Budgeting & Forecasting applications are often considered inflexible in comparison to Excel, which allows you to add or change formulae and layouts at will. The inflexibility of Budgeting & Forecasting applications is mainly due to their lack of customization options, which makes it difficult to adapt them to different scenarios. These limitations can also restrict...

Whether it is panacea or not the answer depends upon your circumstances, your budget and the application you buy. For any small business, we don’t believe that an application will offer any benefit over Excel, you don’t need other people to contribute to your budget, and you probably don’t need to share them, what you need...

The Success of Powerful Non Financial KPIs is seen in the results of businesses that make better decisions about resource allocation. Trends in non-financial KPIs can give valuable insights into how a business is performing, with a variety of non-financial KPIs that can be tracked, depending on the business and its sector. Some common examples...

One of the most difficult aspects of managing projects is integrating them into the company’s core budgets and forecasts. This is because projects are often seen as separate entities to be managed separately from the core business. However, this should not be the case, as projects can have a major impact on the overall budget...

Do you ever feel like your budget is a little “off?” That’s because it probably is. When you build formulas into your budgeting process, you’re relying on unproven formulae that sometimes create errors, contain broken links and formulae that can be altered by others. This can lead you to create inaccurate budgets and forecasts, which...

To be successful it’s important to have accurate information about future demand for your products or services. That way, you can make informed decisions about production levels, inventory, staffing, and other aspects of your operation. ProForecast demand forecasting can help you get that information. ProForecast uses Rapier artificial intelligence (AI) to predict future demand for...

These days, more and more businesses are turning to cloud-based budgeting and planning solutions. And it’s no wonder why: the cloud offers a number of advantages that traditional on-premise solutions simply can’t match. Here are just a few of the ways that companies are benefiting from moving their budgeting and planning to the cloud: 1...

Top 5 faults in forecasting Tops Down Sales Forecasting. This is when, to achieve an artificially imposed revenue number on the business annual sales targets are introduced into the forecast, without any real substance behind how they will be achieved. A noose around the sales guy’s neck. To be an incentive targets must be realistic...

Using What-If scenario analysis to make smarter decisions George W Bush won’t be remembered as one of the great US presidents, however he was unjustly ridiculed for this very pertinent bit of advice, “You don’t know what you don’t know”. Or as Harold MacMillan said when asked, what was most likely to blow a government...

Time needed to create a forecasting model No matter how good you are at using Excel, it is going to take a lot of time and effort to create a model that can be used to produce a meaningful detailed forecast for your business with the outputs and analytics you need to make informed decisions...

The devil is in the detail Forecasts and budgets are a normal part of managing any business and the Hospitality industry is no different. The challenges the Hospitality industry faces are much like any other industry, identifying sources of business and the related dependencies. Once you have done this it’s important to assess the impact...

The “Amazon effect” has already dramatically changed the landscape of retail but the disruption goes much deeper than just the convenience of 24/7 shopping and next day delivery. It has changed retail cycles as retailers are forced to change the timing of their typical end of season sales to align with the Amazon driven Black...

Hubris and poor assumptions will do it every time. Forecasts, in many cases are nothing more than an educated guess, someone’s gut feel. Sales projections and margins used to calculate outcomes are the starting point to make the model achieve the target goal, whether these are realistic or not is not the forecasters responsibility or...

I must admit, personally, the thought of autonomous cars driving themselves while we read books, watch Netfix or climb into the back seat to do what should be done at home or in a secluded place at night, fills me with horror. It might be because I’m not from Generation X who blindly believe in...

In the state-of-the-art Sunderland Software Centre, you will find ProForecast. Led by Steven Katirai, the ideas behind the application, ProForecast have developed the most powerful Financial Forecasting and Business Strategy application on the market. “We wanted to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the market” begins Katirai, “there are a lot of cash flow forecasting...