Sometimes yesterday = tomorrow
- We live in constant change
and
- It's going much faster now
Statements we hear daily about the time we live in. Exaggerated people think. Of course, someone else says. But no matter what we think, believe and like about the world at large, why not look at the local environment you and I live in today.
In my job, I have the privilege of encountering many different worlds and local environments. Companies and organizations that are in some ways similar to each other but in many other ways have completely different conditions. Yet, surprisingly, there is little difference in how to budget and forecast for the future. Here there is a large untapped efficiency potential and competitive factor. A potential that rests on the assumption that "Sometimes is yesterday = tomorrow".
In budget work (which is later converted to updated budgets, often called P1, P2 and P3), you spend countless hours working to figure out what next year will look like for expenses that are most likely to be more or less unchanged . What are these costs in your local environment?
Tip # 1: Copy the outcome for the current year to next year's budget for costs that are the same from year to year. For more advanced level use data and trends from a few years back.
Revenue, on the other hand, contains a great deal of uncertainty for most people. But also on the cost side, you can find with great certainty costs that you, given your specific business and industry conditions, have very difficult to assess. At least not at the detailed account level that many businesses choose to budget for. Nevertheless, many companies try in vain to make decisions during the autumn budget process that it would be much better to make later on, when it is possible to better assess where the efforts and resources are most beneficial.
Tip # 2: Don't budget at the account level. It is most likely not relevant to your business.
Then there are companies that go even further, who have chosen to completely disregard the traditional budget process. So it must be tip number 3. If you want to know more about this I recommend the following link: http://1company.se/inspelat-webinar-vad-hander-efter-budgetstyrning/
Sometimes yesterday = tomorrow. But for the most part, we do not know what challenges and opportunities the future has to offer. For my part, I think it feels so exciting.