NEUBRAINER, the official blog of Neubrain

Core Capabilities of Successful Budgeting, Forecasting and Performance Management Solutions

Budgeting, forecasting and performance management is a difficult process for organizations, not to mention reporting on results can be challenging, regardless of size or industry. Enterprise planning is critical for managers that contribute to the overall success or failure of a program, project or product, especially in good and bad economic times. Despite the importance of accurate forecasting, budgeting is often seen as a demanding and inefficient process. Yet forward-thinking organizations see integrated planning and performance management solutions necessary to compete.

Earlier this month, Aberdeen Research released the results of their 2014 Financial Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting and Enterprise Performance Management Benchmark Survey. The survey sought to discover the best practices and technologies used by organizations that are successfully navigating the financial planning, budgeting and forecasting process. So, what did the survey reveal?

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Topics: budgeting, forecasting, Neubrain, consulting, software solutions, industry insights, best practices, performance management, tools, budgeting and finance, business processes, government budgeting software

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.

Poor integration with back-end systems
No way of knowing what data is missing
2-dimensional, not sophisticated enough to model complex organizational structures; the process of defining hierarchies and creating aggregations is time-consuming and cumbersome
Limited analytics capabilities (what-if scenario, forecasting, trending, time-based analysis, etc.)
The ability to perform fast calculations across multiple dimensions is missing
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
Lacks power: not robust and quick enough to support large data sets
Multiple versions on multiple computers (controls and security)
Lack of support for enterprise-wide collaboration (workflow, versions)
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:

Financial reports delivered on time
Actual costs within budgets
Actual revenues within forecast

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

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Topics: budgeting, forecasting, planning

NEUBRAINER, the official blog of Neubrain

Core Capabilities of Successful Budgeting, Forecasting and Performance Management Solutions

How To Solve The Biggest Problems With Budget Software Selection

NEU Infographic: Key Reasons to Improve Budgeting and Performance Management

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

Key indicators to measure the agility in financial planning

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