Organisations operate in an uncontrollable and often unpredictable business environment, such as market demand, energy, inflation and exchange rates. As a consequence, the role of planning is to help manage what can be controlled to produce outcomes that will achieve organisational objectives, within an uncontrollable and unknowable external environment.
Michael Coveney
Michael Coveney spent 40+ years in the software analytic business with a focus on transforming the planning, budgeting, forecasting and reporting processes. He has considerable experience in the design and implementation of Business Analytic systems with major organisations throughout the world. He is a gifted conference speaker and author where his latest book ‘Budgeting, Forecasting and Planning In Uncertain Times’is published by J Wiley. His articles have also appeared on www.fpa-trends.com, that encourages innovation in FP&A departments.
Author's Articles
Spreadsheets are without doubt the ‘killer’ application that turned the PC into an indispensable business tool. Before then, computing was the preserve of geeks and specialists who spoke in a language few accountants could understand as they served expensive, inaccessible machines locked away in their own air-conditioned environment.
Analytic models are rarely static. Their aim is to model the organisation in such a way as to allow managers to investigate what is actually going on and to assess changes to the way it operates.
Workflow is critical to a CPM application in the same way that it is critical to ERP. It is through workflow that users are directed and their attention focused onto their roles and responsibilities through the different performance management processes. The activities involved tend to be classified into the management processes.