Waypoints: Ideas and Insights to Navigate Enterprise Complexity

Raise your hand if you’re looking forward to your annual budget process this year. Obviously, I can’t see who has their hand up and who doesn’t. But I’m willing to bet that very few, if any, of you read that first line and thought, “Oh yeah, I can’t wait!” The yearly process of asking for the moon and getting back a lump of green cheese eats up a significant amount of a business’ productive time and can often have a negative impact on morale in many departments. Nevertheless, it’s unreasonable to think that any business can function effectively without an accurate forecast of the revenue and expenses expected in the months and years ahead. Many companies have turned to a more flexible and less onerous approach, the rolling forecast.

Imagine this – you are a company with hundreds of thousands of customers. As part of doing business, you also have multi-year contracts with each of your customers.

Now imagine planning for the new revenue recognition standards. I know … it’s daunting.