Process Improvement for Effective Budgeting and Financial Reporting

"The budget and financial reporting processes are well known sources of frustration for most CFOs. Seeking a quick fix to the problem, the common solution is to pour more money into new and better software. This leaves the root cause, the inefficient and dysfunctional underlying processes and routines, unaddressed. As this book shows, substantial and sustainable improvements are only achieved through an holistic approach to process improvement, technology, strategy, and people."
―Tom Henry Knudsen, Executive Vice President, Telenor Eiendom Fornebu AS, Proven methods for improving efficiency

Corporations face a high turnover among financial managers, rapid changes in technology, lack of time and process redesign skills, and ongoing ambiguity about primary objectives behind the budgeting and financial reporting processes. Amid this frenzy, it is the fundamental efficiency of these processes that dramatically impact overall business performance. Process Improvement for Effective Budgeting and Financial Reporting provides financial managers with a compelling blueprint for increasing efficiency and eliminating waste of time and energy. Four operational experts lay out an 80/20 plan-improving 80% of processes in 20% of the time it would take to improve 100%-and explain a Business Process Improvement (BPI) plan that incorporates:

• The emerging trends affecting financial managers today
• Step-by-step process implementation
• Interviews with industry leaders, consultants, and managers who have successfully instituted BPI plans
• Appraisals of the available software that can help or hinder the process

There is no substitute for improved efficiency. CFOs, controllers, budget managers, and financial analysts will significantly benefit from adding this authoritative guide to their professional libraries.

NILS H. RASMUSSEN is a software solutions manager with Solver, Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in budgeting and reporting. He has participated in more than two hundred software selection and improvement projects.

CHRISTOPHER J. EICHORN is a consulting manager with Solver, Inc. He is responsible for developing and implementing budgeting and financial reporting software for midsize and large corporations. He has formerly worked with Deloitte & Touche as a CPA.

COREY S. BARAK is a senior consultant at Solver, Inc. specializing in requirements analysis and implementations, enterprise-wide budgeting, and reporting software as well as budgets, financial reporting, workflow, business processes, and training.

TOBY PRINCE is a systems analyst at Dacor, Inc., where he performs financial analysis and implementation and support of financial reporting applications and analysis. He has supervised or participated in software implementations at over thirty companies.