the past and Planning Maestro is one of the most user-friendly ones out there.”

Lesley Delaney
CFO, Carroll County Memorial Hospital

“With Planning Maestro, I have access to so much more information than I had before to really show what’s going on.”

Jenny Barker
Senior Budget Manager, The Housing Authority of Snohomish County

“With Planning Maestro, I can change forecasts and get new information faster and without headaches. It used to take a week to do that.”

Joan Edelman
CFO, Wakeland Housing and Development Corporation

“We’re able to spend less time talking about the numbers and more time on how we’re going to get there. Our budget sessions are much more strategic.”

Scott Coleson
Controller, Four Star Freightliner

“We just finished our current year budget, so we are now starting year two of using Planning Maestro. Creating the budgets this year was a dream.”

Shelly Golly
Price Family Vineyards & Estates

Centage Corporation
330 Cochituate Road, #807
Framingham, MA 01701
P: 800.366.5111

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