Harvard Business Review calls today’s evolving business landscape the ‘Era of Volatility.’ The last 30 years saw largely peaceful geopolitics, falling interest rates, and moderate inflation, but that’s all about to change. They warn that this next era will be unsettlingly different.
As organizations move into this future, the term ‘agility’ will gain new importance. To survive, businesses must transform away from their traditional, slow, and cumbersome annual budget processes.
This whitepaper, from the budgeting experts at Solver, details the top budgeting best practices that can set your company up for financial success both now and in the future.
3 New Budgeting Skills to Implement Now
Considering today’s constant uncertainty and relentless upheaval, Harvard Business Review recommends 3 new skills that forward-looking businesses should build:
- Predicting the future
- Using those predictions to change your business more quickly than your competitors; and
- Making smart investments with an expanded view toward long-term resilience, instead of narrowly focusing on short-term profits
Each of these skills requires you to have a firm grasp on your financials. Organizations wishing to succeed with these skills must maintain an agile budget.
HBR is not alone in recommending these changes. An insightful article from FP&A Trends invoked the acronym VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) in support of their conviction.
The future is clear. Companies that will survive this new era will be the ones that successfully align their budgeting processes with our modern business landscape’s rapid pace.
This whitepaper can help.
Does your organization struggle to stay agile? Do you worry that your competitors are acting on information you can’t yet see? Your budgeting processes may be to blame.
Download the whitepaper and discover:
- The 10 signs that your budgeting process is “broken”
- The precise steps to take – and in what order – to fix your budget process
- The 2 top ways experts approach their budgeting process, plus advice to choose the right path for your needs
- 5 critical considerations for crafting effective strategic budget goals
- How to run a realistic forecast that limits your “guesswork”
In addition, you will learn 3 tips that better ensure your budget will be approved by the Board, and you’ll gain access to handy tools that you can use to get started with your own agile budgeting process.
How Budget Software for Acumatica Can Help
Once you know how to craft a better, more agile budget, your team must roll up their sleeves and begin putting that knowledge into action.
This is hard work, but effective budgeting software can make your work easier.
This is because budgeting software delivers a seamless, end-to-end experience that helps organizations shave time off the processes of collecting and using their financial data. One of the biggest benefits of budgeting software is that it makes it easy to continually redesign your working budget in response to change.
And here’s a tip: the best budgeting software solutions will deliver capabilities far beyond what you’re doing in Excel right now.
You can expect:
- Seamless integration between your budgeting software and your Acumatica financial KPI data
- Automated budget process workflows that keep stakeholders accountable for results and on time with their updates
- Instant, accurate multi-scenario modeling, with “what ifs” and up-to-the-minute flexible budget forecasts
Most important of all, you can expect budgeting software to make it easy for you to quickly and securely update your budget in response to unexpected changes.
Be prepared for your organization’s future in our new Era of Volatility, no matter what. You invested in your Acumatica ERP, so you could finally quit reacting to outdated, month-old financial data and could view emerging financial trends in real time.
But now, the time has come for you to extend your insight as far as you can into the future.
Solver, the all-inclusive, budgeting software and xFP&A solution for Acumatica, helps you do that.
Sources:
- Harvard Business Review, “How to Succeed in an Era of Volatility”
https://hbr.org/2024/03/how-to-succeed-in-an-era-of-volatility – March-April 2024 edition of the magazine - FP&A Trends, “Beyond Budgeting – Business Agility in the Age of Uncertainty”
https://fpa-trends.com/article/beyond-budgeting – October 27, 2021
