Automation and data integration undeniably pose a huge potential in transforming budgeting among organisations.
In a guide published by Vena Solutions, they enumerated several pointers as to how technological advancements can bring change to the budgeting process and the value of an organisation's budget entirely.
- Taking advantage of abundant tools. Flexible and intuitive solutions for finance automation are now widely available for organisations, spanning from ERP modules, FP&A software, and other technologies. The benefits of such include:
- the elimination of manual tasks, and the time and human error that come along with them
- increased efficiency and capacity to free up time for analysis
- a full-picture view of business performance for prescriptive insights
- Automating the workflow. When dealing with the budgeting process, finance leaders are faced with various opportunities to the snag maximum benefits. It is necessary then that finance heads familiarise themselves with the latest technologies around automation for the department as such provide capabilities such as:
- drag-and-drop workflow designers for processes like submissions, review and approval, and distribution of reports
- personalised roles with different access, approval, ad distribution permissions for every stakeholder
- automatic notifications when tasks are ready, due or overdue, including when escalations are needed
- Using simple standard, connected templates. In managing business budget, finance leaders must opt for simple standard and connected templates to minimise complexities and customisation needs. It is necessary that they limit differences to departmental goals, KPIs, accounts, and budget numbers. Features that should be considered to be included are:
- built-in rules such as maximum variances from the previous year's actuals, or what conditions require supporting assumptions. commentary, calculations, or documentation
- role-based permissions so each contributor can only access data they are supposed to see
- pre-populated templates with fields and data from a central database to achieve a single source of truth for every number in the budget
- Integrating data sources. To have the full picture of the budget performance, finance heads must incorporate financial and non-financial information throughout the whole process. Tools that can aid this are:
- General ledger - for real-time actuals
- CRM - for identification of most profitable and happiest customers/stakeholders
- HR information system - for ensuring the budget and workforce planning are in alignment
