How to transform budgeting and forecasting with Dynamics GP and BOARD

Blog: Professional advantage - BPM blog

It’s not an easy time to be an Australian business. While the Aussie dollar has hit an eight-month high and business confidence has stabilised, experts report increased pressure on wages, profits and revenue growth.

In this uncertain economic climate, businesses need to take greater control of accounting and inventory. They must also improve their ability to plan ahead and carefully manage cash flow. An ERP platform like Microsoft Dynamics GP is a great place to start.

But if you already use Dynamics GP, what else can you do to help your business thrive in difficult conditions?
One of the simplest ways to improve financial performance is to get rid of spreadsheet-based budgeting and forecasting. By swapping spreadsheets for dashboards that provide visibility across all data sources, you can analyse, predict and interpret financial information in new ways.

In this post I’ll explain why spreadsheets fall short for budgeting and forecasting, and how a BI and CPM tool like BOARD Software can help.

The problem with Excel spreadsheets

According to a recent KPMG survey, chief financial officers rank planning, budgeting and forecasting as their top priorities. The bad news is that 70 per cent of companies rely on spreadsheets to do so.

Excel spreadsheets are fine for basic reports, but they’re not ideal for sophisticated budgeting and forecasting. Not only are they time-consuming and prone to error, but they also lack version control and centralised backup. They don’t have workflows or approvals, and numbers must be consolidated manually.

It sounds like a nightmare, right? It gets worse.

In many cases, only one or two employees are familiar with a business’ Excel budget model. If team members leave, that hard-earned knowledge is lost and must be replaced, often at considerable expense.

If you’re serious about improving your ability to plan ahead, you need a more reliable, accurate and powerful budgeting and forecasting solution.

How BOARD Software helps

BOARD is a visual modelling toolkit that takes any Dynamics GP solution from great to brilliant. It’s also one of the only products to combine business intelligence and corporate performance management in one.

With BOARD, Dynamics GP clients don’t need to use spreadsheets for budgeting and forecasting. By integrating BOARD and Dynamics GP, users receive a holistic view of their business performance, from operational execution to results monitoring.

BOARD provides:

an advanced, easy-to-use forecasting framework
workflow approvals
a platform for multiple users to work on the same file
links to your financials in Dynamics GP
browser access so you don’t need Excel to view or edit data
a secure database so you never lose valuable information.

Why BOARD?

We recommend BOARD for Dynamics GP clients who want to eliminate unreliable Excel budgeting and forecasting spreadsheets, while gaining improved visibility into their data.

To discover how BOARD can optimise your business’ performance, register for Professional Advantage’s free webinar, Advanced budgeting and forecasting for Dynamics GP.

You can also read more about Professional Advantage and BOARD here.