Let’s Talk about the Business
People have been complaining about budgeting forever. Technology helps the CFO and finance organization produce a detailed budget and analyze “the numbers” with less effort than was required in the past. Dissatisfaction remains, however, because technology hasn’t addressed the challenge of increasing the business value of budgeting, especially to the budget owners. It hasn’t changed the conversation to a dialog centered on the business plan first rather than concentrating on the financial outcomes of that plan. It hasn’t allowed executives and budget owners to say, “Let’s talk about the business, not just the budget.”
Software that supports a dialogue about business objectives and the resources necessary to achieve them while simultaneously producing a budget is necessary to enable a breakthrough in improving a company’s budgeting process.
Our business planning benchmark research finds that fewer than half of participants said their company performs its budgeting and planning processes well. This is puzzling because technology has made the mechanics of planning and budgeting more efficient. Yet one of the consistent complaints from budget owners is that the process provides little value to them.