Budgeting and forecasting is one of those unavoidable tasks that most of us would prefer not to do, especially for a company with multiple moving parts. So how can you improve your budgeting and forecasting?
Any healthy-sized company would agree that Excel spreadsheets are not intuitive, dynamic, or powerful enough to handle modern business demands. Modern tools expedite the budgeting and forecasting process by including collaboration, a natural prerequisite in planning for the future. Spending within your company’s means is important to maintaining a competitive edge, especially within the mining and mining services industry.
Making room for something new.
Improving your budgeting and forecasting process tends to involve multiple players bringing current research and historical actuals to the table for a new, informed strategy. Most financial professionals have used Excel, and despite being trusted, it can be logistically tedious, especially when it comes to collaboration, consolidation of spreadsheets, and security. Because most of us already have Excel, investing in another product might seem expensive. However, third-party budgeting solutions are becoming more popular through increasingly improving the mining and mining services’ budgeting and planning processes.
Easy-to-use, collaborative, and flexible budgeting platforms have increased the popularity of budgeting and forecasting software. One way has been through having an interface similar to Excel, with employees being able to adopt the software easily through spreadsheet software. Newer software also makes it possible to avoid linking separate, manually built spreadsheets with the most powerful solutions focusing on automation, dynamic accounting logic, and reusable templates for ease of use.
Solver CPM
Using Solver CPM, we transformed a specific budget process within a mining or mining services company developed with Excel into a system that allows companies to continue to have the familiar feel of their budgeting process while putting the rigger of a real system in place.
We spoke to a CFO who mentioned she was hesitant to implement new budgeting software due to logistics and security concerns. However, modern budgeting software like Solver offers built-in password protection and customisable e-mail distribution. This allows supervisors to take ownership of the budgets they have to manage while avoiding long, attachment-heavy e-mail threads.
Taking that one step further, companies that have developed a full Life of Mine Plan (the approved long-term plan for a mine site) generally review that plan once every few years. Feeding that plan, shorter-term plans are developed that form part of the planning cycle, taking into account actual events and changes that have been identified. Physical quantities in the budget plan drive the budget costs via the appropriate cost models, these can then evolve in detail and accuracy over time. Budgeting solutions help deliver the drivers that feed each of these plans to ensure mining operations have as few unexpected surprises as possible.
The long and the short.
Investing in a budgeting solution can be very valuable if you consider the costs of energy, staffing, time, and the financial facets of planning.
What vital features and functionalities should you be evaluating when searching for budgeting software to upgrade your planning processes? Think about these: Excel versus proprietary interfaces, budgeting functionalities, integrating live from other data sources such as Pronto Xi or PLODtrack, versus querying information from a BI data store, the flexibility of positioning within a complete suite of BI tools, and the dawn of web-based budgeting.
If your company has outgrown its budgeting and forecasting software, we can help find the best solution for you. Contact us and we can help you gain deeper insights with a dynamic budgeting solution.
