Advanced Planning Tools Foster Business Success

Gone are the days when basic budgeting, forecasting, and planning tools offered everything a business needed to thrive. Facing an increasingly competitive and dynamic marketplace, many modern companies now rely on Extended Financial Planning and Analysis (xFP&A) solutions to secure and enhance their place in the economy. Businesses that use, and rely on, xFP&A solutions to guide their planning processes are better equipped to outperform competitors and react to market trends.

How Planning Tools Drive Business

No matter the industry, precise financial planning is an integral part of every business' success. It’s how company leaders set goals and chart a realistic course to achieve them, despite challenges in the marketplace. When you implement advanced budgeting and forecasting tools designed for today’s complex environment, you can: 

• Collect real-time, accurate data automatically.
• Track sales performance in relation to budgets and forecasts.
• Increase control of revenue and expenses.
• Compare performance with key performance indicators.
• Inform your business strategy with robust financial data.

Drawing from a single source of truth, a modern budgeting solution not only provides process automation, time savings, and more accuracy, but also helps manage your financial expectations for future periods. The latest forecasting technology, meanwhile, allows you to estimate your financial outcomes based on past data on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis. These aspects of financial planning provide critical, fact-based insights and competitive advantages for your company.

The Planning Tools You Need

A corporate performance management (CPM) solution integrated with an xFP&A solution facilitates a smooth and efficient budgeting, and forecasting process across your organization because it brings all of your tools together in one place. It also can help you save time and money by automating your financial and operational reporting. Streamlining your processes—including assignments, workflows, and approvals—is much easier in a CPM solution than in a spreadsheet due to pre-built features designed specifically for these tedious tasks.

Budgeting

Although budgeting can be an especially time-consuming process for many companies, it is vital because it provides a defined path for spending and supports strategic goals. However, no one needs to reinvent the wheel. Every organization should find a solution that has customizable budgeting templates to help organize and deploy your budget according to specific industry best practices. Templates can include the following:

• Department Budget: Businesses use department budgets to monitor the cash flow of specific sectors of their organization, enabling them to set spending goals and ensure departments are contributing to the company’s larger success. For example, a senior living organization might use this resource to establish financial expectations for its food or healthcare services departments as part of its larger effort to meet the needs of its residents.
• P&L Budget: Companies can evaluate their income versus their expenses over a period of time, and use that information to make adjustments. Construction companies can turn to such budgets to better understand how specific types of projects are performing, and decide whether to continue pursuing those kinds of jobs in the future.
• Membership Budget: Specifically designed for membership organizations, including some nonprofits, membership budget forms are considered an important component of an annual budget model and are often used by budgeting and membership managers to budget membership attrition, growth and related revenues. Companies rely on these tools to plan for expected revenues from this area of their organizations.

Budget dashboards can also be helpful tools. Often used in conjunction with budget input templates, budget dashboards for expenses, revenue, and profit margins can streamline the planning process. Managers can use these dashboards to quickly assess and track budget performance.

Forecasting

Forecasting, which estimates what a business will accomplish financially, is also a critical component of the planning process—and shouldn’t be put on the back burner or forgotten until it’s too late to make changes. A solid forecast is often used to figure out how you should allocate your budgets for a future year. As with budgeting, businesses should seek xFP&A solutions that have customizable forecasting templates to help leaders make financial decisions. Templates can include the following:

• P&L Forecasts: When they use P&L templates with features such as display of variances between current and previous budgets, construction companies and other businesses in this type of industry drive faster and more accurate financial planning. These P&L templates can include top-down driver-based forecasts, 12-month rolling forecasts, and 5-year forecasts, depending on the needs of your business.
• Payroll Forecasts: Payroll is typically among a company’s largest expense, which makes precise planning in this area all the more important. For example, an owner of a number of senior residences might use this type of forecast to help ensure funds are properly earmarked for the many workers who keep it up and running. The tool can also calculate costs associated with taxes and benefits.
• Event Forecasts: For nonprofits and other organizations that host events to generate income, event forecasting can be crucial. This type of forecast typically examines a company’s budget for tickets, revenues, and expenses related to specific events.

Plan More Effectively with Solver

A combination of automated budgeting and forecasting capabilities gives business leaders a comprehensive planning tool for future investments, cost control, reporting and analysis. An xFP&A suite can significantly enhance a company's ability to create budgets and forecasts, providing the tools and insights needed to capitalize on opportunities for growth.

Our expert team is ready to help you with all your financial planning needs. Contact Solver today to learn more about how our innovative xFP&A solution can support your company's success.