The Ledger

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Tag Archives: Forecasting

CFO Magazine: 91% of CFOs Concerned with Hitting Sales Forecasts: Weekly Stat

“Using technology for accurate decision-making is paramount for any finance executive looking to overcome both the short- and long-term consequences of a recession. With nearly half (46%) of CFOs telling Coupa they lack visibility into company spending data, a proper tech stack’s value to any CFO is continuing to become a requirement for success.”

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CFO Journal: Why an Emphasis on Cash Flow Forecasting Remains Critical

“Enhancing forecasting can help companies build resilience, address potential liquidity concerns, and avoid falling into distress. It can also be a powerful tool to drive better decisions.”

Read More at The Wall Street Journal >

CFO Magazine: Cycle Time for Short-Term Cash Forecasting: Metric of the Month

“If your team is still forecasting manually with spreadsheets, there’s a good chance you will see dirty data and errors that require rework. Those will add to your cycle time. Automated forecasting tools on the market today can pull in finance data automatically from a banking source or from the general ledger. Creating a template that automatically populates the data you need can cut down on the time that you would otherwise spend finding and keying in that data manually.”

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CFO Magazine: Only 27% of Businesses Can Forecast at Scale With Data Analysis Tools

“Dependency on data, and the accuracy of that data, is pivotal for any organization. But in a recent research report from insightsoftware, less than a third (27%) of organizations said a majority of their users can forecast at scale using current data analysis tools. As dependency on data increases in all industries, low confidence around that data may result in less reliable business forecasts.”

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FP&A Trends: Best Practices to Drive Transition to Extended Financial Planning & Analysis (xP&A)

“To achieve an integrated FP&A, organisations and their leaders need to focus on key success factors”

  1. Data & Key Drivers
  2. Driver-Based Model
  3. Way Financial View
  4. Integrated Processes
  5. Integrated People
  6. Integrated Platform

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CFO Magazine: 49% of Finance Professionals Worry Cash Flow Data is Unreliable: Weekly Stat

“As the economic outlook for the next twelve months continues to be poor, real-time financial data will be “key to survival” according to the survey. Rising pressures on CFOs will result in more data-reliant decision-making.”

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CFO Magazine: Budgeting vs. Forecasting: You Likely Need Both

“While a rigorous budget process shines a light on new initiatives and long-term goals, while also providing the guardrails for the coming year, sometimes facts on the ground change and you need to understand that and respond accordingly. If the changes are material, that response should include an accurate and sufficiently detailed forecast. Running a business is challenging. Attempting it with limited visibility will mute its successes and may even hasten its demise.”

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CFO Journal: Automated Financial Forecasting: Upgrading Talent Models

“Functional finance expertise alone is not enough. To architect a finance function to achieve continuous forecasting, it is critical for the CFO to instill a bias for data-based decision making, continuous improvement of data and predictive models, and a passion for technology enablement.”

Read More at The Wall street Journal >

CFO Journal: Automated Financial Forecasting: Remaking the Planning Process

“A solid foundation of data quality and data management is the first essential input to establishing automated, adaptable, and real-time forecasting. Leveraging continuous flows of data, algorithmic forecasting models allow organizations to quickly adapt to ever-changing business environments.”

Read More at The Wall Street Journal >