NEUBRAINER, the official blog of Neubrain

How To Solve The Biggest Problems With Budget Software Selection

Posted by Neubrain Communications

Many government agencies and private corporations are nearing the end of the 7-10 year average lifespan of most budgeting and performance management software systems, causing more and more CFOs to explore new budgeting and performance management technologies. In fact, according to the “2013 Gartner Financial Executives International (FEI) CFO Technology Study,” nearly 60% of CFOs indicated that investing in analytics and decision-making was their top priority, as it should be. 

In the past decade, budgeting and financial planning technologies have transformed from error-prone manual data entry tools to an array of advanced analytical, integrated, and sophisticated real-time budget management software solutions, improvements that are only making the software selection even more difficult. Recent independent research revealed the top three software acquisition impairment factors:

  • Lack of user input
  • Incomplete requirements and specifications
  • Changing requirements and specifications

To overcome software acquisition impairment, it is imperative to put time, effort and thought into your software selection process and establish quality requirements. 

Click on the infographic and discover just how important detailed, thought-through QUALITY requirements are to your budgeting software selection process or read the complete list here. 

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Topics: budgeting, software solutions, industry insights, best practices, Government Budgeting, implementation, budgeting and finance, business processes, government budgeting software, budgeting analytics

NEU Infographic: Key Reasons to Improve Budgeting and Performance Management

Posted by Yana McConaty

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Topics: budgeting, performance management, tools

“Spreadsheets Are An Excellent Hammer, But Not Everything in Your Business Is a Nail.” (Val Sribar, Meta Group)

Posted by Yana McConaty

After speaking with many customers about the disadvantages of using spreadsheets to support their company or enterprise-wide budgeting and planning activities, we’ve decided to come up with a short list that features technical limitations of spreadsheets.

  1. Poor integration with back-end systems
  2. No way of knowing what data is missing
  3. 2-dimensional, not sophisticated enough to model complex organizational structures; the process of defining hierarchies and creating aggregations is time-consuming and cumbersome
  4. Limited analytics capabilities (what-if scenario, forecasting, trending, time-based analysis, etc.)
  5. The ability to perform fast calculations across multiple dimensions is missing
  6. Lack of separation between logical structure and presentation. In other words, it lacks the ability to change grid-like data views (or other kind of external representation) without making changes to the data structure
  7. Lacks power: not robust and quick enough to support large data sets
  8. Multiple versions on multiple computers (controls and security)
  9. Lack of support for enterprise-wide collaboration (workflow, versions)
  10. Difficult to document and time-consuming to maintain as an enterprise platform

 

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Topics: budgeting, planning, excel

Key indicators to measure the agility in financial planning

Posted by Yana McConaty

NEU Infographics: Key indicators to measure the accuracy and agility in financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting. How Does Your Organization Compare?

Aberdeen Research conducted a survey of over 200 organizations to analyze their financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting practices. According to the results, core metrics that measure accuracy and agility of the financial planning, budgeting and forecasting processes include:

  1. Financial reports delivered on time

  2. Actual costs within budgets

  3. Actual revenues within forecast

How would you rate your organization: Best-in-Class, Average or Laggard?

 

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Topics: budgeting, forecasting, planning

NEW! Infographic and Technology Brief: Data Visualization

Posted by Yana McConaty

If data dictates our decisions, then why would we allow key information to sit idle simply because it is too hard to reach or too time-consuming to understand or even uncover? More than ever, decision-makers must accelerate how quickly they collect, consume, interpret and analyze data. 

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Topics: interactive, dashboards, implementation, methodology, visualization, dashboarding, reporting, dashboard, metrics, interactive dashboards

Business Analytics for Budget and Finance Professionals

Posted by Yana McConaty

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Topics: Neubrain, Business Analytics, Government Budgeting, Performance-based Budgeting

Introducing Our NEU Blog!

Posted by Neubrain Communications

Here at Neubrain, we spend a lot of time working one-on-one with our clients providing advice and insight on how they can leverage technology to improve their analytical and decision-making capabilities. Our consultants are overflowing with information that they are eager to share with the world…and that is how NEUBRAINER was born.

NEUBRAINER, the official blog of Neubrain, LLC, connects you directly to our experienced team as they provide industry insights, advice on best practices and offer recommendations for improving and optimizing business processes or analytical models.

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Topics: Neubrain, Neubrainer, consulting, software solutions, industry insights, best practices

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Neubrainer 

neu·brain·er |n(y)o͞o brān ər|
noun

  • Neubrain’s official blog featuring expert advice, industry news and analysis, innovative ideas, and more. Did you read today’s post on Neubrainer?
  • An important tip or fact from Neubrain experts; Improve cost-efficiency and foster interdepartmental communication by implementing a performance-based budgeting solution-- it’s a Neubrainer.