Category: Finance

  • Cool software? The Connected Business – Part 3

    Yeah, those spreadsheets. Welcome to part 3 of this series of posts. An interesting special section in the Financial Times prompted me to post a quick summary with interesting quotes. But the report did not necessarily provide some specific details about why spreadsheets make our lives difficult. Part 2 then focused on the particular pain…

  • Spreadsheets Confidential – The Connected Business – Part 2

    The other day I wrote about the special section of the Financial Times called ‘The connected business’. One of the key take aways from this section was the fact that way too many finance departments are putting their faith into spreadsheets. A few years ago, my team started conducting some surveys amongst finance professionals. For…

  • The connected business?

    The Financial Times from December 8th 2010 included an interesting special report called “The Connected Business”. A bunch of great articles about technology in the office of the CFO. One thing that caught my attention was the fact that the entire section highlighted the problems caused by the use of spreadsheets. For people who work…

  • Poor forecast accuracy

    Over the last few weeks three separate clients have expressed their frustration with inaccurate forecasts delivered by certain members of the salesforce. Nothing new here. It happens all the time. However, what struck me about these three independent cases was the nature of the issues: The salesforce consistently forecast higher than actuals. This is not…

  • The case for forecast accuracy

    People always say that you get what you measure. And it is true. When I want to loose weight and I am serious about it, I do have to step on the scale frequently. The same thing is true for business. What gets measured gets done. FORECAST ACCURACY Forecasting has become a critical business process.…

  • The useful budget?

    Fall of 2010. Many people across the world are engaged in a process that has polarized generations of business managers. Some love it. Most hate it. Yet, almost every company invests endless numbers of hours into the process. We are talking about the annual budget. BEGINNINGS The annual budget is a management tool that was…

  • The case for continuous forecasting

    Continuous Forecasting Time for a confession. I really hated forecasting back in my old job. Here I was working with clients on improving their planning, budgeting & forecasting processes. Yet, I absolutely hated doing my own forecast. It just didn’t feel right. What was wrong? Well, I never really understood the template that our controller…