Improve Forecasting, Predictive Insights, and Budgeting
The Situation
A green energy company managed its forecast process on an adhoc basis. They were only able to project 3 months ahead. The company needed to develop and maintain a 12-month rolling forecast to better anticipate the needs of their seasonal business.
The Task
Create a forecast system that projects 12 months ahead using automated processes to reduce the burden on finance.
The Action / Approach
- Streamlined, effective, and mapped processes with improvement plans
- Created a clearer route to financial sustainability because energy is a seasonal sector.
- Ensured the process gets it right data first time, on time, every time by implementing high-level checks
- Reduced staffing and systems costs from automation
- Removed the risk of bad decisions made because it forecast 12, not 3 months ahead.
- Reduced delays and inaccuracy due to timely and accurate finance reporting
- Reduced audit control points and rework
The Result
The cashflow forecast project resulted in the following financial and process improvments:
- Reduced debtor days to 10 days by… The credit control team enhanced the ability to drive business growth, financial returns, cashflow, and sustainability.
- (If I put the metric at the front, not clear that the description fits the metric. What was the relationship between reduced debtor days and those actions. What if we just used the metric and did not editorise?)
- Reduced month-end financial process by 50% by using BI and finance process automation to increase the quality and speed of the process.
- Increased customer growth by 20% annually by giving time back to finance to better drive strategic topics and projects.
- Avoided issuing and £10m Bond and accompany £3/4m in interest by….
- Becoming true business partner(s) to CEO and across the business (again, not sure that the reason aligns with the metric)
The following financial pains were relieved during this project:
- The inability to maintain steady cash flow and control costs.
- Contentious stakeholder relations that absorbed excessive amounts of time to reconcile issues and concerns stemming from poor data and inadequate process transparency.
- Stress caused by poor process support for rapid growth and market volatility.
- Poor interdepartmental and cross-functional business partnerships that lead to disputed decisions.
Focus In On: Responsible for Finance / CFO
New Areas of Value:
Improved Forecasting / Predictive Insights / Budgeting
Enhanced ability to drive financial returns, cashflow and sustainability
Quality, speed and savings from optimisation and automation of finance processes
Time and resources to drive strategic topics and projects
Becoming true business partner(s) to CEO and across the business
Meaningful and actionable KPIs and metrics
Improvements around:
Unable to maintain steady cash flow and control costs
Inefficient or non-standard processes
Contentious stakeholder relations and/or lack of board confidence absorb excessive amounts of direct personal time
Fast growth / volatility causing significant stress
Not acting as a business partner due to lack of involvement in key decision making
Finance function under a lot of pressure from operational tasks
Arguing over data quality instead of supporting data driven decisions
Complex and changing government regulations across multiple jurisdictions
