inlumi blog

Many CFOs sense that there are pockets of inefficiency in their organisations. They then contract one or more consulting firms to help rationalise spend and streamline operations. The theories brought to the table by the consulting firms are fantastic and stem from either deep experience or benchmarking.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to budgeting or forecasting. Some organisations keep it relatively high-level using a subset of accounts, while others conduct planning at the same levels of actuals. There is one common denominator, however: speed.

It is a reality that employee-related costs comprise a significant percentage of an organisation’s operational costs. Typically, a Workforce planning solution caters to the traditional finance cycle of the annual budget and the year-to-go periods of the quarterly forecasting. If an organisation wanted to perform long-term planning of Workforce costs, this was done at a cost centre level with a subset of accounts. The COVID pandemic triggered an emphasis on the costs, with organisations quickly looking for ways to gain further insight into them. A critical aspect in the decision-making is truly understanding where these costs are.

Organisations need to be continually on the lookout for potential threats arising from a competitive and ever-fluctuating market. By challenging your assumptions and planning for multiple scenarios, you will be better equipped to make informed decisions. What-if analysis in planning can enable you to evaluate potential future outcomes and to create an understanding of how different variables can affect your business goals. These variables can be anything from sales, cost of sales, personnel costs, margin, etc.

In many organisations, planning processes are still too siloed and manual to support making the right and timely decisions. A modern Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) function generating forward-looking and connected insights - without wasting time – is key for organisations to thrive in today’s dynamic environment. In this article we will address why a modern FP&A function is important and what you need to do to make that happen.

In 2016, at Domino’s Pizza Netherlands, the use of Excel was reaching its limit. The consolidation of the budget and forecast took over a day to perform. The budgeting and forecasting processes were also not fully aligned across the entities with numerous exceptions.

Holmgrens Bil, one of Sweden’s largest car dealerships, suffered from lack of a complete planning and budgeting process, with a high amount of manual work and data prone to human error. They wanted to start working with a continuous planning process which can enable better insight on a regular basis. Ideally, this would be performed via a fully digital tool where all data is collected and integrated in one place.

In 2018, after a recommendation by Oracle, Ikano Bank approached inlumi with the request to automate their budgeting and forecasting process and simplify the usage. Their ambition was to enable faster decision-making and decrease time-to-market with improved data quality, while improving the lives of finance staff.

SBAB Bank, a Swedish bank focused on mortgage lending and borrowing, was experiencing limitations in their existing EPM solution. After working for several years with Oracle Planning and Budgeting on-premise, they started looking into a more cost-effective Cloud-based way to deliver the same service to the organisation but also to provide more interactive and self-service reporting analytical tools. 

Will the software solution solve my planning issues?

In recent years, we have experienced many new software solutions for planning, budgeting and forecasting (PBF). Companies have acquired and implemented new software solutions with the anticipation that their PBF issues disappear like snow in the sun.