One of the characteristics people use to describe me is well-read which is appropriate because I enjoy reading material that covers a variety of fields.  One of the fields I cover is sports because it provides connections to finance. While covering sports I found material that represents a connection to budgets and the connection is the leadership style of a football manager, Jurgen Klopp.

A Deloitte survey of 600 global finance leaders, as highlighted in CFO.COM, found that: "companies spent nearly half their time creating and updating reports, and just a fraction of that time devoted to uncovering insights in the data — insights that could prove vital to the business”. 

In this article, we will look at how driver-based advanced analytics has overcome the problems with the current budgeting process. This is the first article in a series that is devoted to next generation budgeting; specifically, the operational income statement (OIS) and its associated operational budget (OB).

A budget expresses thoughts with numbers. Numbers can be financial like income and cash flow or non-financial like time and volume. Expressing thoughts with financial and non-financial numbers can be done through a variety of methods. One method is zero based budgeting which like all methods has strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of this article is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of zero based budgeting. 

A core aspect of financial planning & analysis (FP&A) is forecasting and budgeting. In this article, exposed are some of the more common myths so frequently accepted as truth within FP&A groups around the globe.
 

I would like to share my experience on my company’s journey towards a better budgeting process. I hope this will provide a starting point for fellow finance professionals to explore better ways to improve your own budget planning process.