Budgeting, planning and forecasting are “mission critical” applications in most organizations today. A poor budgeting process is the number one reason why organizations miss their numbers. Implementing a process that appeals both to the financial organization, officially responsible for the budget, and the department heads, who own the results is hugely difficult. Poor capabilities from…    Read More

Budgeting is “mission critical” in organizations today.  Yet many organizations still use Excel for budget preparation.  Many organizations have turned to Excel because their ERP systems had weak budgeting capabilities.  ERP systems were designed especially for financial people, with strict controls and transaction processing.  But successful budgeting involves non-financial department heads, requires flexibility, and account…    Read More

If there are two things that many organizations have in common, it is that they all have limited financial and IT resources – and they are all trying to do more with less, while simultaneously keeping costs down. There isn’t a lot of excess cash for large software or hardware purchases. Yet despite this lack…    Read More

The XLerant team is hitting the road next week (though not straying too far from our CT offices!) for the CFO Dimensions event in the heart of NYC. We’ll have the usual booth presence so all the attendees can come meet and greet with us. But even more exciting is that our CEO, Ted Dacko,…    Read More

You can’t pick up a newspaper without reading about how higher education is under pressure to keep tuition costs in line.  In the past, higher education institutions were able to pass along cost increases to students.  No more.  Now these institutions must learn to do more with the same resources or, in some cases, with…    Read More

Is this the way you feel? Freedom of choice Is what you got Freedom from choice Is what you want –Devo Sometimes we do crave freedom from choice.  I know that I am often relieved when I enter a search term on Amazon that turns up only three items.  (Try searching for “USB hard drive”;…    Read More

A recent headline stood out to me: “Argument for Austerity Based on an Excel Error.[1]” I was stunned when I saw it.  How could a spreadsheet error be so big that it could shape economic policy?  This story shows how drastic the results of a single miscalculation can be. In 2010, Harvard Economists Ken Rogoff…    Read More

The 7 Personas of Budgeting (Also known as: Persona Non Grata!) Imagine this:  It’s budget time, and you are surrounded… Surrounded by department heads that don’t have financial training, but do have their own agenda and quirky approach to budgeting. You probably don’t have to stretch to imagine it – as most finance teams live…    Read More

Zombie spreadsheets should be dead – for all intents and purposes they should have been put in the ground long ago – but they refuse to die. Budget templates are the most prevalent form of zombie spreadsheets. They’re complex. They’re prone to error. They’re difficult or impossible to fully audit. Only a handful of people…    Read More