Tackling the Top 5 Corporate Budgeting Challenges

Published: September 24, 2021

Lengthy and complex manual workflows coupled with out-of-date reporting means the annual budgeting process is often cumbersome and time-consuming. Here, Dafydd Llewellyn, EMEA General Manager, insightsoftware, explains the benefits of automation and helps to build the business case.

Global organisations work hard to deliver sustainable, profitable growth. Budget planning is an integral part of building this growth – the annual process of compiling, monitoring, and updating a company’s revenue, spending, debt, and capital forecasts.

Unfortunately, budgeting is often a headache for CFOs and treasury teams. They are ultimately responsible for defining goals, bench-marking business performance, and enforcing the budget company-wide. While managers aim to use budgeting to keep the company on track and pinpoint areas of improvement, the reality is that too often it is time-consuming and labour-intensive, while delivering questionable value. Additionally, delays in collecting timely data leads to out-of-date reporting, which makes proper forecasting impossible.

Overcoming hurdles

Broadly speaking, these are the top five budgeting challenges facing companies:

Many corporates also are unable to realise the value of effective budgeting and fiscal planning, which hinders the ability of operating managers to make informed decisions.

Introducing automation

With the right automation tools, CFOs and treasurers see results quicker, improve productivity, and adapt to change much more easily. The solution is a collaborative, integrated, finance-owned budgeting and planning application that is simple and easy to use.

There are three main benefits to this automation-based approach:

The annual budgeting process is never easy, but it can be simplified, more collaborative, and make a positive contribution to the running of any business. And investing in the right automation-driven tools now can create business value further down the line.