年度预算流程、计划和最佳实践

All companies have to prepare annual budgets, but many don’t understand the real purpose behind the exercise. If a budget fails to influence and promote behavioral change across an organization, it remains a work of fiction, imposed from above and adopted with varying degrees of resignation or cynicism.

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The budget is a blend of art and science. It needs to tell a compelling story for people to believe in it and reflect that with their behavior. During budget season, the finance team’s efforts quickly get stuck in the weeds of spreadsheet overload, and the real story is lost.

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There is a better way of building a budget to reflect the company’s priorities, stimulate growth, and encourage employee engagement. That’s what we’re offering here: the opportunity to get back to basics and rethink budgeting (as well as other fundamental financial processes we’ll discuss over the following weeks).

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Giving more responsibility, getting more accountability

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The most effective annual budgets are both operational and financial, rather than an arbitrary, top-down, purely finance-driven exercise. They make the budget process transparent and accessible to all involved. This organizational alignment ensures that departmental leaders have ownership of their segment of the plan, know how the overall budget affects them, and, as a result, gain a clearer vision of both tactical and larger strategic goals.

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The results of getting the budgeting approach right are that businesses become more efficient, waste less time on spreadsheet manipulation, and operate more cost-effectively. When the budgeting process transitions from overly focusing on the accounting perspective to being about the real drivers behind the business, then the departmental heads feel more inherent responsibility and ownership toward the numbers. And beyond these intangible benefits to morale, people who feel more like owners will show more accountability to deliver on those numbers.

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For management, mastering the basics of budgeting will better position them to make decisions that can increase revenue, decrease costs, and improve free cash flow and working capital.

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Bring your lines of business into the budget process early

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A former boss of mine liked to say, “nobody went to budgeting school.” Below, Nadine Pichelot, VP of Finance, EMEA at Anaplan, shares her perspective on how to get the most out of the budgeting process. Pichelot previously spent more than 20 years as a finance leader and CFO at several companies. She has managed teams using budgeting methodologies of all types, including zero-based, top-down, and bottom-up budgeting.

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Pichelot observes that the best budgeting processes start at the top, with business leaders thinking through the commercial and operational drivers that influence their financial plans. Key considerations include market size, projected growth or decline in market share, demand shifts, cost inputs (raw materials, employee costs, transportation, advertising, and more), competitive pressures, and the regulatory environment. You also build in the company’s high-level goals for the year (and looking ahead to future years).

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It’s important to reach out to the operational departments and regions to find out their budget expectations for the coming year, and balance those bottom-up projections against the top-down goals. Bring the departments into the budgeting process as early as possible, Pichelot says: “Finance should take the lead, but finance needs the operational departments involved… or you have only a partial process.”

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Of course, even in prosperous times, no budget can satisfy everyone’s hopes. You can’t blithely assume that, say, the manufacturing output will go up 10% across the board without buying replacements for outdated equipment. Or that every project on R&D’s wish list will get funded. Involving the leaders from these operational departments gives everyone more perspective. Executives gain more realistic expectations in relation to the productivity of their workforce. Line-of-business heads get a better sense of how much (or little) new funding is up for grabs. Those operational managers know they’ll have to make trade-offs, but they’ll be more accepting of the results when they see the assumptions that went into them and have a voice in how they are shaped.

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Make smart trade-offs

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This kind of collaboratively validated budget process relies on everyone working off a single set of numbers and expectations. “If you don’t have a budget process that makes sure you start out with shared assumptions, working from a single source of the truth, it ends up wasting a lot of time,” Pichelot cautions. “You spend a lot of time chasing down facts or settling misunderstandings. And then you’re not really spending the time where you should be, which is working with your functional leads.

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“For example, my chief development officer should only be focused on questions like, ‘How do I get the budget to cover my new R&D projects and my product development?’ And all my sales director should be worried about is ‘How will you fund my sales force? How will you make me more productive?’” A transparent, efficient budget process will let these executives make their cases for funding, or else accept prudent trade-offs. Discussing how to allot your resources is worthwhile when it keeps you aligned to larger corporate priorities, Pichelot explains.

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“[With an inefficient budget process,] you’re spending all your time reconciling data – saying things like, ‘Oh, by the way, I need to take away half a million here to fill a hole of half a million in another department,’ which shouldn’t be the case. You end up doing stupid trade-offs.”

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Spreadsheet chaos versus a single source of the truth

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This brings us to the biggest hindrance in annual budgeting: manual, spreadsheet-driven processes. Some of the world’s largest, most successful companies still rely on sending around copies of spreadsheets for lines of business to fill out and the finance team to reconcile. That’s a huge waste of time, Pichelot says.

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“Spending hours and hours reconciling numbers in leadership meetings – that has happened to me! Someone will say, ‘I entered that number, so I know it’s right.’ And someone else will reply, “Oh, no. You’re working off the wrong assumptions. Which cells did you change?’ Sometimes they won’t even remember what figures they changed.”

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In fact, each spreadsheet is a potential point of failure. Over weeks and months, errors accumulate. Links break. Version control issues increase with time. There’s no real-time visibility into performance against objectives. By the time information is communicated across the business, it’s out of date.

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No wonder the annual budgeting process can take three or four months, sometimes even five, to complete, when it’s hampered by outdated technology.

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“When I joined Anaplan, of course we used our own software platform for our internal financial planning processes. I saw how much faster and more efficient it is when everyone has access to the same set of data, on a shared platform,” Pichelot says. “For example, there’s a built-in audit trail, so you’re not spending time tracking down which figures got changed. And you can easily view all the KPIs – not just financial ones but operational indicators like contract renewal rates or staff hiring and attrition rates.”

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This offers benefits beyond making the process faster and more accurate, she points out: It helps the budget better reflect the company’s overall strategy. “Even if you have an efficient budgeting process, it can defeat its own purpose if you haven’t listened to your operational leaders and assigned the right funding priorities to the various functions. Finance shouldn’t be acting in a vacuum. It plays a role in gathering information and setting the cadence, of course. But it should also be fostering a more thoughtful budget process across each department.”

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A budget built to support business growth

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Part of that more thoughtful process, Pichelot adds, is offering the flexibility to reflect changes during the budgeting cycle, whether due to executive priority shifts or the external shocks that came all too often in 2020. Even a final, approved annual budget isn’t meant to be a pair of handcuffs. Rather, it should point out a clear direction of travel for the next 12 months, ensuring that employees are accountable to the plan and motivated to deliver on its objectives.

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With that kind of process in place, the annual budget becomes less “spreadsheet fantasy” and more a realistic foundation for business growth.

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所有公司都必须准备年度预算，但许多公司并不了解这项工作背后的真正目的。如果预算不能影响和促进整个组织的行为改变，它仍然是一种虚构的作品，是从上面强加的，并以不同程度的顺从或愤世嫉俗的方式被采纳。

预算是艺术和科学的结合。它需要讲述一个令人信服的故事，让人们相信它，并在他们的行为中反映出来。在预算季节，财务团队的努力很快就会陷入电子表格过载的杂草中，而真正的故事就会丢失。

有一种更好的方法来制定预算，以反映公司的优先事项，刺激增长，并鼓励员工敬业。这就是我们在这里提供的:一个回归基本并重新思考预算的机会(以及我们将在接下来的几周讨论的其他基本财务流程)。

给予更多的责任，承担更多的责任

最有效的年度预算是业务预算和财务预算，而不是武断的、自上而下的、纯粹由财务驱动的预算。它们使预算过程透明，并使所有相关人员都能获得。这种组织一致性确保了部门领导对他们的计划部分拥有所有权，了解整体预算如何影响他们，并因此对战术和更大的战略目标有更清晰的认识。

正确使用预算方法的结果是，企业变得更有效率，在电子表格操作上浪费的时间更少，运营成本效益更高。当预算过程从过度关注会计角度转变为关注业务背后的真正驱动力时，部门主管就会对数字感到更多的内在责任和所有权。除了这些对士气的无形好处之外，那些感觉更像老板的人会表现出更多的责任来实现这些数字。

对于管理层来说，掌握预算的基础知识将使他们更好地做出能够增加收入、降低成本、改善自由现金流和营运资本的决策。

尽早将你的业务线纳入预算流程

我的一位前任老板喜欢说:“没人去学过预算。”下面，anplan的EMEA财务副总裁Nadine Pichelot分享了她对如何充分利用预算流程的看法。Pichelot此前在多家公司担任财务主管和首席财务官超过20年。她曾使用各种预算方法管理团队，包括从零开始的自上而下和自下而上的预算。

Pichelot观察到，最好的预算流程是从高层开始的，由企业领导人考虑影响其财务计划的商业和运营驱动因素。主要考虑因素包括市场规模、预计市场份额的增长或下降、需求变化、成本投入(原材料、员工成本、运输、广告等)、竞争压力和监管环境。你还可以制定公司今年的高层目标(以及展望未来)致未来岁月）.

与运营部门和地区接触，了解他们对来年的预算预期，并平衡自下而上的预测和自上而下的目标，这一点很重要。Pichelot表示，尽早将各部门纳入预算编制过程:“财务部门应该发挥主导作用，但财务部门需要业务部门的参与……否则你就只能进行部分流程。”

当然，即使在经济繁荣时期，也没有任何预算能满足所有人的希望。你不能轻率地假设，如果不购买过时设备的替代品，制造业产出将全面增长10%。或者研发部门愿望清单上的每个项目都会得到资助。让这些运营部门的领导参与进来，让每个人都有更多的视角。高管们对员工的生产力有了更现实的期望。业务部门的负责人可以更好地了解有多少(或多少)新资金可供争夺。这些运营经理知道他们必须做出取舍，但当他们看到这些假设并对结果的形成有发言权时，他们会更接受结果。

做出明智的权衡

这种协作验证的预算过程依赖于每个人都根据一组数字和期望工作。Pichelot警告说:“如果你没有一个预算流程来确保你从共同的假设开始，从单一的事实来源开始工作，那么最终会浪费很多时间。”“你花了很多时间追查事实或消除误解。然后你就没有真正把时间花在你应该花的地方，也就是和你的职能领导一起工作。

“例如，我的首席开发官应该只关注这样的问题:‘我如何获得预算来支付我的新研发项目和产品开发?’而我的销售总监应该担心的是‘你们如何为我的销售团队提供资金?你怎样才能提高我的工作效率?一个透明、高效的预算程序将使这些高管能够为资金辩护，否则就会接受谨慎的权衡。皮切洛特解释说，讨论如何分配你的资源是值得的，因为它能让你与更大的公司优先事项保持一致。

“(由于预算流程效率低下)，你把所有的时间都花在核对数据上——说一些诸如‘哦，顺便说一下，我需要从这里拿走50万美元来填补另一个部门50万美元的缺口’之类的话，这是不应该的。”你最终会做出愚蠢的权衡。”

混乱的电子表格和单一的真相来源

这给我们带来了年度预算的最大障碍:手工、电子表格驱动的流程。世界上一些最大、最成功的公司仍然依赖于发送电子表格副本，让业务部门填写，让财务团队协调。皮切洛特说，这是对时间的巨大浪费。

“在领导会议上花几个小时调和数字——这在我身上发生过!”有人会说，‘我输入了那个数字，所以我知道它是对的。’其他人会回答说:“哦，不。你的假设是错误的。你换了哪些单元格?’有时他们甚至不记得自己改了哪些数据。”

事实上，每个电子表格都是一个潜在的失败点。数周或数月之后，错误就会累积起来。打破的链接。版本控制问题随着时间的推移而增加。对目标的表现没有实时可见性。当信息在整个企业中传播时，它已经过时了。

难怪年度预算流程需要三到四个月，有时甚至五个月才能完成，因为它受到过时技术的阻碍。

“当我加入anplan时，我们当然是用自己的软件平台为我们的内部财务规划程序。我看到，当每个人都能在一个共享平台上访问同一组数据时，它是多么的快速和高效。”“例如，有一个内置的审计跟踪，所以你不用花时间去追踪哪些数据被修改了。你可以很容易地查看所有的关键绩效指标——不仅是财务指标，还有合同续订率、员工招聘率和流失率等运营指标。”

她指出，这样做的好处不仅仅是使流程更快、更准确，还有助于预算更好地反映公司的整体战略。“即使你有一个有效的预算流程，如果你没有听取业务领导的意见，并为各个职能部门分配正确的资金优先级，它也会违背自己的目的。金融不应该在真空中行动。当然，它在收集信息和设定节奏方面起着作用。但它也应该在每个部门培养一个更周到的预算程序。”

为支持业务增长而制定的预算

皮切洛补充说，这一更为深思熟虑的过程的一部分是提供灵活性，以反映预算周期中的变化，无论是由于高管优先事项的变化，还是由于2020年过于频繁的外部冲击。即使是最终通过的年度预算也不意味着是一副手铐。相反，它应该指出未来12个月的明确发展方向，确保员工对计划负责，并有动力实现目标。

有了这样的流程，年度预算就不再是“电子表格的幻想”，而更像是业务增长的现实基础。