-by John Florio, General Manger at PARIS Technologies
Abraham Lincoln has a famous quote, “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”
Not many of us enjoy taking part in the budgeting process each year. The process is the most tedious and potentially risky task we do to keep a business running smoothly. It may be stressful to decide what decisions to make for the future of your business. It is also challenging to weed through multiple cells of Excel spreadsheets and never feel truly organized.
The budgeting process actually CAN get easier, while still using the Excel software you are comfortable with. Excel spreadsheets are obviously well-known. But spreadsheets can be a nightmare in any healthy-sized company. Consolidating multiple spreadsheets, sharing documents with multiple people, and handling numbers manually are all very risky actions. The margin for error and misappropriated time grows with each additional spreadsheet, and frankly with each additional hour spent agonizing over them.
Cutting the budgeting process time down drastically leaves time to invest in OTHER aspects of your company.
So, how do you find that extra time, eliminate errors, and give everyone something to love about budgeting? How do you ensure that budget and forecast plan data is centralized, so that there is now “one version of the truth,” How do you accommodate “what if” analysis so that it is done dynamically throughout a shared model? How do you maintain data security, so that dozens of staff can see only what they are meant to see—but see enough to feel a sense of collaboration in the budgeting and forecasting process?
There IS budgeting and forecasting software that accelerates and enhances the way you use Excel spreadsheets.
When you implement a powerful, effective budgeting and forecasting solution you empower your employees to provide more value to the business with insightful analysis. You eliminate personal fatigue and frustration. Most important, you have CONTROL over what is often a chaotic process.
PARIS Tech does all of these things, and delivers them within the Excel interface you are familiar with. Sharpen your axe with a set of tools built right into Excel—tools with the flexibility to match the process to your business. Tools that your users will love because it makes them effective contributors to the business.
Why exhaust yourself spending six hours chopping down a tree, when you really only have to spend two?
(This post was originally published on Jan 27, 2022 and had been refreshed for you reading pleasure.)
