Surgent's Controllership Skills Update: Budgeting, Forecasting, and Big Data (CON3)

Course Details

Date

Friday, April 23, 2021

11:00am – 1:00pm (Registration: 8:01am)

Location

Online

CPE Credit

2 hours CPE credit

Level of Knowledge

Update

Vendor

Surgent McCoy CPE, LLC

Prerequisites

Experience and/or exposure to financial management

Description

Budgets are the vehicle for allocating resources and measuring the success of selected strategies. 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 and/or structure/emotional forces. The establishment of a system to collect, process and analyze Big Data can provide significant insights into the budgeting and forecasting process. 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. Good budgets effectively allocate resources, provide information for decision-making and an early warning system for unforeseen events. A poor budgeting process provides a false sense of security, inappropriate or inaccurate data and re-enforces the status quo. Updated to include an exercise discussing the potential impact the recent tax regulations may have on your budget, as well as managing/using Big Data and additional industry data sources and analytical tools.

Highlights

  • 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 strategic measurements
    • Strategies vs. non-strategies
  • Expanding the Budgeting Framework:
    • Quarterly and rolling forecasts
    • Mission-based budgeting
    • Zero-based budgeting
    • Post-completion evaluations
    • Contingency planning
    • Identifying improvements
  • Big Data:
    • Definition
    • Challenges
    • Goals
    • Current uses/examples
    • Sources of information
  • Analytical Tools:
    • Ratio analysis
    • Benchmarking
    • Pareto analysis
    • What If analysis
    • Trend analysis
    • Regression
    • Simulation 

Objectives

  • Gain up-to-date knowledge in all facets of the budgeting process
  • Recognize techniques to improve forecasting
  • Learn 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.
  • Become aware of the management, uses, and potential benefits of Big Data  
  • Garner techniques for further research 

Designed For

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

Registration for this course has passed.

Course Pricing

WYOCPA Member Fee
$89.00

Non-Member Fee
$116.00

Your Price
$116.00

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