tailieunhanh - Financial Management Theory and Practice_2

Give future and current managers a thorough understanding of the financial theory that is essential for developing and implementing effective financial strategies in business today. Brigham/Ehrhardt's leading FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: THEORY AND PRACTICE, 13E is the only text that strikes a perfect balance between solid financial theory and practical applications. | Licensed to me@ Chapter 14 Financial Planning and Forecasting Financial Statements 486 Chapter 15 Corporate Valuation Value-Based Management and Corporate Governance 517 Copyright 2008 Thom-on Learning Inc. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied -canned or duplicated in whole or in part. Financial Planning and Forecasting Financial Statements A recent survey of CFOs on financial planning found a paradox. On one hand most respondents believe that financial planning is important with the majority stating that budgeting is highly useful for allocating resources. On the other hand many managers have doubts about the process largely because they believe that the input data are rarely accurate enough to yield realistic results. In fact 45 of the CFOs reported that budgeting is contentious political and time-consuming. Even worse 53 said that the budgeting process can encourage undesirable behavior among managers as they negotiate budgets to meet their own rather than the company s objectives. What can CFOs do to improve the situation Consider the budgeting process. It typically starts in July and ends in December just prior to the forecasted year. The process begins with data acquisition including historical information on sales costs inventories batch sizes defect rates number of repeat customers product mix by customer type hours of employee training and the like. Unfortunately most larger companies have stand-alone software packages and spreadsheets that vary from division to division making data acquisition timeconsuming and error filled. Instead of basing growth and performance targets on analysis of the markets and competitors targets are often set as last-year s-results-plus-a-per-centage-increase. To help solve this problem companies are developing a variety of new strategies. Demand-pull budgeting links the budget to sales forecasts and the sales forecasts are frequently updated to reflect changing economic conditions. A similar but more regimented .