Moving Past Excel: 5 Advantages of Rolling Forecasts

“The Annual Budget,” a static document meant to guide the finances of organizations. Countless effort and hours go into making “The Annual Budget” perfect, but it’s out of date the minute it’s published because of the dynamic, up-to-the-second nature of business these days. Often, they’re built using stalwart, old standbys like Excel and on-premises applications, but they can’t be updated easily as the landscape changes, so it just sits there until next year.

The annual budgeting burden: How it holds SMBs back

In the meantime, as this budget grows older, valuable insights are lost, and the business isn't reacting to meet the new situation, which can mean ruin in some extreme cases. What potential is lost forever without actionable insights? “The budget locks everyone into an annual cycle. We need to be moving faster than that, to be more agile,” observed Steve Player, North America program director for Beyond Budgeting Round Table according to a recent Arxis Technology blog post. Annual budgets don’t allow for that agility and can be responsible for:

• Ambiguous accountability which causes confusion about how targets get set and who is supposed to be hitting them;
• Poor resource utilization spent on the annual budgeting cycle yielding a document that isn’t changing with the business environment;
• Limitations prevent easily updating and refreshing variables from a moving business environment;
• Inability to collaborate easily or access from anywhere.

“The budget locks everyone into an annual cycle. We need to be moving faster than that, to be more agile."

A rolling forecast is more manageable and meaningful

What would you do with all the time you spent across the organization writing the annual budget? Managing a rolling forecast is more approachable and collaborative, so teams don’t dread it; and in some cases, they actually enjoy it! Here are just a few benefits of adopting rolling forecasts:

• Drill-down capability: Easily see all the way down to the journal entry and invoice in just a few clicks.
• Improved forecast quality: Profitability analysis is based on actual data when integrated with your accounting or ERP system.
• Cross-functional alignment: Financial modeling and execution is coordinated across multiple departments so your insights are not in silos.
• Cloud-based architecture: Access from anywhere to real-time, up-to-the-minute data means your organization makes better decisions faster.

If it’s time to move past Excel and The Annual Budget, watch this brief video to see how Adaptive Insights expertly implemented by Arxis Technology, an Adaptive Insights featured Gold Partner can help your finance team flip the focus to Financial Performance rather than Operations.

About Arxis Technology

Arxis Technology, Inc. is a technology consulting firm specializing in the implementation and support of accounting and business management software, CPM/BI solutions, and custom application development. As resellers and consultants for Intacct Cloud Financials, Adaptive Insights, and Sage 100/300/500, Arxis supports clients from locations in Los Angeles, Orange County, Chicago, Phoenix, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Ireland. We specialize in the Entertainment, Software & SaaS, and Professional Services industries.

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