Aligning Strategy With Budget And Forecast Development Key To Effective Budget Planning Process According To Recent Caturano And Company Benchmarking Survey
Survey is the First in a Series of Studies Conducted by the Firm’s Business Process Consulting Practice
Boston, MA (PRWEB) November 12, 2009 -- Caturano and Company, New England’s largest regional full-service CPA, Business Process Consulting, and wealth management firm, recently released the results of a comprehensive budgeting and planning benchmarking survey of 75 finance executives from companies throughout New England. This survey is the first in a series of benchmarking studies that Caturano and Company will conduct.
 The 2009 Budgeting and Planning Benchmarking Survey sheds light on current budgeting trends and best practices, pinpoints common issues that organizations contend with during their budgeting and planning process, and highlights solutions that can help companies improve their process.
“Survey results clearly demonstrated that there is no ‘magic bullet’ when it comes to improving a company’s budgeting process,” said Jim Cashin, Vice President, Caturano and Company. “Organizations need to determine what they should measure and ensure the right metrics are in place to support their business, both operationally and financially. Processes and systems can then be optimized to enhance the budgeting and forecasting processes to improve efficiency and drive better decision making,” said Cashin.
Survey finding highlights include:
| | - Businesses with revenues greater than $50 million tend to use a corporate performance management (CPM) tool rather than traditional spreadsheets for budgeting – indicating that CPM software and techniques are effective tools for larger companies looking to enhance how they manage and meet corporate goals.
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| | - The deployment of a continuous planning process or rolling forecasts can improve the budgeting and planning process and reduce the overall effort required. Respondents that utilize rolling forecasts indicated that their finance team had to put in half the effort compared to companies who do not utilize rolling forecasts.
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| | - Simplify and improve the budget process by reducing the level of detail required. By defining key indicators to measure results and reducing the amount of line item budget detail, respondents believe the process is improved significantly. On average, simply reducing the number of budget lines 15 percent moved companies from an “average” score to “above average” for process efficiency.
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Survey respondents represent a wide spectrum of companies ranging from revenues of zero to several billion dollars and with employees numbering under five to close to several thousand. The respondents also represented some of the region’s leading industries including healthcare (28%), technology (25%), services (16%), and finance & insurance (9%), representing 78% of all participants.
While findings confirm several long-held beliefs and leading practices, they also highlight the need to improve the budgeting process and the importance of leveraging tools to improve analysis. Budgeting and planning is seen as highly valued, but the associated process is not viewed in the same favorable light. The report investigates the practices employed by companies to manage their budgeting and planning process and identifies where companies should focus their time, effort, and resources to reap the largest rewards.
To download a free copy of the 2009 Caturano and Company Budgeting and Planning Benchmarking Survey, please visit http://www.caturano.com/2009-budgeting-planning-survey or call Jim Cashin, Vice President of the firm’s Business Process Consulting Practice at 617-241-4694.
About Caturano and Company
Caturano and Company is New England’s largest regional full-service CPA, consulting, and wealth management firm and one of the top 40 CPA firms in the country, with 33 partners and over 370 employees. The firm provides services in the areas of assurance, tax, management and technology consulting, business risk and controls, transactional services, business valuation, and wealth management for companies ranging from small and emerging, to middle market and prominent public companies.
To serve the needs of our multi-location clients, the firm is an active member of Baker Tilly International, one of the world’s top ten accounting and business advisory services networks, focused on serving the global needs of growing multi-national enterprises; comprised of 145 independent member firms with 509 offices in 110 countries.
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