Strategic Planning, Budgeting and Rolling Forecasts 
Auckland, 23-24 August 2012
This two day in-depth masterclass will allow you to effectively link strategic planning, budgeting and forecasting. Rolling forecasts offer greater visibility into future operating performance. Unlike budgets, they reflect the fact that operations don't switch off at year-end. Making good business projections is not as hard as it sounds. Well-established forecasting techniques, used properly, can significantly improve profits. Implementing forecasts and invigorating your planning techniques can take some of the guesswork out of operational decision-making and put the focus back on optimising profitability, rather than putting out fires.
Strategic planning in organisations
- Strategic planning models & frameworks
- From strategic plan to business plan
- Strategic plans and financial plans
- Identifying strategic gaps and risks
- Communicating strategy across the organisation
Building financial plans
- The traditional budget process
- Integrating planning and budgeting
- Involving managers at an operational level in the budgeting process
- Communicating the budget process
Leading edge trends in budgeting
- Beyond budgeting
- Activity based budgeting
- Zero based budgeting
- Priority based budgeting
- Trending and benchmarking
Why change from traditional budgeting to a rolling forecast?
- Why do so many managers dislike the traditional budgeting system?
- Budgets versus forecasts
- Historical versus forecasted
- Identifying your reasons for changing to a rolling forecast
- Determining the benefits gained from rolling forecasts
Changing the way you set targets and measure performance
- Linking performance management and forecasts
- How does the budget fit within the overall context of business planning and performance management?
- Successfully integrating forecasting and budgeting as essential tools for measuring performance
Examining the factors that can improve your forecasting capabilities
- Standardising your inputs and forecast methods
- Limiting biases
- Measuring performance
- Adopting collaborative sales and operational planning
Examining forecasting methods
- High/low extrapolation
- Time series decomposition
- Regression
- Consensus forecasts
- Scenarios
- Trending
- Benchmarking
Matching rolling forecast time periods to your business cycle
- Rolling forecast time period vs level of detail for your business needs
- Determining the time spent on planning and budgeting
- Relating your rolling forecast to month end
Identifying and using business drivers in the rolling forecast
- Identifying drivers specific to your organisation and processes
- Linking rolling forecasts with the reality of past results
- Accommodating multiple business components
Designing and implementing rolling forecasts
- Incorporating the variables to establish accurate indicators and benchmarks
- Creating an adaptive performance measurement framework
- Measuring against benchmarks rather than budgets
- Linking activity based budgeting (ABB) in a rolling forecast process
- Software solutions supporting rolling forecasts
Critical success factors: Managing and controlling the implementation
- The key building blocks for an effective rolling forecast process
- Obtaining early management buy-in and stakeholder acceptance of the need for change
- Developing the business case for change, identifying costs and estimated benefits
- Techniques for avoiding the pitfalls associated with implementation
Linking rolling forecasts with your strategic planning
- Using a rolling forecast as a management tool
- Integrating forecasts into the strategy review
- Strategy, plans and performance indicators
- Linking rolling forecasts to your financial reporting
- Fast tracking month end close
- Changing from reporting actuals to budget and replacing this with actuals to forecast
- Complementing your financial reporting with KPI reporting
The facilitator for this course is Aubrey Joachim, Principal Consultant, Leading Edge Change.
Aubrey Joachim (Australia) FCMA; MBA; GAICD is a Chartered Management Accountant a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants UK, and MBA and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He has over 30 years of strategic management accounting experience with global conglomerates (Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever and US Energy giant McDermott International Inc.) in South Asia, the Middle East, South East Asia and UK.
For more information on this course and to register, please click here.
CSNZ confirms that this event qualifies for Structured CPD credits based on 1 credit per hour of attendance.
