Budgeting to Strategy AND Making Budgeting Strategic to the OrganizationTwo distinct but related questions: Do you budget to strategy, or do you budget to history and politics? Is budgeting a strategic function in your organization, or is it a mechanical one? In many organizations, the days of putting numbers on a spreadsheet and calling it a budget are over. Many organizations, but not all…. Read More |
Keys to Vendor Selection in the Budget ProcessSelecting a vendor to handle your budgeting and planning can be a tricky proposition. Many organizations (and people) do not have a great deal of experience at vendor selection and the world of cloud-computing has completely changed the game. However there are a number of key considerations that can help you select the right long-term… Read More |
10 Biggest Mistakes Made in BudgetingWe all make mistakes, right? But there are little mistakes and big mistakes and personal mistakes and business mistakes. A big mistake made in a business setting can have profound implications – both on you personally and on your organization. Budgeting is gaining significant importance as organizations try to improve and better tune their financial… Read More |
How College Presidents Can Improve Financial PerformanceHow can college presidents improve financial performance and ensure support/funding of their strategic plans? Two things that all college presidents (small and large) have in common are (1) making sure that the entire institution is supporting and executing their strategy, and (2) identifying ways of improving both the financial performance and the health of the… Read More |
The 6 Personas of Budgeting that Will Destroy your ProcessAs we all know: not everyone is alike. There are many different personality types in the world. And there are also many different personality types in the budget process…not all of which are good for your budget process. We have identified six different types of budget user personas that can destroy your process and have… Read More |
Perfection Paralysis and Budgeting“Perfection Paralysis” is defined as fear of moving on a particular issue unless absolute perfection is achieved. A similar sentiment is expressed in the phrase: “Perfection is the enemy of the good”. In other words, people will sacrifice positive achievement and movement because it was not perfect. If you could get a threefold improvement in… Read More |
Excel in Budgeting – Friend or Foe?Most organizations still use Microsoft Excel as their budget preparation tool. The reason for this is that the general ledger or ERP providers don’t focus on, or even understand, the budget process or budget workflow and do not think about this from the perspective of the average user or institution. So, financial people took matters… Read More |
Seducing Users to Improve the Budget ProcessIn today’s world of software, people are used to being seduced by personal applications that make things simplistic…like Google or Facebook. They now expect that business software will follow suit. Wikipedia defines seduction as the process of deliberately enticing, corrupting, persuading, or inducing a person to engage in behavior. The word seduction stems from Latin… Read More |
Reverse Engineering the Budget ProcessReverse engineering (the process of starting with a product and taking it apart to see how it works) has been used in product development for decades. Many organizations use this as a best practice in copying some key product or concept from a competitor. When applied to a process, it is the practice of starting… Read More |
“Actual Results May Vary” – The Art of ForecastingMost organizations budget. They may not budget well, but at least they try. The budget process is the funding of the next 12 months of the strategic plan. It sets financial targets for revenue and expenses and it (hopefully) lays out how each area of the company will support the company strategy. But is it… Read More |
