Planning, budgeting and forecasting still costly for companies

Last minute changes can result in reduced stakeholder buy-in, but some organisation are managing the budgeting process within one month, the report revealed.

The level of detail demanded from planning, budgeting and forecasting activities remains high, regardless of company size, with finance as the primary owner of these processes in 86 per cent of organisations.

Moreover, 60 per cent of respondents only look at financial outcomes rather than other corporate performance indicators.

Simon Barnes, partner in Deloitte UK and author of the survey said: “It is clearly an unacceptable waste of time, effort and resource to spend up to six months preparing a set of numbers that few in the enterprise believe and even fewer use. 

“Businesses need to understand these processes are a key component to how information is generated and processed, how decisions are made and how responses are formulated – all of which steer the organisation and impact future performance.”

Simon Kerton-Johnson, partner and UK finance leader at Deloitte, added: “Change not only requires processes to be reengineered. A cultural shift must take place across all executive and staff communities.”

In addition to culture, five areas emerged from the survey as challenges to achieving improved planning, budgeting and forecasting: exploiting technology, clarifying decision-making responsibilities, applying process discipline, using and integrating forecasting properly.

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