Did you know that more people die in crosswalks than jaywalking? The reason is because people have a false sense of security in a crosswalk and don’t feel compelled to pay attention to what is going on around them. The same can be true for other aspects of life…or business for that matter. People (and… Read More
The Contemporary CFO and The Budget ProcessThe following article draws from, and expands on, an article entitled “How CFO’s Have Evolved From Bookkeeping into Corporate Leaders” by David Dewolf The CFO’s role is changing for the good. A recent Entrepreneur article by David DeWolf, captured the essence of this new kind of leader. The days of old CFO’s who try to… Read More |
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The Case for Collaborative Budgeting in Higher Education“Collaborative Budgeting” is a hot concept in higher education. It is the process of gaining more participation in and ownership of the budget by faculty and staff department heads, providing more transparency to the budget and showing how the department heads will support the institutional strategy as opposed to simply budgeting to history or politics…. Read More |
CFO’s Don’t Make Decisions Based on CostThe CFO job is a tough one. There are a plethora of ideas that need to get funded…and most are very good ideas. How do CFO’s make critical decisions in their organizations? The common mistake is thinking is that a CFO will make decisions on cost. The truth is that a good CFO will never… Read More |
Why The CTO Should Care About The Budgeting ApplicationWhile CTO’s have always been very busy people, these days the job is even more taxing with constantly evolving software, technology platforms, and now the introduction of cloud computing. That said, there is one application area that has slipped outside the boundaries of the CTO sphere of influence. This application has become mission critical and… Read More |
Top 5 Evaluation Criteria for Nonprofit Budgeting SolutionsMany people feel that “budgeting is budgeting” regardless of the organization that you are in. That is not always the case. Nonprofit budgeting is a great example. Effective, precise budgeting is far more essential in an organization with slim margins and organizations that need to carefully manage cash. No where is this more true than… Read More |
Accounting for Special Projects: Budgeting for Strategic InitiativesTo state the obvious: budgeting is complex. Budgeting for strategic initiatives or accounting for special projects makes it even more so. Sometimes you want your department heads to submit their own initiatives and other times you want to dictate to departments which initiatives they need to budget for. But either way – you always want… Read More |
Leaving Excel? What you need to consider when evaluating budgeting software.Decision Point: When should you leave Excel budgeting behind? And when the time is right, what do you need to consider when evaluating budgeting software? Lots of organizations “make-do” year over year with their current budgeting approach (Excel, ERP, etc.) At XLerant we often hear the question: “When is it the right time to invest… Read More |
Why Cloud-based (SaaS) Budgeting is Ideal for Any OrganizationIf 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 |
What Motivates Organizations to Abandon Excel Budgeting?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 |