The Ledger

Harvard Business Review: How Companies Can Prepare for a Long Run of High Inflation

“First and foremost, understand your entire value chain and its exposure to supply chain shocks. In other words, go beyond learning about just your immediate supplier — figure out the supplier behind your supplier, and so on. Even a minor subcomponent crisscrosses the world at various manufacturing stages. Assess the risk of disruption at each stage, develop alternative sources of supply, and keep sufficient inventory. Those days of keeping lean, just-in-time inventories are gone.”

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Harvard Business Review: 3 Stumbling Blocks that Get in the Way of Strategic Planning

“But there’s a paradox, as Adrian outlined. Budgeting takes place within the context set by the strategic plan. The point at which the budget is set is the same point at which executive and shareholder expectations are put in place. Now circumstances change. And in a flexible planning environment so too does the strategic plan. What happens to the budget?”

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CFO Magazine: 3 CFO Priorities for An Unstable Time

“CFOs are asking their crews to sail across the ocean without a map. Finance chiefs need to step up their focus on reliable demand forecasting.

Technology can be a major help. Has your company’s finance group started using digital tools such as predictive analytics and business visualization applications?  These tools improve management’s understanding of business drivers and their impacts.”

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CFO Journal: The CFO Agenda

“Although weekly reforecasting or monthly scenario planning may wane as the pandemic does, CFOs are not likely to revert to their prior ways of doing things. As a result, CFOs will likely have to demonstrate their own agility as leaders, equipping the enterprise with what it may need most: insight on what drives its value and fulfills its purpose and options to maximize both.”

Read More at The Wall Street Journal >