Integrated Business Planning

macs Software's integrated budgeting and planning functionality allows for planning, budgeting and forecasting to be performed at the detailed bill of material and routing level. The integrated process spans all the various organizational departments - from marketing (sales planning) to production (S&OP) to finance (overhead cost management, activity based costs), even taking capacities into consideration - ensuring the organization is treated as one integrated whole.
 
The macs integrated process starts off with the sales plan indicating the intended quantity and product mix.  The sales quantities are adjusted based on current and future stock levels (S&OP process) to arrive at the production quantities - which are exploded to determine the material and activity requirements.  Departmental costs are planned against the activities as either being fixed or proportional (variable).  Activity rates are calculated based on the available number of hours.  Product or service standard costs are calculated based on the standard bill of material and activity quantities.  Indirect costs are allocated over the business segments (customers and products based on applicable criteria).  The process culminates with the creation of a planned profit and loss statement.
 
This process can be repeated multiple times for either the annual planning & budgeting process or throughout the year to perform a revised forecast or to simulate a specific scenario.  These varying scenario's can all be compared against one another.  The benefit is that organizations are better and more accurately able to quantify the forecasted outcome of a set of new or differing scenarios.
 
Effective Capacity Utilization and Reconciliations
Macs ensures that capacity levels are established for all available resources.  Should there be large increases in sales volumes this should place increased requirements on production and the various support departments.  The overall budget must operate as one cohesive unit if quantities and assumptions are increased in one area then quantities and support costs must be increased in other areas as well.  A well balanced budget should also not allow resources to either be over or dramatically under utilized.
 
Rolling Forecasts
The pain, stress and long hours of the budgeting process is well known...staggering through iteration after iteration of time consuming activity, correction after correction only to be left with a result that in today's fast changing environment almost becomes irrelevant after the first quarter.
 
Some environments are more stable than others.  Should your annual budget assumptions remain valid after the first quarter then wonderful - you don't need to do another forecast - but unfortunately you might be one of a select few.  Most organizations today are exposed to a tremendous amount of variability, leaving assumptions and budgets outdated and irrelevant after very short periods of time.  The only alternative is to reforecast regularly based on the latest set of data and assumptions available.  A direct correlation exists between the variability of the industry and the frequency of doing forecasts.
 
macs enables the organization to become more adaptive, more flexible and readily able to quantify at a detailed level the results of any possible changes to the original budget.  Organizations of the future need to be adaptive and able to react quickly - leveraging macs integrated process enables organizations to quantify in extremely short timeframes the expected results of a new sales plan, scenario or forecast.  Comparative reporting enables organizations to compare the result and choose the direct (product and service mix) that will lead to the highest profits.
 

Key Differentiators

• Integrates sales, production and finance activities
• Ensures capacities are taken into consideration
• Integrates sales, production and finance activities
• Ensures capacities are taken into consideration
• Establishes the foundation for sound profitability reporting
• Maximizes the accuracy of product costs
• Aligns planning and budgeting goals
• Supports responsibility