Business Intelligence & Budgetary Control

Companies, organizations (in fact all of us), are used to work following inside time periods defined by some administration, usually quarterly or monthly periods of tax assessments (depending on the type of company and country).  The year-end closing usually represents a series of obligations with the administrations (as presenting certain accounting documents) and, in many aspects and cases, determines the strategic cycles or the definition of objectives in the company.

This is normal, we make a yearly plan, review the past based on economic years (How many yearly revenue evolution charts have we seen?). After all, if the public administration requires me to report critical information with certain periodicity, it is logical for me to make use of those same periods to think about the past or plan and budget next year’s activities. How much do I expect to sell next year? How much am I going to invest in marketing? What are my staff costs going to be next year?

However, the world is faster and changes faster every day. Nowadays, in order to take the right decision (tactical or strategic) it is necessary for us to look at the recent past, or plan the immediate future and control it. It’s time to measure everything that is happening in the company, to control if everything is going as we expected. We need to do this in order to lead our business towards success.

Business Intelligence tools allow us to do it through analytical tools aimed at the business user (OLAP) or through business strategy control methodologies as the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). On one hand a company’s management can have available more information to understand the organization’s evolution and the possible deviations from the budget. On the other hand, a more useful and relevant information to be able to plan and align all the company’s activities with the corporate strategy and budget my KPIs with the periodicity and level of detail the management requires.

The Budget, and its control, needs to move towards something more agile and flexible, something which requires less effort and time. We don’t need to limit ourselves to budget or control certain basic economic indicators determined by accounting needs, with a Business Intelligence tool we can define and budget all the key aspects of our business (sales, production, financial indicators, purchases, logistics) and control and analyze them in a regular and inexpensive way. Control the evolution of these indicators, detecting deviations and adapting our actions to correct them, quickly and with reliable information, making our company more competitive, agile and with a higher capacity to respond to unforeseen events. Moreover, if in cases as LITEBI, the tool is cloud-based, the solution turns to be even more agile and closer to the business needs.

This allows us to align all the company’s operations with its strategic vision and key objectives, as well as control that all processes work efficiently. In short, transform the company towards a metric-driven culture in which actions are budgeted, measured and controlled, having available useful and relevant information which guides the decision-making processes. Turning our organization into an intelligent company.

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