How do you invest resources and plan budgets for your organization? The answer to that question often predicts business success or failure. Most organizations have similar goals: They want to achieve business insights from accurate data so they can optimize their business processes and balance organizational needs with financial objectives. For planning and budgeting, realizing this goal often proves difficult, as year after year organizations repeat the same outdated and inefficient annual operative planning (AOP) processes that do not deliver accurate budgeting insights in a timely manner. But revamping budgeting and planning processes can be a challenge for organizations that still must deliver accurate management information, reliable accounting functions, compliance, cost control, and reporting. They often stick with their existing processes and end up with managers who don’t trust data and then inflate budgets and modify forecasts, which are then not in line with the business’s strategy and initiatives. Companies use technology to combat these issues, but it is often insufficient, with disparate solutions forcing the business to deal with complicated integration, long delays in data retrieval, or unreliable reporting. The solution lies in the adoption of planning technology that can provide accurate, timely data to develop reliable reports.

Overcoming Planning and Budgeting Challenges

Companies can address these issues with today’s planning technology. Precisely's solution enables the extraction of financial data from SAP systems and integration with information from non-SAP systems. This integration can streamline and speed up budgeting cycles, and enables more in-depth analysis and decision making. The solution also uses existing SAP system logons and familiar tools, such as Microsoft Excel, so users can avoid adding custom code or making changes to the SAP environment. Using Precisely in the planning and budgeting process can help deliver greater data accuracy as well as time and process improvements during four key steps: load, plan, automate, and analyze (see Figure 1). Consolidating all data from an organization’s disparate systems becomes simpler, and once it’s consolidated, it can be used to model complex simulations. This allows managers to build their budgets around accurate, timely data instead of feeling as though they have to circumvent inaccurate and slow processes. With automation speeding up budgeting and forecasting, businesses can perform analyses that deliver actionable business insights, enabling managers to align their budgeting and forecasting strategies with overall business goals.  

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The goal of every organization is to have budgeting and forecasting supported by fast processes and accurate data, but many struggle to realize that goal. Learn how Precisely can help by enabling shortened budget cycles, improved planning data processes, and actionable insights across multiple SAP systems at precisely.com.