5 Best Practices of Effective Budgeting & Planning: From Theory to Practice

Ask, Share, Learn – Within the Largest Community of Corporate Finance Professionals

5 Best Practices of Effective Budgeting & Planning: From Theory to PracticeBill Aiken, CEO, Abacist GroupEric Zimmerman, FP&A Manager, Infusionsoft

Welcome to Proformative

Proformative is the largest and fastest growing online resource for senior level corporate finance, treasury, and accounting professionals.

A resource where corporate finance and related professionals excel in their careers through:

• Uniquely valuable, online Peer Network

• Direct subject-matter-expert advice

• Valuable Features and Resources

All of it completely noise-freeCheck it out at www.proformative.com

http://www.proformative.com/

Learning Objectives

After participating in this event you will be able to understand:

• Understand how to deliver timely and accurate re-forecasts & what-if scenarios

• Discover how to drive better business decisions through improved reporting and analysis

• Understand how to implement 5 key best practices in effective financial planning at your company

• Learn how to improve companywide participation and alignment in your company’s budgeting and planning efforts


Bill AikenCEO at Abacist Group, Adaptive Planning & NetSuite Planning implementation partner

© 2013 Proformative. Proprietary and confidential

Abacist Grouptop Adaptive Planning Partner

3 time winner of Adaptive Planning Top Partner Award!

In class of most tenured Certified Adaptive Planning Partners

Have been ranked #1 across Adaptive implementers for Client Satisfaction

Have successfully completed over 100 Adaptive Planning projects

Role of Finance – Where Are You?

TransactionManagement

Annual budgeting

Financial accounting

Controlling the Business

Variance reporting

Tax, audit, treasury

Planning & Analysis

Rolling forecasts Performance

management Analysis of drivers

Integrated Functional Excellence

Enterprise-wide collaboration Empowering business units to

self serve analysis Predictive, ‘what if’ planning

AccountantsDominated by complex systems and detail

1

Process ManagersFocus on improved reporting and minimizing risk

2

Business PartnersDecision support

Provides sound financial analysis

3

Business LeadersIntegral part of management

Creates value by providing information and analysis for operating and strategic decisions

4

Stage

Key Capabilities

Expectations have increased for finance organizations

Automated actual imports

& re-forecasting

Real-time, easily

consumed data elevates

strategic dialogue

Driver-based models with drill-down &

what-if

Easy interface,

note-sharing, approvals &

alerts

Designed for business end

users

Best Technology Enables Best Practices

Practice #1 Integrate ERP & Planning

Practice #2Adapt to Business Changes

Practice #3 Expand Business Drivers

Practice #4Improve Collaboration

Practice #5Break-down Barriers to Self-Serve Info

Evolution of CPM & BI tools

Powerful Features

o Very Expensive

o Highly Complex

o Slow to Deploy

o Hard to Use

o IT-Intensive

Easy to Use

o Manual / Slow

o Error Prone

o Non-Collaborative

o Doesn’t Scale

o Not Secure

LEGACY ENTERPRISE

LOW-END TOOLS

CLOUD SOLUTIONS

Easy to Use

Powerful Features

Quick to Deploy

No IT Required

Collaborative

Scalable

Continuous Innovation


Eric Zimmerman FP&A Manager at Infusionsoft

© 2013 Proformative. Proprietary and confidential

Infusionsoft at a Glance

© 2013 Proformative. Proprietary and confidential 10

• The only all-in-one sales and marketing software built for small business– Enables small businesses to get organized, attract

more customers, grow sales, and save massive amounts of time

• High growth business with pay-as-you-go and subscription based solutions

• 17,000 customers around the globe– Explosive-growth– 60K+ users– 443 employees

• Headquartered in Chandler, AZ

The Challenge


• Newly implemented NetSuite ERP and Adaptive Planning

• Hired in October 2012 with experience using Hyperion, SAP, and spreadsheets

• Needed to transform the company’s 2012 annual budget from spreadsheets into Adaptive Planning

• Self implement cloud-based Adaptive Planning integrated with NetSuite in 5 weeks

Moving Planning Processes to the Cloud


• Core business drivers of a Cloud provider– People and Marketing investments are largest business

levers

• Annual budget with quarterly and monthly planning– Departmental expense budgeting– Personnel and revenue planning

• Monthly close includes all board and executive reporting– Balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow

planning

• Long range planning and what-if analysis

#1 Integrate ERP and Planning


• Push button actuals transfer to budgets and forecasts automatically

• Back and forth integration of NetSuite and Adaptive Planning eliminates manual data cleansing and spreadsheet work prone to errors

• Fast, efficient monthly close

• Centralized source of truth – Budgets– Forecasts– Actuals– Variances

#2 Break Down Barriers to Information


• Executive team gaining earlier access to critical data

• Managers see timely actuals integrated into plan

• No more ‘meeting killers’ arguing over data validity

• 3 week process of performance reporting reduced to a few days

• Earned Employee of the Monthin my first 6 months -Camaro, gas, and meals card for a month!

#3 Adapt to Business Change


• Automated assumptions modeling and what-if analysis– 3 year planning with varying cash flow implications– What-if analysis on revenue growth or constriction– Equity event needs analysis

• Answering CFO questions in near real-time

• Business acumen of department managers and directors has increased – Data at fingertips – Numbers tell the story…We get to the story quicker

• Increased productivity enables more strategic dialogue, collaboration, measurement, and decision making

#4 Improve Collaboration


• FP&A now a team sport

• Collaborating more effectively with a broader set of stakeholders– Adapting Planning usage increasing

from 25 to 45 seats

• Working together on solutions– Identifying causes of variances, ways to reduce– Forecasting more efficiently

• The Cloud enables everyone access to data on-demand from anywhere

#5 Expand Business Drivers


• Leverage more operational data, reporting and analytics– Central hub for reporting on immense data:– Customer growth– LTV, churn, retention– by channel, region, industry type – Sales pipeline analysis

… to somethinglike this …

Best Practices


• Integrated ERP, G/L, Planning and Reporting systems

• Faster access to business performance information

• Plans always change!

• Drive collaboration

• Leverage more business driver data


THANK YOU

If you have questions about CPE Credit, please send an email to [email protected]

Please join us at www.proformative.com to ask any additional questions you may have and to continue this conversation with your peers and the experts you heard from today.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.proformative.com/

Sponsors