Selecting Critical Business Process for BPI Projects
Using Business Process Improvement as a tool to improve internal efficiencies and to bring about the desired changes in business operations has become an accepted practice in most of the Organizations. At a time where the life cycle of products and businesses is becoming shorter and fast changing in line with changes in technology and […]
The Fall of a Giant: Wal-Mart
The fall of Wal-Mart Wal-Mart has been a global retailing behemoth. The rise of Wal-Mart is an amazing story, but it seems like the fall will be equally spectacular. Just a few decades, after Sam Walton from Bentonville Arkansas, started building the world’s largest retail empire. The same empire is today facing an existential crisis. […]
Inventory Costs – Ordering Cost, Carrying Cost and Stock Out Cost
Inventory procurement, storage and management is associated with huge costs associated with each these functions. Inventory costs are basically categorized into three headings: Ordering Cost Carrying Cost Shortage or stock out Cost & Cost of Replenishment Cost of Loss, pilferage, shrinkage and obsolescence etc. Cost of Logistics Sales Discounts, Volume discounts and other related costs. […]
Are We Living in a Reality TV Like World? How Does This Impact Business and Society?
Whoever Controls the Narrative, Wins Look around and watch what is going in the world around us and you would find that things are not they seem to be. While our business and political leaders proclaim all is well in front of the cameras, the situation on the ground deteriorates. Indeed, the rise of charismatic […]
Optical Character Recognition and E-Invoicing
Automation of business processes has become the single objective of every multinational corporation. Automation saves a lot of money in the long run. It also streamlines the process and makes it more robust. In the recent past, two technologies have helped companies automate their accounts payable departments. These two technologies are optical character recognition and […]
For an organization to succeed in the global and competitive world, it needs to have a robust strategic plan in place. The strategic plan is made of several definite targets it aspires to achieve. Some of the targets are internal (Productivity improvement, sound finance discipline, etc.) as well as external (EPS, Stockholder value, etc.). Therefore, organizations strategic consist of long-term planning, organizational development, treasury management and value management.
Financial planning and forecasting are integral part of strategic finance. Organization needs to develop strategic finance tools, which can take into account scenario analysis as well as modeling capabilities. A strategic finance tool should help in quickly developing finance models and evaluate various financial scenarios. These financial scenarios can suggest sophisticated debt and capital structure management. Strategic finance tools should be connected to enterprise performance management tools as well as other databases. A strategic finance tool should provide a convincing finance solution which further can be used to set internal targets, perform financial analysis and provide data to perform informed decision making.
Organization requires a robust and flexible finance tool to analyze ever evolving financial and business market. The finance tool should be capable of doing what-if scenario modeling. It should also allow development of finance models, which can be used to carry our impact analysis based on dynamic variables and reach targets, which can be assigned to other departments.
At present, most of the finance modeling is done through spreadsheets. However, these spreadsheets are somewhat difficult to manage, lack data integrity and do not integrate with other aspects of finance modeling like strategic planning and treasury.
Strategic finance module helps the organization in the sensitivity analysis as well as what if analysis allowing to gain deeper understanding of various strategic scenarios and develop business intelligence. Since the strategic finance tool is integrated with other business modules all possible disconnect between strategic targets, and operational plans are analyzed.
Finance modeling provides insight into impact of strategic decisions on company’s bottom line, cash flow, balance sheet and shareholder value. Strategic finance module provides the bridge between finance modeling and financial analysis. Its gives flexibility in developing finance models and measure impact on financial statements. Strategic finance modules have an in-built finance model which saves time from designing and developing spreadsheet based models. Finance modeling tools' users need not be trained in writing complex logic statements. The finance tool provides users flexibility of adding as many complexities as required. The finance tool provides users to invest more time in doing analysis and developing alternate strategies rather spending time in validating data.
Any strategic finance decision has a direct impact on cash flow of the company. In turn cash flow impacts the balance sheet, hence financial performance within the company. The strategic finance tool connects finance decision-making process to working capital management to capital structure to taxation. This connection adds value to organization and reduces overall cost of capital.
A strategic finance tool also has a consolidation module which provides the total view to decision makers.
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Communication Systems and Groupware – Information System Concepts that Apply in All Functional Areas of Business
February 12, 2025
