Agile Finance: Strategies for Streamlined Annual Budgeting and Planning

“Agile” is more than just a buzzword — it’s the key to unlocking your finance team’s full potential in a changing market. 

While it can be daunting to start the process of annual planning and budgeting, adopting Agile methodologies can transform that process into a dynamic, collaborative effort that propels your business forward by replacing rigid forecasts with flexible data-driven strategies that adapt to market shifts in real-time. 

Dominic DiBernardo, Partner at Citrin Cooperman, joined the latest episode of The CFO Show to share how he helps middle-market businesses optimize their finance and business operations by teaching them how to successfully incorporate agile strategies to make finance teams more efficient and collaborative. 

What is Agile and why does your team need it? 

According to Dominic, being agile really means being proactive and keeping up with the speed at which business runs today. 

Finance has evolved into the hub of business intelligence, and adopting an Agile approach enables your finance team to play a strategic role and to become more of a profit center than an overhead function.

Finance teams are no longer just reporting to other departments about what happened last month. Through agile methodologies, these teams are able to help other areas of the business better understand what might unfold in the future and what levers need to be pulled to affect change if predicted outcomes are undesirable. 

Agile practices allow your finance team to move faster and work from a proactive state rather than a reactive one. Furthermore, the agile approach is more thoughtful and collaborative, thus elevating the finance team to be seen as strategic partners. 

Overall, adopting agile practices means you can start the annual planning process later. With the right tools and methodologies, planning cycles can be condensed from five to six months to about two months. 

How to adopt Agile practices into your annual planning

The key to implementing agile practices for your finance team is starting with the right CPM tool. The right tool will help you create a scalable process and remove cumbersome, manual development work.  

You should be spending more time collecting inputs and qualitative information across the organization before layering in strategic initiatives. 

Once you’ve selected the right CPM, here are your next steps:

Step 1: Define your current process. What’s the 20% that drives 80% of your business? Outline your current process, each step you plan to take to achieve your goal and the key players who will be involved. 

Step 2: Condense your timeline and focus on scalability. Dig deep and ask yourself and your team how you can condense and accelerate your current cycle. Choosing the right tools and implementing agile practices effectively can bring your planning time down from 5 to 6 months to 2 months. 

Step 3: Increase collaboration. Make sure to involve key stakeholders in your process. Schedule a meeting (or a few) with stakeholders to brainstorm. Go over what your system looks like today, what you want it to look like in the future and the steps you need to take to get there. 

Step 4: Enhance adaptability. Be ready to flex and adapt by implementing frequent meetings to review planning and progress. Use this time to outline smaller action items to move the team toward long-term, sustainable progress. 

Looking to level up your annual planning and budgeting process and unlock your finance team’s full potential? Dominic shares his insight and expertise on effectively implementing agile practices on this week’s episode of The CFO Show, available wherever you typically listen.

Free top down planning template…

Streamline strategic decision-making and achieve organizational alignment by utilizing drivers to forecast goals and objectives with the free Top Down Planning Template from Vena.

In case you missed it…

Finance professionals are embracing AI technologies, including generative AI with increasing numbers, to improve financial functions, decision-making and overall operational efficiency within their organizations. In our last episode, Rishi Grover, Co-Founder and Chief Solutions Architect at Vena Solutions, discusses how financial leaders can implement AI to reduce repetitive, manual work across their teams and increase focus on strategy.

What’s next…

As businesses increasingly prioritize customer-centric strategies, collaboration between finance and CCO becomes essential in aligning financial objectives with customer experience goals. The CFO Show’s next guest, April Oman, is the Chief Customer Officer at Resilinc, where she champions customer success on the leadership team. She talks about how CFOs and CCOs can align financial strategies with customer-centric initiatives to drive innovation, improve operational efficiency, and foster sustainable growth.