Comshare, Inc.

i

Management Planning and Control:
A Holistic Approach for Strategic Business Success

Management Summary.................................................................................................1

Business Drivers ..........................................................................................................2

Changing Role of Finance ........................................................................................2

Unceasing, Accelerating Speed of Change ...............................................................2

What is Management Planning and Control? ..............................................................4

Fundamental Business Questions for MPC ...............................................................4

The Traditional Approach: Neither Efficient nor Effective...........................................5

ERPs, CRM, GLs Need MPC’s Focus on the Future .................................................7

Enabling Technology for MPC .....................................................................................8

Components of an MPC Application..........................................................................8

Build or Buy a Solution .............................................................................................9

Market-driven Rules for MPC Solutions.....................................................................10

Processes ..............................................................................................................10

Business Model ......................................................................................................10

Analytical Capabilities.............................................................................................13

Technology.............................................................................................................14

Conclusion..................................................................................................................15

Sources .......................................................................................................................16

Comshare, Inc. 1

Management Summary

Management planning and control (MPC) is a single system that drives a company’s
strategic direction and overall success.

•

Management planning takes key management initiatives and supports top-down
and bottom-up planning processes. This area involves deciding on an
organization’s goals and the strategies to attain them through goal setting,
budgeting, and rolling forecasts.

•

Management control supports planning by providing organizational insight,
communication, and focus. It involves managers influencing other organizational
members to enact the strategies by monitoring plan performance, supporting the
analysis of alternatives, and taking corrective action.

Together, management planning and management control comprise the four fundamental
processes of planning, budgeting, reporting, and analysis. MPC leverages organizational
knowledge and insight by synthesizing those four processes into a single, ongoing
system to implement strategies better, strengthen decision making, and make
management more effective.

To be successful, organizations must excel at all aspects of management planning and
control. To reach this goal, organizations turn to information technology to support the four
fundamental MPC processes and the overall MPC system. In the past, this support was
achieved by setting up discreet applications using different technologies that typically
worked on the basis of a year.

But due to the ever-faster change in market dynamics that requires organizations to
respond in hours or days rather than months, and the enormous amount of time and effort
traditional systems require in maintenance and linking together, these systems have fallen
short of serving the needs of organizational MPC.

Recently, there has been a realization that the solution lies in implementing MPC “best
practices” combined with a new generation software application: one that supports the
planning, budgeting, reporting, and analysis processes as a single, closed-loop system,
recognizes that MPC involves more than fiscal accounts, and is not bound by a calendar or
fiscal year.

2 Comshare, Inc.

Business Drivers

The competitive landscape changes so quickly that organizations often find it difficult to
keep up, let alone maintain an effective system to plan and control the business. Finance
staffs add value to the organization because they are the focal point for capitalizing on
business information to secure and maintain a competitive advantage.

Changing Role of Finance

In many organizations, finance is seen as the primary, authoritative source of financial and
performance-related information. In addition, finance staff is called on to analyze and
comment on that information. More than ever, finance departments are relied on to act as
business partners by providing management counsel and support to all areas of the
enterprise. Finance supports management in formulating strategy and implementing
management initiatives. Finance supports the planning and budgeting processes across an
enterprise. And finance often supports other functions within an enterprise – like marketing,
sales, and production – by supplying information about customers, production, and the
marketplace.

A finance staff is responsible for the organization’s financial systems – the systems that
capture the operating results of the enterprise. Finance is responsible for the accurate
provision of financial information, both internally as management reports and externally as
statutory reports. Today, many finance organizations are struggling to provide the expected
value through:

•

Efficient, ongoing development of plans, budgets, forecasts, management reports,
performance tracking, and statutory reporting

•

Timely access to results, analyses, and information

•

Comments and insight on past and planned performance

Unceasing, Accelerating Speed of Change

The faster an industry moves, the faster a company shifts its priorities and needs to adjust
its plans, budgets, and forecasts. As the competitive landscape changes, companies must
change too. In times of change, organizations need to plan and re-plan quickly. Fast and
efficient budgeting, rolling forecasts, and effective management reporting and analysis are
key to better managing changing conditions or deviations from planned performance.

Comshare, Inc. 3

Today, budgets are vital to making resource allocations based on a strategic plan, not just
to control costs. The old rules no longer apply. As the pace of change continues to
increase, budgets can no longer be seen as a forecast that doesn’t change for 12 months.
The reality is that plans and forecasts become obsolete as soon as the competitive
environment changes, and budgets become misaligned within the first month as
unforeseen events occur.

Because of the rate of change, the past by itself is no longer a reliable indicator of the
future. In these circumstances, measuring performance relative to the market and
competitors, as well as monitoring performance indicators, becomes imperative.

The impact of these factors means that organizations must move away from traditional
planning and reporting practices and embrace a new, more responsive management
approach—management planning and control.

4 Comshare, Inc.

What is Management Planning and Control?

Management planning and control (MPC) is more than just a set of processes for planning,
budgeting, reporting, and analysis. MPC synthesizes these once disparate processes into a
single, cohesive, and ongoing system through which management can implement
strategies better, strengthen decision making, and make management more effective.
Management planning and control is both a philosophy – or a way of thinking about the
business, and a methodology – or a way of running the business.

As a philosophy of the business, management planning takes key management initiatives
and supports top-down and bottom-up planning processes. This area involves deciding on
an organization’s goals and the strategies to attain them through goal setting, budgeting,
and rolling forecasts.

As a methodology for running the business, management control supports planning by
providing organizational insight, communication, and focus. It involves managers
influencing other organizational members to enact the strategies by monitoring plan
performance, supporting the analysis of alternatives, and taking corrective action.

Both management planning and management control involve continuous evaluation and
adjustment of plans as needed. So, MPC is not a “once-a-year” process, but an ongoing,
single system to make sure the company is on track with everything it wants to be and to
achieve.

Fundamental Business Questions for MPC

Management planning and control requires top corporate leaders to answer key questions
that shape the business. These questions can be grouped into the following categories:

Management Planning

•

Where do we want to go?

•

How do we compare with our peers and competitors?

•

What do we have to do?

•

What targets can we achieve?

•

How do we allocate resources?

Management Control

•

Where are we?

•

How are we doing compared to plan?

•

What actually happened?

•

Why did it happen?

•

What are the alternatives?

•

What decisions do we make?

•

What is the impact of those decisions?

Comshare, Inc. 5

After all the questions have been answered, you must go back to answer them again,
because the business environment continues to change, and your business must be ready,
willing, and able to adjust accordingly. So the cycle starts again and continues for the life of
the enterprise.

To answer these questions, management needs two things:

•

Relevant, timely information in the form of a model that reflects the way the
organization operates. This information is both financial and statistical on all
aspects of organization. Information about the marketplace and competitors is also
needed.

•

Technology that will enable management to create plans, manage the execution of
those plans, evaluate performance, highlight exceptions, and model decisions. The
capabilities of that technology work together as a seamless, single application that
shares a common model of the organization and a common set of data.

The Traditional Approach: Neither Efficient nor Effective

The traditional approach to management planning and control involved massive amounts of
spreadsheets, which is still a mainstay for many companies today. Spreadsheets have been
the single greatest tool for MPC. As technology advanced, better ways to run an MPC system
emerged. In fact, the evolution of MPC technology can be viewed in three stages: substitution
of new technology for old, increased demand for the functions of the new technology, and the
rise of new technology-intensive structures (Malone & Rockart, 1992).

Ledgers were kept by hand for centuries. About
20 years ago, people began adopting electronic
tools as a substitute for hand-written ledgers. This
new tool made correcting data, making changes,
and performing calculations easier and much
faster. It was seen as a boon for planning,
budgeting, reporting, and analysis.

Soon, after seeing the possibilities of this
technology, corporate management at companies
everywhere asked for more complex ways to look
at their businesses in response to increasing
competition and revolutions in industry. This
would include the rise of pivot tables and OLAP
(online analytical processing). Demand for the
kinds of functions electronic technology could
provide increased dramatically. The result was
discreet spreadsheet-based applications using
different technologies on separate data sources
that typically work on the basis of a single year.

6 Comshare, Inc.

Although this functionality had its benefits, most finance departments today find themselves
(as shown in the figure) dealing with too many documents, including numerous and often
complex spreadsheets that are usually linked, poorly maintained, poorly understood, or
error-prone. Finance staff find general ledger reports inflexible, difficult to navigate, and
impossible to analyze. Add to this the complexity of multiple general ledgers, multiple
charts-of-accounts, and the mixture of home-grown systems.

Business Finance (2000) reported that 84% of finance staff time focuses on non value-
added activities, like transaction processing, data collection, and reporting. Much of this
time is spent re-keying numbers into spreadsheets or responding to singular requests for
reports. It’s no wonder many finance organizations struggle to provide the value that is
expected through plans, budgets, forecasts, management reports, performance tracking,
and statutory reporting.

Now we are seeing the emergence of new technology intensive structures that are far more
powerful, flexible, and open. These new structures are market-driven in that, according to
findings by Hackett Benchmarking Solutions (2000):

•

Only 11% of companies can analyze results at will rather than only at the end of an
accounting cycle.

•

Only about 30% of companies can access data by geography, product, commodity
customer, supplier, or major project.

•

Only about 20% of companies provide management with access to integrated
information sources like transactional or operational systems.

The new technology structures for management planning and control provide a single
source for critical management information. They also allow performing the high-value
analysis that is key to organizational success in fast-changing and competitive
environments. They foster greater communication, collaboration, and responsiveness while
reducing information overload by guiding users to data that is routine, out of line from the
plan, or atypical.

Comshare, Inc. 7

ERPs, CRM, GLs Need MPC’s Focus on the Future

In most companies, investments in ERP have not solved the problem. (See GartnerGroup
[2000] Research Note, The New Wave of Best-of-breed Financial Applications.) Over the
past few years, many companies have implemented ERP systems that were designed to
improve operational business processes such as general ledgers, order processing,
procurement, and inventory management. With these investments behind them, some
companies are now looking at how to take advantage of the latent value of the data to
support more effective management processes. Some are turning to “add-on” modules,
such as budgeting.

Why are companies looking for such value-
added solutions? The basic problem with
ERP systems is that they focus on
operational efficiency and, thereby, are
anchored in the past and structured around
internal operational processes. Although
this is of some value, it inherently lacks the
focus offered in an MPC system.

An MPC system focuses on management
effectiveness. Decision makers can perform
best when they have access to both internal
and external sources of information that can
help them reveal future opportunities. This
information must be transformed, modeled,
future-focused, and viewed and analyzed
from multiple business perspectives (e.g. by
strategic initiative, geography, line of business, market, and so on), as the figure here
shows. End users of MPC solutions are decision makers who must make sense of the
effects of “what if” scenarios, model alternative structures, and formulate new initiatives. All
this information is not held within an ERP system, plus structures and structural changes
are incompatible with the focus of an ERP. Corporate decision makers need quick access
to both ad hoc and formal reporting.

The GartnerGroup (1999) strategic analysis report, Administrative Applications: Around the
Edges, explained that ERP suites are weak in these areas, and enterprises should turn to
specialist vendors offering planning, budgeting, reporting, and analysis solutions. The
capabilities necessary for an MPC system are in stark contrast to ERPs and transactional
applications, like CRM and general ledger (GL) systems. The latter are designed to track
history as efficiently as possible with very little regard to modeling, analysis, trends, and
general end user data consumption.

Nevertheless, MPC solutions complement ERP, CRM, and GL systems by accessing
relevant base data from those systems and creating a focus on the future rather than the
past. These solutions are designed to add value to the raw information they are fed, and
have specific functionality to support the complete MPC process.

8 Comshare, Inc.

Enabling Technology for MPC

Technology enables people to address key MPC issues that companies face. Business
users need to constantly monitor business performance, highlight exceptional variances,
model new initiatives, and where necessary, re-plan initiatives at any time. Management
needs a specialized combination of technologies that will enable people to use the MPC
system for more effective planning, budgeting, reporting, and analysis.

Components of an MPC Application

Technology applied to an MPC system utilizes best practices in planning, budgeting,
reporting, and analysis. An illustration of an MPC solution is shown here. Software
solutions for MPC have a number of components, including:

•

A collaborative planning
environment where budget
holders and budget
controllers can jointly
develop and communicate
plans.

•

A central, financially
intelligent database to hold
the organizational model,
data, and results. This
database can interact with
an organization’s general
ledger and other systems
that supply information to
the planning and reporting process.

•

Workflow support that guides users (budget holders, budget controller, business
managers, and executives) through the different planning and reporting processes.

•

Specific processing capabilities that allow the formulation of plans, budgets, and
reports.

•

Powerful ad hoc analysis capabilities that can be accessed throughout the
organization.

•

A comprehensive security system that prevents unauthorized access or change to
the different parts of the database.

Comshare, Inc. 9

Build or Buy a Solution

Until recently, MPC software applications were not available. Organizations have had to
rely on either linking together multiple, discreet applications for planning, budgeting,
reporting, and analysis, or have had to build unsophisticated MPC applications themselves.

This build option typically involves using a generic OLAP tool with a spreadsheet program.
This requires extensive effort in building and maintaining not only a financially intelligent
model, but also the various end user functions required by each part of the MPC process,
such as submission tracking, salary planning, currency conversion, journaling, and end
user ad hoc analysis capabilities.

Consistent with the evolution of MPC technology, the GartnerGroup (1998) report,
Financial Business Intelligence Applications, predicted that a new breed of software will
become available:

“Finance organizations evaluating leading Financial Business Intelligence
Applications (FBIA) seek both strong analytical features and deep process support
for financial planning, budgeting and consolidation. They also seek a single set of
tools and the ability to share common data.

“By 2002, 60 percent of FBIA vendors will provide a single-application environment
to support financial planning, consolidation and analysis while sharing common
data (0.7 probability).”

These solutions are starting to become a reality, although many of the mainstream vendors
still produce single-focus applications. They continue to develop and market discreet
applications, which are then linked together to give the overall impression of an MPC
application. But these solutions do not deliver the real benefits that only a true MPC
solution can give. These single-focus applications have limited appeal and will disappear
completely over the next three years as MPC systems become mainstream. The only
company that currently provides true MPC solutions is Comshare.

10 Comshare, Inc.

Market-driven Rules for MPC Solutions

MPC systems are fundamentally different from systems that consist of a number of
separate, single-focus applications with a common front-end. The following nine rules for
true MPC solutions have been developed from market analyses so that users can
distinguish between “integrated” applications and true MPC systems. These rules are
grouped into categories: the way these systems handle the MPC process, characteristics
of the business model, their analytical capabilities, and the technology they employ.

Processes

Rule 1: Integrated Processes

An MPC system supports planning, budgeting, consolidation, and management reporting
and analysis in a single, “closed-loop” application. Users should be able to swap from one
process to the other without having to change environments or move data.

•

Planning involves “top-down” target setting and the ability to evaluate alternative
scenarios.

•

Budgeting involves providing a collaborative environment where both budget
holders and budget controllers can communicate on goals and submissions.

•

Consolidation deals with the matching and elimination of inter-company accounts
and the handling of adjustments according to FASB requirements, which should
leave automatic audit trails that can be interrogated for audit purposes.

•

Management reporting and analysis involves producing reports, analyses, and
exception alerting, as well as allowing unlimited ad hoc end user investigation.

Organizations are better able to link planning to budgeting, budgeting to reporting, and
analysis to planning. Management can respond to variances quickly by evaluating
alternatives, adjusting plans, and informing users, without the effort of learning and
maintaining multiple technologies and applications. Ultimately, management can drive the
successful implementation of the corporate strategy throughout the business.

Business Model

Rule 2: Common Business Rules and Common Data

An MPC system has a common set of dimensions, business members, and business rules,
although rules may be specifically restricted to specific processes. As a result, one change
in a structure or member automatically updates associated reports and analyses.

Similarly, only one set of data is held, even though multiple versions may be required. This
means that a specific number – whether it appears in the strategic plan, the budget, or
actuals – is only held once. So only one version of “the truth” is open and available to all
users.

Comshare, Inc. 11

Using a common model avoids the hassles and risks of moving data or updating a rule in
multiple systems. No effort is required to maintain links and duplicate changes. No time is
lost while those changes/movements are made. And you can be certain of the integrity of
the changes. Everyone who accesses a number can be assured it is the only version and
was calculated by exactly the same rule. No one needs to wait or debate who has the right
version of the truth, and can instead concentrate on what the value represents.

Rule 3: Built-in Financial Intelligence

Financial intelligence means a system can automatically cope with financial statements and
associated analyses without a user having to program the system. Financial intelligence
includes:

•

Multidimensionality. It supports unlimited business perspectives, e.g. by
organization, cost center, product, market, or channel; and unlimited members
within each dimension. These dimensions must support multiple hierarchies, such
as product and channel, while at the same time supporting multiple alternative
hierarchies.

•

Restricted dimensional focus on accounts. Within a business dimension, it must
be possible to restrict which dimensions apply to what accounts. For example,
sales may be dimensioned by product or line of business, but the balance sheet
items may just be collected at an organizational unit level.

•

Support for different measure types. Measures can be both financial and non-
financial. Measures like ratios must not be consolidated while non-financial
measures, like headcount, should not be converted to a base currency. The system
also needs to understand the difference between P&L and balance sheet type
measures which are then used to correctly calculate year-to-date totals in both
reports and ad hoc analyses.

•

Support for natural signs. Essential for any financial account is the
understanding of debits and credits. This information should be used in reports and
ad hoc analyses to produce better/worse variance reporting.

•

Support for open/closing balances. Some measures may be defined as
“opening balances.” These should be automatically populated from the appropriate
closing balance.

•

Support for currency reporting. Often there is a need to support multiple
currency perspectives for global planning and reporting. The database must be
able to translate accounts at different rates, detect and calculate exchange
gains/losses, and then consolidate the results into a base currency or currencies. It
must also be able to convert measures at multiple sets of rates and allow the
comparison of results to assess the affects of exchange fluctuations.

•

Level of detail intelligence. Different MPC processes require different levels of
detail. For example, strategic plans may occur at a divisional level, budgets at a
departmental level, and actuals are collected by product, customer, etc. Where the
level of detail coincides, it should be possible to compare data directly.

12 Comshare, Inc.

Financial intelligence is a fundamental requirement of an MPC solution. If any part is
missing, it will need to be programmed, requiring more time and effort to set up and
maintain an application – and reliance on the skill of the administrator. Embedded financial
intelligence not only saves time and effort, but it ensures end users have the right answers.
As users manipulate data within the database for their own ad hoc analyses, the system
correctly processes debits/credits, profit and loss (P&L), and balance sheet accounts, so
that the answers portray the right meaning, i.e. analyses will display the right variances,
currency values, and summations across periods.

Rule 4: Unrestricted Rules

The business rules should be able to access any item (measure or dimension member
including consolidation points) in the database. The MPC software must be capable of
carrying out data consolidation several times over.

By allowing these types of rules, the system can cope with a range of requirements that
would otherwise be impossible. This includes allocations and the calculation of minority
interests. The benefits are, from a management view, realistic views of results, and from an
administration point of view, easier setup and maintenance.

Rule 5: Time Intelligence

An MPC solution must have the capability and intelligence to handle various measures of
time that meet process, reporting, and other needs. There are a number of issues with
time:

•

Accounting cycle. The system should allow financial accounting cycles of any
length (quarters, months, weeks), and store data for any length of time (past and
future years).

•

Restricting measures. There must be some way to restrict the periods to which
measures apply. For example, some can occur on a weekly basis while others may
apply to a month or a quarter.

•

Relative referencing of periods. The system should handle rolling budgets. It
should be possible to reference a period by an offset (e.g. July 2000 + 6 months)
and correctly assign the appropriate month and year (e.g. January 2001).

•

Smart YTD totals. The system should generate YTD figures without having to set
rules and automatically handle P&L and balance sheet type accounts.

•

Support for current period indicator. To save time on maintenance, there must
be some way of telling the system about the current reporting period that then
changes all the reports and analyses to focus on that period.

This intelligence makes systems much easier to set up and allows them to cope with the
move to continuous planning. It also means that the system does not need any special
processing as the organization moves from one year to the next, and reports need no
maintenance from one period to the next.

Comshare, Inc. 13

Analytical Capabilities

Rule 6: Communication and Collaboration

Security permitting, users should be able to access data online in any time period/version
without advance notice, i.e. not as part of a pre-configured report. Users should be able to
view and analyze data across any appropriate dimensions, without limitations, such as by
initiative, product, line of business, etc. They must also be able to rotate and nest
dimensions as well as drill down to lower levels of detail within the model. These drill-
downs should use the most current structures. When the lowest level of the business model
is reached, drill-downs should be capable of going back to the underlying data source.

End users must also be able to produce their own unrestricted (security permitting)
analyses such as ranking, sorting, charts, and ad hoc calculations. Capabilities to save
analyses, and recall them later with the latest data, should be provided.

This capability significantly strengthens the way people work together, as they share their
knowledge, handle opportunities, and fulfill the company’s strategy using the MPC solution.
They see greater benefits to the system and the effort finance has to put in to support
them. Users can produce their own analyses simply and without finance’s support, so they
are not restricted in terms of data or access to suitable personnel. Finance no longer has to
produce and maintain numerous “one-off” reports and analyses, and can concentrate on
commenting on the results.

Rule 7: Guided Analysis

MPC systems should focus users’ attention on exceptions and provide tools to guide them
through those variances in detail. By investigating what is not normal and routine, users
can develop more insightful analyses.

Users should automatically be alerted to exceptions that would otherwise go undetected.
Examples of exception techniques include:

•

Broad-based exceptions: Areas of an organization that exhibit out-of-line
performance can be highlighted hierarchically according a product line or
organization structure, or geographically based on global locations.

•

Detailed exceptions at a summary level: These exceptions appear on
summaries to warn users that, although the summary may be within limit, there is a
detailed member at a lower level who is outside the accepted level, but offset by
someone who is above.

•

Software agents: This function performs routine surveillance of the database,
given the parameters or criteria set by an individual user. When something is found
that meets a user’s criteria for a problem area in the data, that finding is
automatically reported back to the user.

It is far too easy for end users to waste time looking through a sea of data and never spot
the significant issues. These techniques ensure that users’ attention is focused on the
issues, and there’s no wasted time looking for issues that don’t exist. So users have more
time to assess what the exceptions mean to the business and formulate what actions they
should take.

14 Comshare, Inc.

Technology

Rule 8: Web Architecture

To support efficient, broad deployment across the enterprise, an MPC solution should be
fully Web-architected. This means that users – whether budget holders, budget controllers,
business managers, or executives – must be able to access the system and the
appropriate functions through a Web browser.

It should be possible for any user to be free from both location and machine when using the
system. They should be able to use any machine, from any location, providing it has a
suitable Web browser and there is a suitable connection to the system. No other software
should be required.

The Web interface should allow setting up a complete MPC portal where users can access
and easily integrate information from virtually any source or Website.

The Web brings five significant benefits to the planning process. First, it is an intuitive
environment that enables users to access and share information from a variety of sources
without having to learn the technologies involved. Second, systems can be deployed to
large user populations with little effort and at a very low cost. Third, it eliminates the need to
distribute the application to each person’s computer, ensuring that everyone uses the same
version. Fourth, any changes are instantly and automatically distributed to those users,
which greatly improves integrity. Finally, users are not restricted to a machine or location,
which frees them to access the system anywhere at any time.

Rule 9: Central Database Employing Scalable, Mainstream Technology

MPC applications are built on top of a central database rather than using proprietary file
structures that are common in many of today’s systems. All users get information from this
database to plan, budget, report, and analyze. This database makes use of mainstream
relational technology for scalability and robustness, although for smaller applications OLAP
databases can also be applied. According to the Dataquest (1999) market analysis, the
world’s leading mainstream relational technologies are those from IBM, Oracle, and
Microsoft. These technologies:

•

Are highly scalable

•

Handle very large numbers of users

•

Support advanced security systems

•

Easily integrate with existing ERP and transaction-based systems

A central database greatly improves data integrity and accuracy. Other key benefits include:

•

Discontinuing the need to collect results, because as soon as data is entered, it is
immediately available for consolidation and analysis.

•

Moving data between applications is not required, so there are no links to maintain.

•

Making changes only once – everyone gets instant access to those changes.

Comshare, Inc. 15

Using the same technology that is already in place also helps organizations maximize the
huge investments already made in infrastructure. Companies get more application value
with less implementation and training costs for their IT staff.

Conclusion

A comprehensive MPC software application enables the processes of planning, budgeting,
reporting, and analysis for everyone who relies on it. It transforms data from an
organization’s transaction-based or ERP systems into business-critical information that can
be used to make sound planning and management decisions. With a single MPC solution,
companies can simultaneously link strategic plans, operational budgets, and actuals to
forecasts with unrestricted analysis capabilities, thereby eliminating a large source of data
integrity problems and unproductive time.

An MPC system also allows finance departments to become business partners on several
important levels. Finance staff is able to spend more time performing the high-value
activities of planning and analysis. Management has ready access to the rationale and
assumptions behind the budget and forecast numbers, thus avoiding misunderstandings
that are often frustrating and unproductive. Executives can better drive strategy and
management initiatives by ensuring the allocation of resources in support of the strategic
plan. An improved planning process ensures organizational buy-in, which can result in
greater accountability. Budget holders have a more thorough understanding of the strategy
and ready access to targets, so they better understand what is expected of them and how
they are being measured. Ultimately, everyone benefits from savings in time and effort
through a streamlined system that removes the drudgery and makes communication and
collaboration easier.

16 Comshare, Inc.

Sources

Business Finance (2000, July). “Finance Managers on the Wrong Track,” p. 10.

Dataquest (1999, March 29). Worldwide DBMS Preliminary Market Statistics: 1998.
Stamford, CT.

GartnerGroup (1998, Nov. 3). Financial Business Intelligence Applications. Stamford, CT.

GartnerGroup (2000, April 22). The New Wave of Best-of-breed Financial Applications.
Stamford, CT.

GartnerGroup (1999, Sept. 13). Administrative Applications: Around the Edges. Stamford,
CT.

Hackett Benchmarking Solutions (2000). The Book of Numbers: Planning and
Performance Measurement. Hudson, OH.

Malone, T. W. & Rockart, J. F. (1992). Information technology and the new organization.
Proceedings of the 25

th

Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Vol. 4 (pp.

636-643). Washington, DC: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

In North, Central
and South America:

Corporate Headquarters
555 Briarwood Circle
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48108 USA

telephone [phone]
telephone [phone]
fax

1.734.769.6943

email

[e-mail]

Comshare is represented in more than 35 countries worldwide.

In the United Kingdom
and in other countries:

European Operations
22 Chelsea Manor Street
London SW3 5RL England

telephone [phone]
fax

[phone]

email

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Comshare is a registered trademark of Comshare, Inc. All other products are the property of their respective holders.
Serial Number 040.01.0800 Copyright © 2000 Comshare, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.

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