Surgent's Controllership Skills Update - Budgeting, Forecasting, and Big Data

Available Anytime

Location: Online

2Credits

Accounting and Auditing and Technical Business

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FICPA Members

~~$89.00 Regular Price~~

Nonmembers

$119.00 Regular Price

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Product Code: SU24-CON3-SSWC

Level: Update

Vendor: Surgent

Field of Study: Accounting, Business Management & Organization

Overview:

Budgets are the vehicle for allocating resources, measuring activities, and identifying needed changes and improvements. An organization's strategy is the primary driver of costs. To be effective, the budget must be linked to strategy and long-term plans. Numerous organizations have achieved a series of short-term targets (budgets) but failed longer term, demonstrating the lack of this necessary linkage. Forecasting, a critical part of any successful budgeting process, can be flawed by technical errors, organizational structure, or emotional forces. The establishment of a system to collect, process, and analyze big data can provide significant insights into the budgeting and forecasting process. An efficient system of incorporating big data and analytics into normal activities will improve management's decision-making. This brief program offers specific actions to improve your forecasting and budgeting activities. In addition, more advanced techniques are identified for the participant's further review, which can be applied throughout an organization. Good budgets effectively allocate resources, provide information for decision-making and serve as an early warning system for unforeseen events. A poor budgeting process fosters a false sense of security, provides inappropriate or inaccurate data, and reinforces the status quo. Budgets are about the organization's story, not just the raw numbers!

Objectives:

Understand all facets of the budgeting process
Provide techniques to improve forecasting
Demonstrate how a budget can be a vital tool for overall long-term improvement
Identify immediate actions that can result in measurable benefits to an organization
Understand management, uses, and potential benefits of big data
Employ techniques for further research

Major Topics:

Why forecasts and budgets are frequently wrong: behavioral finance; improper goal setting, games, continuing the status quo, traditional budgeting techniques
Incorporating strategy into budgets: improving measurement systems; common errors, developing strategies and appropriate measurements
Expanding the budgeting framework: rolling forecasts; mission-based budgeting, zero-based budgeting, post-completion evaluations, contingency planning, black swan events, identifying improvements
Big data: definition, challenges, goals, current uses/examples, sources of information
Analytical tools: ration analysis, benchmarking, Pareto analysis, trend analysis, regression, simulation, dashboards

Designed For:

Public, private and non-profit organizations and their members - CFOs, CEOs, controllers, auditors, and managers

Prerequisite:

Experience and/or exposure to financial management

Additional Info:

You will receive an email from info@surgent.com with instructions on how to log onto your course shortly. If you do not receive the email within the hour, please check your spam filter.

For technical support, registration questions or other customer service-related inquiries, please call (800) 778-7436 or email info@surgent.com. Phones are staffed from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Thursday, and 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday.