Better forecasting and budgeting - one-day course

Member price: £361 + VAT

Non-member price: £425 + VAT

Timing: 9.30am-4.30pm

Overview

When the conventional annual budget is replaced by the combination of a more credible budgeting process and a rolling forecast, a responsive and highly-effective management tool can emerge. On this course discover how to:

• Create a dynamic rolling forecast for both revenue and expenditure
• Produce a budgeting process that can quickly reflect the output from the rolling forecast
• Make your budgeting process responsive to plans inspired by changes in strategy and the market; plus competitor moves, advances in technology, efficiency and process improvement ideas
• Play a pivotal role as a catalyst for change

Who should attend

Board members, senior managers and accountants with responsibility for budgeting.

This course is best suited to delegates from commercial enterprises but delegates from the public sector are welcome to attend if they would like to keep up to date with practice and trends within the commercial industry.

What you will learn

• Why do we budget?
  • The need to fully understand the key purposes and priorities that budgets and the budgeting process are there to fulfil
  • The complex and different requirements that can emerge from stakeholders across the business
• Are budgets doing what we need them to do?
  • Six key elements of budgetary practice that have a critical influence over the quality of the result, the central one being the relationship with strategy
  • Elements of ‘traditional’ budgetary practice that need to be challenged
  • Ways to diagnose the health of the budgeting process
  • The importance of separating forecasts from budgets
  • The importance of building drivers of value into budgets and forecasts
  • Roles, responsibilities, measures and behaviours that support progressive budgeting
• The role of the rolling forecast
  • Why have a rolling forecast and what has to roll
  • The information needed to make it happen
  • The key analytics that underpin its strength and that drive improvement in quality
  • Using a rolling forecast as a catalyst for change
  • Its partnership with performance measurement systems
• With better forecasting in place, the core requirement for the budget
  • An opportunity to fully understand the costs and cost based risk
  • A mechanism for robust driver based cost management and efficiency improvement
  • A time to review plans, accountability and control
• Getting started on implementing change
  • Freeing up time for the change agents
  • Using measures of effectiveness as a compelling reason for change
  • The role that benchmarking can play
  • Getting the first steps on the road to change underway

Questions?

BPP | Tel: 0330 060 3303 | Email: ldicas@bpp.com