Business Officer Magazine: Self Service Budgeting at DrewI was honored to work with Howard Buxbaum on “Self Service Budgeting at Drew University” which appears in the November 2011 issue of Business Officer Magazine. Here’s an excerpt: In a meeting with Drew University’s president, we not only reviewed the points outlined in this article but also talked about the higher-level issue of accountability,… Read More |
The Missing Link: Budgeting and ExecutionThere are two primary purposes of budgeting. The one most people think of first is to put a cap spending. But that’s only one reason why organizations (and people) budget. The other reason why organizations budget is to ensure what’s important gets done. And let’s face it, just because something is important doesn’t mean it… Read More |
You can’t create an Interactive BudgetMap in ExcelHere’s a fundamental problem with the budget process we wanted to address. People don’t like budgeting. That’s really the elephant in the living room we’re all trying to navigate around, isn’t it? Here are some of the words I’ve heard line managers and department heads use to describe budgeting: Stressful… Intimidating… Frustrating… Confusing. I’ve heard… Read More |
Mega Trends in Budgeting: Renewed Focus on CommunicationThis mega trend is something that’s come full circle; and it’s such a major trend we’ve actually done a whole webinar on this topic… which you can find a link to on our website. It’s tough to boil a whole webinar down into a couple of slides, but let me give it a try. Think… Read More |
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 |
Stanford Ph.D Defines BudgetSo 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… Read More |
The Circle of DoomThe consequences of not budgeting to your strategy (i.e., not integrating strategy and budgeting) can be pretty severe. We call it The Circle of Doom. And it begins with the development of strategy that never really gets done. I had a CEO tell me about the frustration he felt after a strategic planning retreat where… Read More |
Isn’t it amazing — The evolution of budgetingIsn’t it amazing when someone comes up with an idea and everyone says “That’s obvious, why didn’t they do this 5 years ago?” It’s more amazing still that when the idea catches on nobody would think of going back to the old way of doing things. Malcolm Gladwell talks a lot about this in his… Read More |
That’s Not My NumberProbably the worst moments I had as a Manager of Financial Planning and Analysis when I was at Pepsi Cola International and Reader’s Digest; was when someone would say, “That’s not my number!” The embarrassment factor was a function of A) The level executives in the room… B) How late in the planning process we… Read More |
What the Fortune 500 can learn from nonprofitsSome people think it’s only high powered, Fortune 500 companies that need to concern themselves with budgeting and planning. Yet from my experience, nonprofit organizations are just sophisticated and thoughtful about budgeting – maybe more so. Why is that? Partly out of necessity. If a nonprofit is sloppy about budgeting they run out of cash…. Read More |
