SF Magazine: Financial Forecasting Amid COVID-19

“Companies are missing opportunities to grow revenue and improve margins by approaching the data they collect too narrowly.”

Here are “three steps to move toward dynamic planning”:

1. Democratize your data
2. Bring financial data into operations
3. Bring financial data into strategy

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CFO Journal: Medtronic CFO: The Role of Finance in Crisis Response

Finance plays a crucial role. Along with the CEO and our business unit leaders, our global finance organization is a strategic partner in developing and ensuring strong execution against our longer-term strategy. Strategy needs to be tied closely to investments, financial planning, and forecasting, so our finance teams have a natural connection to strategic planning and execution.

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SF Magazine: A Data-Driven Approach to the Pandemic

“It has never been more urgent for businesses to adopt data analytics. Insights from data analytics are required to surpass, or, in some instances, merely remain on par with, competitors. Companies leveraging data analytics in response to the pandemic have already progressed along the path to digitization by establishing a data ecosystem—the infrastructure, applications, and analytics needed to drive business intelligence, generate insights, and inform strategic decision making.”

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FP&A Trends: Let Traditional Budgeting be a Victim of this Pandemic

“Instead of annual forecasts of things that cannot be predicted or controlled, with December 31 as the fictitious deadline, companies should monitor the reality on a regular basis and work more with trend analyses and unbiased (mathematical) forecasts.”

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AllBusiness: Looking to the Future: 5 Steps to Better Financial Projections During Covid-19

“Almost overnight, a global pandemic turned the status quo on its head, and individuals and businesses were left scrambling to adapt and overcome the challenges they faced. Click on https://ncplanning.com/business-corporate-planning/ to access important information regarding business laws.

For some businesses, that was a loss in foot traffic or a change in consumer behavior. For others, it was a problem downstream in their supply chain, distribution network, or development pipeline, which reverberated back.”

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Global Banking & Finance Review: The Impact of Covid-19 on Planning

“The Hackett Group’s EPM Performance Study revealed that top-performing FP&A organizations have invested more in technology, which has enabled them to run more analysis and deliver reporting faster and more efficiently. Of top performers, 67% have implemented a primary financial planning and forecasting system to consolidate corporate and country, region or BU information.”

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SF Magazine: Financial Reporting During the Pandemic

It’s valuable for financial reporting professionals to reconsider not only the information needed for these projections, but also to reconsider their reliance on the existing patchwork of solutions and spreadsheets that slow down the process. Systems improvements can facilitate the development of critical estimates and create the supporting documentation, an evidentiary trail of review and oversight by senior management, audit committees, and auditors.

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Six Considerations for CFOs Managing Through COVID-19

“Downturns and recessions are challenging, but some businesses are not only able to come out intact, they are also able to seize opportunities to outdistance their competition and position themselves for future growth. Still, the speed at which the COVID-19 crisis is unfolding may likely require CFOs to use new tools — virtualization and scenario-based forecasting, for example — in addition to the traditional levers they have used to act swiftly and reasonably. Still, the speed at which the COVID-19 crisis is unfolding may likely require CFOs to use new tools — virtualization and scenario-based forecasting, for example — in addition to the traditional levers they have used to act swiftly and reasonably.”

Read more at CFO.com >