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What a pain planning is and so divorced from the unknowable reality residing right around the corner. Robert Burns may have expressed it best at the end of the 18th century, when he wrote:
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
And how much more likely are those plans to go astray when they’re drawn up in
We expect an oracular utterance from this complex divination, yet find ourselves frustrated. The only thing that seems certain from the process of financial planning and enterprise resource management is disappointment.
IBM says that’s because financial professionals don’t use the right software. The company recently posted a whitepaper to Proformative designed to help CFOs and other financial folk figure out what type of tools they need and how best to implement them.
It’s an important topic. Better planning and resource
IBM suggests that planning may be improved dramatically even without forking over for a new software system simply by changing the processes used. It recommends aligning strategic and operational plans, regularly reviewing and merging top-down plans with bottom-up tactics, attribute stats to their business drivers, encourage cross-functional collaboration and build in the ability to adapt to changes. Inflexible systems with non-standard data sources are like torpedoes into the hull of any planning process.
Be sure to check out the company’s extensive list of things to look for in a software system that will help with each one of those process suggestions.
