Magnifying Glass On Financial Balance Sheet - XLerant

Stanford Ph.D Defines Budget

Small Chris VanW resized 600So what’s a Budget? Well according to one of our favorite customers, Chris Van Wyk at Drew University, “The budget should be a financial representation of the strategic plan.” Now Chris is an interesting guy. He is Associate Vice President of Finance at Drew, and manages the budget process there. But that’s not all. Chris is also a professor of Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science; and holds a PhD from Stanford. Smart guy, and a guy who’s seen the budget process from both sides.

And what I like about this is frankly most people don’t think of budgeting that way. They think of Budgeting as an exercise of putting numbers in a template, and adding them up. But this definition goes well beyond let’s do a X% increase over last year. It turns a mechanical exercise into a strategic exercise.

 

Read More