White Paper

Financial Planning and Analysis has had an important seat at the table for some time when it comes to the strategic future of the enterprise.

To discover a roadmap for elevating your teams from Planners to Trusted Advisors, click the link below to download the Unit4 white paper on the subject.

In this white paper, you can learn.

• To make your people key to reconfiguring processes, regardless of IT expertise
• Real-time visibility can power better decision-making
• Automating tasks will improve efficiency
• To make your organisation more agile and adaptive

Read the white paper today to find a better way to work.

The promise of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is a compelling one. Deploy the right solution and it can help deliver a complete view of your business, integrate processes and data, drive efficiency, boost productivity and sharpen your competitive edge.

But as with any major software implementation project, success is not guaranteed. Even a seasoned procurement manager can be captivated by the bells and whistles such as swish visualisations and impressive-sounding AI capabilities, while potentially losing sight of the nuts and bolts: i.e. the ability of the system to meet your real-life business problems.

Read our guide to identifying your best-fit solution for maximum return on investment.

This whitepaper discusses how FP&A teams can harness the power of scenario-based planning to guide business leaders towards making informed decisions that ensure optimal performance during difficult times.

It is the responsibility of the FP&A team to guide business leaders towards making informed decisions that ensure optimal performance during difficult times. In doing so, they must harness the power of scenario-based planning. Below are the critical factors and steps in this process that we will discuss:

• Identifying the key business drivers and critical uncertainties.
• Generating multiple scenarios through decision tree thinking.
• Being mindful of possible cognitive errors and be receptive to the external environment.
• Harnessing the technological tools available to enable real-time planning solutions.

Our “Steering the Ship During Times of Extreme Uncertainty” paper looks at how critical FP&A is as we enter the phase of the unknown during & after COVID-19. It highlights important approaches that may prove valuable to those in FP&A across all verticals.

One of the key factors in successfully navigating through levels of uncertainty is a simple acknowledgment that you don’t know. You don’t know what will happen. You don’t know how long this will last. And you don’t know what the best way to handle it will be.

Therefore, in acknowledgment that we do not know, and fully encouraging alternative views, we attempt to highlight a few approaches that may prove valuable to you. We discuss:

• Dumping your long-term plans.
• Thinking short-term and scenario-based.
• Developing an ‘options’ mindset.
• Communicating and aligning teams.

“The big times are now”. This is how KPMG described the landscape in its June 2021 UK Economic Outlook. Certainly for sectors such as hospitality, leisure and nonessential retail, we seem to be firmly within revenge buying mode as pent-up demand is unleashed.

Here’s a closer look at the forecasts, and at the steps businesses can take to boost their ability to take advantage…

Successful transformation requires clarity not just on what you are trying to achieve, but also on the best operational set-up to achieve it. This is where a Target Operating Model (TOM) comes in: a high level representation that shows how your business will be organised to deliver on its transformation strategy.

Here’s a closer look at how a TOM can help you visualise and then execute major change.

We are currently experiencing what appears to be a long-term shift towards virtual working. This means that many managers tasked with the delivery of major finance transformation projects may need to rethink their approach. In other words, if the virtual team has become a permanent fixture, what needs to change to ensure your management techniques, processes and tools remain fit for purpose?

Here’s a closer look at what has changed, at the challenges it raises, and at how to adapt your approach to ensure successful project delivery.

Since 2008, regulatory compliance has assumed far greater importance within the Financial Services sector with organisations having to grapple with new legislation such as Sarbanes Oxley, MiFID, Basel, Dodd Frank as well as changes in IFRS reporting.

In response, Millennium Consulting has been supporting clients with digital and finance transformation and enterprise architecture design.

Much of 2020 was spent in firefighting mode. We were reacting to events, hastily putting together workarounds in the face of unexpected problems and focusing on survival.

2021 will be different. For one thing, the vaccine rollout means that restrictions on movement and contact will (hopefully) ease. So, can we expect economies and businesses to revert back to their pre-Covid state? Probably not. While Covid-19 threw up new challenges, it also accelerated trends that were there already. From our attitude to the daily commute, right through to the c-suite decision-making process, things have shifted – and those changes will most likely remain.

Here’s a closer look at some of these key trends and how they are likely to shape the coming year.