NEW Effective Forecasting & Budgeting

Early Bird Discount

Book before 8 January 2012 and pay only £549 +VAT per delegate, rather than the usual course price of £649 +VAT

Target Audience

Managers who are required to produce and manage revenue or cost budgets

Finance directors and finance managers responsible for the budget and how it is conducted and reviewed

Those in the finance function who are involved in setting and re-forecasting budgets and for conducting monthly budget reviews

Course Programme

Strategy, plans, forecasts and the budget

• A model that links strategy, plans, forecasts and the budget
• Using the model to spot areas of weakness and root causes of problems
• A technique for creating plans from strategy

Incorporating your plans in the budget

• Ensuring that the value and timing of costs and revenues associated with plans stand scrutiny
• Recognising that plans affect budgets in two distinct ways:  the costs of implementation; and the costs and revenue changes resulting from implementation

Forecasting

• Eight forecasting techniques and when to use them
• Forecasting sales and reforecasting

The conventional annual budget

• The problems most often encountered
• Should we just stop budgeting?  What organisations that stop do instead
• Ways that organisations improve conventional budgets

Rolling forecasts and driver-based budgeting

• The benefits of rolling the forecast
• Using drivers

Building risk into the budget

• Assessing the risks implicit in your budget numbers
• Deciding what to do with the risks:  avoid, monitor or mitigate?
• Budgeting for risks inherent in the plans

Budget reviews - ways to get effective accountability

• The importance of effective accountability
• Reasons why accountability is often poor
• A process for achieving accountability

Course Director

David Baines is a Director of Freeman Baines Consulting.  He holds a degree in Electronic Engineering from Imperial College, and an MBA from the London Business School.  After a career in BT he moved into consulting, becoming a partner in a major UK firm before establishing his own consultancy.

He is an Associate of the National School of Government, working in the fields of Organisational Development, Management Development & Skills and Managing Change.

Over the last 27 years he has consulted extensively in both the public and private sectors.  He has written several management books covering planning, forecasting and budgeting, overhead cost reduction, organisational restructuring, performance measurement and business process re-engineering.

In addition to consulting, David develops and presents courses and workshops on a range of topics.  He uses his consulting experience to ensure that the contents are anchored to approaches that work in practice and include the latest trends in management thinking and techniques.