Research Reports

Managers involved in the annual budget always carry a huge burden in the loss of productivity resulting from the process. IOMA Research is again breaking new ground in the corporate finance department by conducting a major study that has uncovered time- and money-saving best practices and benchmarks for the budgeting process in organizations of all sizes

Hundreds of top financial professionals responded to this exclusive survey, allowing IOMA editors to develop benchmarks to help you evaluate and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your budgeting process. With this new report, you’ll get:

• Benchmarks within distributions that examine budget line items, iterations, weeks spent on budgeting, demands on personnel, costs, etc.—to help you evaluate the level of detail, pace and costs of budgeting in your organization
• 65 budgeting best practices, based on the experiences of survey respondents, with implementation ratings to help you identify those practices that will most benefit you
• An overview of conditions that affect the value of budgeting—too much detail, inaccurate data, slow pace, etc.—plus survey responses regarding budgeting software, budgeting games (yes, games!), and support of senior management

With analysis of data presented in over 30 easy-to-compare tables, you’ll be able to benchmark your operation against other organizations similar to yours, plus learn how the surveyed CFOs, accounting managers, and controllers manage their budgeting. You’ll also find out what best practices are most important to them, including:

• Establishing the importance of the budget process. Does your department swing from gung-ho to “no go” as your process moves forward?
• Linking the budget to corporate strategy. Our survey reveals a close relationship of budgeting to boardroom decisions—yet a troubling lack of connection to functional managers.
• Empowering managers during the budget process. Survey respondents demonstrate strong participation in the process at the manager level. Do you measure up?
• Tying employee incentives to budget targets. Find out why this doesn’t always work in our surveyed companies, and who does—and doesn’t—benefit.
• Reducing budget complexity and cycle time. See how erratic implementation of best practices slows the process and can lead to data redo.

The report includes a handy, time-saving vendor directory of 45 companies that provide budgeting software, including personal contact information and hard-to-get pricing.

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Click here to review this report's Table of Contents, Table of Figures, and Executive Summary.