Partnering with your budget usersOur recommendations are for improving the budget process are grounded on two basic principles. The first is that to improve communications we need more participation from managers, not less. I know some of you are dealing with a very frustrated user community and you’ve been thinking about ways to involve them LESS in the process…. Read More |
Why locking down spreadsheet templates doesn’t workWe have discussed in this blog a big concept – Explicit Budgets for projects or initiatives. But not every department really needs that degree of sophistication. Sometimes it’s the small things that can improve communication. Like allowing managers to easily add justifications and detail. For example, we have a client that has an Administrative Services… Read More |
Why you need a Rosetta Stone for budgetingManagers and Accountants speak two different languages, so you need a Rosetta Stone to interpret. If you don’t remember the story, Egyptian hieroglyphics were a complete mystery until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. The inscription on the stone records a decree that was issued in the year 196 BC. The decree appears in in… Read More |
Is Excel an impediment to communication?Does the traditional budget template itself become an impediment to communication? I believe the answer is YES. And incidentally, it doesn’t matter if you use Excel or a million dollar system. If it looks like a spreadsheet, and quacks like a spreadsheet — it’s an impediment to communication. Let’s step back a minute and look… Read More |
Manager-Speak vs Accounting-SpeakThe language of Accounting is rooted in the General Ledger. Finance people pride themselves in knowing the general ledger accounts inside and out, and often they refer to these accounts BY NUMBER rather than by their description. Who else does that? Because Accountants think in General Ledger account terms, when it comes time to do… Read More |
CFO Mag Article on Winning Over Your Budget HoldersA possible solution [to getting line managers to become willing participants in the budget process] says John Hagerty, vice president and research fellow at AMR Research, would be to create a more intuitive, text-based interface for budgeting software. “Instead of forcing people into a form that’s easier for you, you could pull from them the… Read More |
How do YOU define an “effective corporate budget process”?There is a boatload of advice on how to shorten the time it takes to complete a corporate budget cycle. I’m all for that. But faster doesn’t necessarily make it any better. If the budget process doesn’t deliver business value to begin with, then the goal of making it faster produces the same lame results… Read More |
Are you communicating effectively in your budget process?There are three parts to communication. There’s the telling part, which is often done through email or phone call. Sending the message. Then there’s the receiving part – the person actually read the email or reviewed the document or listened to the voicemail, whatever. These two parts are easy compared to the last part. In… Read More |
Is Budgeting driven more by politics than by strategy?A while back The Buttonwood Group and CFO Magazine conducted a reader survey on budgeting and planning and the results are disturbing to look at. I’d like to find out if these results would apply to your organization or not: 2/3 of readers surveyed said their planning process was driven more by Politics than by… Read More |
Why do we budget anyway? What’s the point?Have you ever stepped back and asked yourself, “Why do we go through this budget process anyway? What’s the point?” I remember being in the throws of the budget process at Reader’s Digest, where I managed the process for North America, and asking myself that question a lot. True confessions… in my most cynical moments,… Read More |
