Budgets and budgeting

Know what your project is worth in today’s dollars.

A senior design engineer for a large American automobile manufacturer recently complained to one of his colleagues. “Those marketing guys want everything. They’ve decided that what they need in the next design series is ‘The All-American Car.’ They say it’s got to be large enough for a family of five (plus dog), small enough to […]

By utilizing the reality show format, corporations can create a more effective forum for pitching innovative products.

Today’s technology can put adjusted present value into the arsenal of every general manager.

Building a scorecard can help managers link today’s actions with tomorrow’s goals.

With a record $2 trillion in cash and short-term liquid assets on hand, U.S. non-financial firms certainly seem poised to expand. What’s holding them back? Many are deeply uncertain about which initiatives they should fund — and one root of this indecision is a general lack of confidence in the cost of capital projections they […]

Rather than highlight short-term accounting profits, budgets should emphasize future cash. That, as Warren Buffet knows, is where a company's growth potential...

Rigid plans just won't work anymore.

Your measures of success need to change with your industry.

Budgets have two primary functions: planning and control. Companies must decide which function is most important and then resolve a number of formulation...

A budget is your roadmap to the future.

This article contends that to be effective every formal long-range planning system must achieve a compromise between “creativity” and “practicality”—goals for planning that are often in conflict. The authors also argue that the problem of maintaining a satisfactory balance can be directly addressed by varying the design features of the planning/budgeting interface. After specifying the […]

The financial worries of New York City in the early 1970s began registering in the bond market in October 1974, when the city first encountered difficulty selling its securities. These problems reached a crisis stage in 1976, and it was not until then that the bond rating services reduced the city’s bond rating. In this […]

It can work, but only with a huge amount of effort.

Lessons from a study of 5,700 global businesses.

Green initiatives can, by reducing costs, enhance a company’s bottom line. Actions that harm the environment can have the opposite effect. Now, thanks to a burgeoning market in greenhouse gas emission credits put into effect by the Kyoto Protocol, environmental considerations will increasingly affect not only companies’ income statements but also their balance sheets. A […]

Easy steps you can take today to craft a more agile process.

A friend of mine who had taken over running a major government department noticed right away how abused the word “strategy” was. “Everything has to be a strategy in order to get noticed,” he told me. “You practically need a strategy for visiting the restroom.” The second thing he noticed was that nobody was actually […]

Creating a budget can stress both managers and their employees. The resolution? Depersonalize the process to ease tension and anxiety.

Thanks to the credit crisis, companies are scrambling for cash. Time to take a cold, hard look at the way you manage working capital.