It’s Always Budgeting and Planning Season

Tom Kelly, Product Marketing Sr. Director

April 16, 2019

Businesses seeking to create and maintain growth need to be firmly committed to budgeting and planning. And while planning and budgeting has traditionally been an annual or quarterly endeavor, to really be successful, it is probably best to always be in a budgeting and planning mode.

Many companies undertake budgeting at the beginning of the year, as if the turn of the calendar is a magical time to reassess plans and budgets. After all, if managing your business is a year-round endeavor, shouldn’t managing your budget be too?

Yet, we know how difficult planning and budgeting can be, and we have seen many budgets or plans fail.

Organizations that are effective at continually integrating financial and operational data, embedding analytics in every process, and using advanced analytical techniques to predict future trends outrank their peers by 70 percent on measures of profit and revenue, according to Ventana Research.

A key aspect of any planning process is that it focuses a company on the right opportunities and helps identify and avoid any barriers to reaching those objectives. Without planning, you risk being swept up in the wrong opportunities, and this lack of focus can have a significant impact.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.”

----- Steve Jobs

Implementing a superior budgeting, planning and forecasting tool with the right type of process can reduce, even eliminate, uncertainty and improve efficiency while simultaneously ensuring this focus. Doing so requires employing the right planning, budgeting and forecasting application not only for early forecasting and estimates, but for measuring performance and identifying trends and deviations along the way. It provides you with a basis to be a proactive organization, nimble and quick, able to double down or make strategic changes to key opportunities when warranted.

Financial planning, budgeting and forecasting is a very complicated endeavor for any company. Clarity, flexibility and compatibility between your accounting system and planning tool is critical. NetSuite is tightly integrated with Oracle NetSuite Planning and Budgeting(opens in new tab) thanks to Oracle’s acquisition of NetSuite and the close coordination between development teams.

NetSuite launched Planning and Budgeting in 2017. The application is the next generation of Hyperion Essbase (which Oracle acquired in 2007). Its integration with NetSuite ERP forms an end-to-end performance management system that includes planning, budgeting, consolidation, operational analytics and compliance reporting.

Download this ebook to understand how planning and budgeting can impact all stages of growth(opens in new tab) and learn how Lancaster Bingo is using Planning and Budgeting to automate processes(opens in new tab).

See the data sheet for more specific details on Oracle NetSuite Planning and Budgeting(opens in new tab).

NetSuite has packaged the experience gained from tens of thousands of worldwide deployments over two decades into a set of leading practices that pave a clear path to success and are proven to deliver rapid business value. With NetSuite, you go live in a predictable timeframe — smart, stepped implementations begin with sales and span the entire customer lifecycle, so there's continuity from sales to services to support.