Many sophisticated business environments use budgets as a bridge between actual and forecast. Within the corporate finance domain, budgets are used to allocate resources and provide a starting point for current and future period estimates.
Through the financial crisis, the advent of drill down database capabilities and with direction from the Federal government, financial modeling is evolving into both a defined art and science.
The Value Cycle is our approach at redefining FP&A’s role in the organization. To take a leadership position influencing the direction and outcome. It is our role to help facilitate this process by taking the insight that we have generated and converting this into more long-term strategic thinking.
As a former public accounting auditor, I have been through my fair share of busy seasons which usually ran from September to April. For me, this was a character-building and learning opportunity that I am privileged and thankful that I got to experience in my career. However, like most, I realized this was not what I wanted to do long term.
Today's controller is confronted with two developments: on one hand, increasing usage of mobile applications for all employees, steady growth of IT-supported operational resource planning systems and the hype towards Big Data result in an increasing volume of direct business information. On the other hand, more and more detailed accounting standards and higher requirements for compliance and governance enforce heavier control activities.