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.
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.