The 80/20 rule in Integrated Business Planning!
The good old 80/20 rule: 20% of what we do produces 80% of our outcomes. In a business context then, it is critical that the 20% effort is right; that it is properly planned...
Category: Planning and Forecasting
The tug of Siloed Business Planning
When teams within an organisation operate in siloes, the effects can be detrimental to the business. It results in gaps, inefficiencies, and lost productivity. Substantial effort is put in to strategising and planning at...
Integrated Business Planning with Spreadsheets; the fragile final mile
After many years in consulting, I am still surprised to find that even organisations with sophisticated transactional forecasting and supply chain capabilities still rely on spreadsheets for their final mile of decision support in...
Key problems with Annual Budgeting: insights from Oliver Wight’s Stuart Harman.
Many businesses are either still in their annual budgeting process, or have just finished and are taking a breath. It is often a long, arduous and heavily manual process, typically unloved by the business....
My key highlights from the 2nd Annual Integrated Business Planning Summit
Great to attend the recent Akolade 2nd Annual Integrated Business Planning Summit in Sydney. A fantastic mix of content and presentations and many takeaways. I had many highlights, too many to list here but...
24 is the new black
Rolling planning should be the mandatory state for every business. This blog isn’t to advocate the benefits of rolling planning over a single annual plan and its narrow lookout towards the end of financial...
The age of decision-making platforms has arrived!
Decision-making processes are key to your success. They direct resources, mitigate risk and exploit opportunity. Given the nature of business, decisions are both transient and fixed. Formal processes require evaluation and approval, e.g. budgets...
Integrating financial projections and non-financial planning: Part 2
In my previous blog post, I discussed why an organisation should integrate financial projections into Integrated Business Planning (IBP). In this blog post, we explore how to construct financial projections out to the planning horizon...
Integrating financial projections and non-financial planning: Part 1
Integrating financial plans with the operational and strategic plans remains a challenge for many organisations. Finance departments and operational planning are still failing to work together. They are unable to produce a financial projection...
Closing the gap between Finance and Operations
In my previous blog post, I discussed the disconnect between Finance and Operations, and the need to operate cross functionally. Key to achieving this, is an integrated performance framework, such as Oliver Wight’s Integrated...