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Introducing the "big three"
Poor visibility. Inadequate planning. Missed forecasts. Faulty expectations. Sound familiar? Ongoing reliance on antiquated planning, budgeting and forecasting systems contributes significantly to these problems. As such, never has the need for effective business performance management (BPM) been more critical to regaining and sustaining corporate transparency, growth, and profitability. Not to mention survival, given the competitive nature of the global marketplace.
No matter your company size, industry, purpose or function, the "big three" processes - planning, budgeting, and forecasting - ultimately spell the difference between success and failure. It?s no wonder companies across the globe are rushing to embrace modern BPM systems. Systems equipped with the necessary features and functions required to directly support these processes - often found lacking in antiquated or "stovepipe" solutions - including real-time data collection, workflow management, process management, and collaboration. Moreover, the BPM system needs to be equipped with intuitive and accessible tools. Ones that foster end user adoption and participation, making the shift to a BPM-driven culture easier, more efficient, and less costly.
In the beginning: Data collection
The first step of the planning process, be it strategic or tactical planning, is data collection. BPM solutions incorporating Microsoft Excel or web-browser technology as their standard data collection and submission environments are often popular choices due to their inherent ease of use and broad accessibility.
In fact, Microsoft Excel is the de facto language of business planning, reporting and analysis. Some BPM solutions do a better job than others in integrating Excel -- typically through the use of what's known as an "add-in". Still, while attempting to mirror the familiarity and functionality afforded by Excel, even these add-ins can suffer from noticeable limitations in terms of features, flexibility and usability.
The ideal BPM solution should provide users with a "best of both worlds" solution that combines the flexibility and familiarity of Excel with the standardization and control of a packaged BPM solution. While a number of BPM vendors make use of Excel to some extent or another, most treat Excel as secondary to their core application. Solutions incorporating Excel as the primary interface typically guarantee the easiest and most effective way to garner end user adoption and acceptance - while minimizing training and implementation costs (given Excel?s ubiquitous presence).
Ideally the BPM solution should pre-package input forms and schedules to facilitate the planning and data collection process, and offer tight integration with operational and transactional data source systems (such as ERP, GL, and CRM systems) to further centralize and unify the performance management process.
OutlookSoft: BPM & "The Big Three" - Planning, Budgeting & Forecasting for Success
Once the plan is established, users can create and submit their budgets. More sophisticated BPM solutions enable users to attach supporting detail to their structured plans in the form of unstructured information (such as Office documents). This capability, effectively "telling the story" behind the numbers, provides a level of detail auditors love to see. With the passing of Sarbanes-Oxley, IFRS, and like regulations to come, BPM systems equipped with built-in support for unstructured data add considerable value to the process in terms of detail and transparency.
Ultimately, the preferred BPM software should handle budget consolidation and aggregations in real-time, eliminating the need for users to wait on results. Real-time consolidation (with capabilities for automated currency conversion, allocation, and inter-company matching) removes the necessity to manually process results, lending to a smoother, more consistent and accurate planning process.
From chaos to order: Processing the flow
Key to managing the budget submission process is, well, process. Where antiquated systems typically fail to meet this need, controls must be in place to validate data submissions and monitor workflow and progress. BPM solutions rich in process management enable you to optimally control, automate, and manage the planning and budgeting submission process. More effective BPM solutions work to remove non value-added steps and eliminate wasteful costs, further streamlining and optimizing the overall system.
To ensure the consistency and accuracy of corporate plans, budgets and forecasts, data must first be validated within the system. Modern BPM solutions include rules-based validation capabilities. This helps to ensure that the submitted data conforms to the stated budgetary objectives, prior to acceptance by the manager and system. Should the submitted data "fail" the validation test, the plan is automatically rejected.
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