Channel Eye has joined forces with Royston Guest, leading Business Growth Coach and CEO/Founder of Pathways Global, in our column, ‘Ask the Business Coach’
Budgeting and forecasting are a science. It should not be an experiment nor a ‘finger in the air’, and it most certainly shouldn’t be a ‘well, let’s hope for the best and see what we deliver’. And yet, in my experience, most businesses are poor at budgeting and forecasting.
The key takeaways!
- Build agility into your planning framework
- Implement a rolling 12-month plan with quarterly review and preview sessions
- Create a ‘hard deck’ budget and a stretch budget
Episode timestamps
- [0.45] The timescales at which you should complete your budgeting and forecasting depend on the maturity of your business, knowledge of the marketplace, and your current planning cycles. The key is to build agility into your framework.
- [1.22] As a minimum, you should have a detailed 12-month plan broken into quarterly bite-size plans that you review quarterly, making slight adjustments as required. Then at half-year, depending on how on or off track you are, is the opportunity to rebase where you are against the plan. Over and above this, create a high-level view of years two and three to give you that longer-term time horizon.
- [3.03] Create a ‘hard deck’, the budget that feeds into your 12-month plan, and a stretch budget, which acts as your aspirational, over-achieving goals.
Do you have a question for the Business Coach?
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