Managing Risk through better Planning

Most management processes are linked to each other in one way or another. Budgeting and planning, for instance, are intrinsically intertwined with other financial processes like consolidation, reporting, risk management and analysis. These processes, in turn, provide critical insight for managing risk, steering corporate performance and shareholder value, as well as making strategic decisions. In the context of planning, many business processes rely on the finance department to play the role of expert. Budget Controllers are required to oversee the entire planning process, collecting individual submissions, creating first-pass assumptions, mediating variances between top-down allocations and bottom-up aggregations. If the finance department is using an ineffective or inflexible planning solution, then finance becomes a bottleneck. The result: a time-consuming, inaccurate or poor result which generates a deliverable budget whilst failing to achieve the strategic goals.