The traditional budgeting culture is one of the top FP&A challenges right now. We covered this subject at FP&A Board meetings around the globe and two weeks ago were in Frankfurt to continue the global discussion.

Meeting Agenda

• Beyond Budgeting: key definitions and principles.
• A case study from a thought leader and author of the books Beyond Budgeting in Practice (in Swedish) and Dynamic Management Strategy (forthcoming in English)
• Almatis Case Study
• Small groups discussion on Beyond Budgeting Philosophy. "Are we ready to abandon the budget and what does it require?"
• Conclusions and recommendations.

During the meeting, we had two interesting presentations:

• Knut Fahlén, Swedish thought leader, consultant at Ekan Management and author, shared his insights and case studies on BB from his latest book;
• Paolo Dalo, Group Controller at Almatis, presented a case study on how his company restructured the budgeting process with the help of modern Rolling Forecast (RF).

At the meeting, the Board members came to a conclusion — companies are not ready to abandon the budget but they can transform it in different ways:

• concentrate on key business drivers;
• create RF that is translated from top to bottom;
• do not mix RF process with performance evaluation process;
• RF process should be mathematically and analytically exercised;
• experiment with analytics and automate all the data sources and involve as many key stakeholders as you can;
• remember that the role of FP&A is to enhance the company's decision-making process — the traditional budgeting process cannot help with this.

Our Sponsors

We are very grateful to our partners and sponsors — Anaplan, Regus and Robert Half.