We're halfway through the fiscal year and I need to review my marketing department's budget spend, identify what's working and what's not, and propose a reallocation to the CFO. Last year I did this in a spreadsheet and it was unconvincing. I need a structured approach.
Plan for: Plan and Execute a Department Budget Review and Reallocation
Discrepancies between Marketing CRM data and Finance ERP data (e.g., recognized revenue vs. pipeline).
Partner briefly with a finance colleague to understand how they recognize spend/revenue, and align your data definitions to match the ERP as the 'source of truth'.
The financial model format may not align with the CFO's preferred way of viewing data.
Request a blank budget or forecasting template previously used and approved by the finance department to build your model upon.
Getting bogged down in data and running out of time to practice the actual presentation delivery within the 1-month window.
Timebox the data analysis phase (Steps 2-4) to exactly two weeks, forcing a transition to modeling and presentation building in weeks 3 and 4.
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