The Ledger
Curated content foranalytical business leaders
Tag Archives: Budgeting and Planning
CFO Trends for 2020
January 24, 2020
CFO Dive shares it’s list of five trends for CFOs to watch in 2020, including the insight that more finance operations will move to a rolling forecast. By enacting this trend, it creates a “rolling time horizon [that] enables executives to make decisions based on market dynamics rather than an artificial target”.
Seeing Into the Future
January 23, 2020
With just 42% of CFOs and finance leaders indicating that their finance systems give them the information they need to be effective business partners and only 31% of them with a dependable platform for decision making, there’s lots of opportunities for finance teams to evaluate their technology architecture.
How Businesses Are Setting Themselves Up for Success with Integrated Business Planning
October 15, 2019
Many businesses are updating their legacy planning systems to integrated business planning applications that translate the organization’s strategic objectives into operational terms that provide actionable guidance across the enterprise. Business capabilities are the link connecting strategy and business model to enterprise architecture and the underlying technology that executes the strategy. Understanding this link enables companies to align resources, people, and processes to transform themselves in response to market dynamics to maintain a competitive edge.
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >
How Agile Technology Drives Supply Chain Innovation
October 3, 2019
Change and uncertainty are inevitable in manufacturing. While effective production planning can support manufacturing processes, there will always be uncontrollable factors that are difficult to manage. Manufacturers are dealing with an increased pressure to meet customer demands quicker and more cost-effectively. Visibility of where manufacturers are within the production process is a key driver and control for an organization. Companies that have a detailed overview of every step of the production process are enabling machine integration with business applications. Without this integration, there is potential for reduced machine utilization, less effective enterprise resource planning, reduced consistency in product quality, and failures in many business performance fundamentals. The right technology enables agile and responsive supply chain management.
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >
A Futurist’s Framework For Strategic Planning
September 23, 2019
When it comes to long-term planning, many FP&A professionals should be able to answer these questions: Where do you want to have impact? What it will take to achieve success? How will the organization evolve to meet challenges on the horizon? These questions are the foundation for any achievable plan, both long and short term. Many businesses get stuck cycling between strategy and tactics, and while that process might feel like serious planning for the future, it results in a perpetual cycle of trying to catch up: to competitors, to new entrants, and to external sources of disruption. “Futurists” see their planning timelines as more of a cone that measures certainty and charts actions, rather than simply marking the passage of time as quarters or years. The result, ideally, is a flexible organization that is positioned to consistently and effectively respond to external developments.
Read More at The Harvard Business Review >
Competitive Decision Making With Porter’s Five Forces
September 4, 2019
The goal of every business is to increase and retain profits while surpassing the competition. When it comes to strategic planning, knowing who the competition is and understanding how their actions will affect the business is critical to long-term success. One way to analyze your competition is by using Porter’s Five Forces model to break them down into five distinct categories, designed to reveal insights. Originally developed by Harvard Business School’s Michael E. Porter in 1979, the five forces model looks at five specific factors that determine if a business can be profitable, based on other businesses in the industry. Understanding the competitive forces, and their underlying causes, reveals the roots of an industry’s current profitability while providing a framework for anticipating and influencing competition (and profitability) over time.
Read More at Business News Daily >
Increasing Profits with Mid-Year Adjustments
August 19, 2019
Mid-year adjustments to business plans help many companies improve their tactics while staying on track with long-term initiatives. While many businesses only have impromptu approaches to adjusting business plans, a more structured approach provides flexibility and focuses concentration on the right levers of profitability. Checking in on mid-year financials allows executives and decision makers to not only see how the business is performing, but also to see how their plans are faring mid-year and determine any variances. Furthermore, the ability to identify the root cause of the variance and make a thoughtful adjustment to the business strategy is crucial to optimize business performance and drive profits.
Read more at Forbes Magazine >
Intelligent Scenario Planning with Advanced Analytics
August 12, 2019
Nobody understands Robert Burns’ quote, “The best laid plans often go awry,” like modern business leaders. When it comes to financial planning, finance teams need the ability to assess and adjust plans when they go off course. Intelligent planning starts with analysis of past results to help determine where is business is going, and measure future success. However, most planning processes are tangled in static spreadsheet processes that are error prone and limit agility. Modern businesses are leveraging intelligent technologies that provide the most up-to-date insight by analyzing the actual data being used by the systems of record. This enables users to react to analytic results in the context of their business process or workflow by creating scenarios that provide the insight to make strategic decisions.
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >
Modern Supply Chains Require Continuous Planning in Real-Time
August 6, 2019
Today’s supply chain planning has to be continuous and based on real-time information to drive effective business decisions. In the face of rising customer expectations around individualized products, shorter delivery time frames, and predictable availability, organizations are moving away from the familiar pace of traditional planning approaches. The need to act and respond on a more real-time basis is driving manufacturers to get closer to the end consumer wherever possible. With data regarding operations and the customer experience digitally available in real-time, organizations can predict, plan, and drive goods through the supply chain more sustainably and profitably. This can also help prompt more timely adjustments of long-term plans regarding new product launches, capital investments, or supply chain configurations.
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >
