NEUBRAINER, the official blog of Neubrain

If you have ever worked in a governmental organization, you probably experienced the mental gymnastics of the dreaded “what-if” drills.  The annual bureaucratic budget review and approval processes, changing priorities based on political agendas, and emerging agency requirements make these drills a frequent occurrence at all levels of government.  Governmental organizations are often tasked to  “develop options”, “look for efficiencies”, or other code words to deal with real or perceived budget cuts.  These units are scrambling to play defense – to defend (or re-defend) planned resourcing levels. A reason why budgeting is so difficult is that many government organizations have difficulty tying resource allocation to objective criteria that clearly enables decision-makers to make conscious trade-offs, as well as providing transparency throughout the organization. 

High performing Comptroller organizations can add tremendous organizational value beyond just financial transaction processing and audit readiness tasks.

By leading in the establishment of key processes, promoting enterprise-wide collaboration and a disciplined financial management culture, they can drastically improve the ability of an organization to achieve performance targets, strengthen the link between financial plans and strategic objectives, and enhance strategic decision-making.

As technologies advance, the global marketplace changes, and the economy ebbs and flows, it is apparent that traditional budgeting practices are becoming a relic of the past. With the right strategies and technologies in place, public sector organizations can develop a more strategic budget process...

It is a common mistake to assume that automation alone will bring necessary budget process improvements to an organization. Automating an inefficient or unintelligent bud­get process just makes the same process faster, not better.

The reality is traditional practices that govern budgeting, planning, forecasting, reporting and  risk management are becoming obsolete in the context of a fast paced digital marketplace and a volatile and uncertain global economy. Long established budget practices provide a false sense of security and fail to cope with the speed and volatility of today’s markets.

Additionally, the traditional budgeting process is widely de­cried, both by FP&A personnel—who must reconcile the requests from business managers with the targets handed down from the C-suite—and the business line managers they support—who view the budget process as a bureau­cratic exercise, a distraction from their job, a drag on their time, and a purely finance-driven process.

As you consider a new budget system, remember this is the optimal time to evaluate the strategies that can help your organization develop a more agile and intelligent budget process, use this process as decision making tool rather than a negotiation, and positively change your orga­nization’s perception of budgeting.

The following are a few strategies and best practices to consider:

Data visualization tools, like software dashboards, are becoming more popular and necessary to deal with exponential data growth. According to the industry research; however, dashboards have often failed or at best they delivered only a fraction of the insight that is needed to monitor the business. Why?

We are so excited to announce our customer, Park City, Utah, has been recognized with a Certificate of Achievement from the ICMA Center for Performance Analytics™ for their performance management efforts!

“The certificate program recognizes the principles of performance management,” said Randall H. Reid, ICMA Director of Performance Initiatives. “Jurisdictions meeting the qualifications have demonstrated leadership in continuous improvement and community engagement, and they serve as examples for other governments to follow.”  

Often times we see “user-friendly” as a key criterion in the evaluation of budgeting software products, or hear “we have implemented a new budgeting software, but it is not user-friendly”. A system's user interface determines how users interact with the system; therefore, it is a very important aspect of the total user experience with the system. But is it all about the interface or is there more to consider? What makes a system user-friendly: is it visually appealing interface design, or a familiar Excel-like interface, or maybe something else?

After seeing a lot of hype and confusion caused by software vendors positioning their products as the most user-friendly based on a some sort of feature: familiar excel interface, web-based or cloud-based (and therefore, somehow by default, user-friendly), Neubrain experts decided to shed some light on the topic and share key considerations in selecting and implementing a user-friendly budgeting system.