Budget inputs from users are immediately available at the top-level

Description

This feature enables budget data entered by individual users to be immediately available at the consolidated level, greatly enhancing real-time data access, planning accuracy, and decision-making speed.

Example Use Case

Scenario: Acme Corporation is a large corporation with multiple departments and divisions, each with its own budgeting processes. The company uses CPM software for corporate planning and budgeting. Every budgeting period, each department submits their respective budgets to the top management through the software.

Solution: With the feature of instant availability of user inputs, as soon as a department enters their budget data into the system, it is immediately accessible to finance managers at the consolidated level. This means top management has real-time visibility of the total enterprise budget as the departments input their data, hence enhancing planning agility.

Considerations

A core benefit to this capability is trust - you're never left wondering if the consolidated data has been aggregated. You can confidently look at a report or sheet and know that, at that point in time, it reflects everyone's contribution to the database.

This is also helpful if you're looking for mid-month forecast progress. As mid-month actuals come into the system, build a report showing month-to-date results to track progress during the period in question instead of waiting until the end of the month.

Questions to Ask a Vendor

• Real-time Updates: How fast does your system update the consolidated budget data once users input their budgets?
• Reporting: If we wanted to see month-to-date reporting with updated actuals, what is the best way to go about that?
• Comparisons: Can we compare progress from the same time in the previous month?