Decline Your Forecast Frequency

It's very common for enterprises to have a monthly financial review process. The financial reviews generally consist of reviewing what has happened in the past and what will be the forecast for rest of the year. The challenge with the forecasting process is, almost always the forecasts rely completely on business levers and inputs. While the forecasting process needs to be frequent to give early visibility of the run rate to hit plans, it requires significant hygiene on the business side to update the levers frequently.
Many a time, the ability to frequently forecast is impeded by lack of operational hygiene more than lack of data itself. We generally recommend EPM tools to customers not only to get accurate timely information of data, but more so to coordinate and streamline the downstream processes and dependencies. A company that can produce forecasts consistently, frequently (weekly) & accurately would have good growth & profitability – not because of the EPM product itself but because of the hygiene and clarity provided by orchestrating the process between business users, executives and Finance.

Whenever we talk to customers about implementing our suite of products, we first start not with the capability of the product – but more with understanding their readiness to streamline the process. Many EPM projects fail primarily for that 1 reason – not because of the product but the inability to articulate what is needed and more importantly which users are involved in the process and enforcing the hygiene. Enforcing EPM process hygiene is very hard and requires experience – but once done, Companies start realising the value almost immediately.

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