Written by Johnny Kipps
Post Election Opportunities
It’s a funny old world – the strange arithmetic of the UK’s “first past the post” system propelled Labour into the House of Commons with 63% of the seats whilst the Conservatives and Reform achieved a scant 20% of the seats with more votes!
To some, heaven on earth, to others Armageddon.
At Forecast 5, however, our task is not political – it is to assist the financial teams in commerce and industry, in the accounting and financial advisory sphere, the not-for-profits and indeed, government itself to improve their budgeting and forecasting systems.
Credit to Ben Chu, BBC Verify for the data in the image
Morningstar – global credit rating agency – stated on 2 July
"For years the UK economy has been struggling with persistent low growth, mostly reflecting lower productivity growth. Brexit, the pandemic and the energy price shock have weighed on business investment in recent years, while a rise in long-term sickness combined with Brexit effects seems to have also slowed growth in the labour force, with an increase in labour inactivity."
At Forecast 5 we will do what we can to help improve productivity.
The first priority of a results-oriented entity, be it in the private or public sector, is to set a business plan for the future, the second priority is set a financial plan – the budget – which validates the business plan. Then the challenge is to accurately and quickly measure the drivers of the financial plan against financial results on a periodic (monthly, hopefully) basis.
With this review should come the ability to show where reality – actual financial results - are deviating from the plan. This enables early corrective action to be taken based on the variances, both on a monthly and a continuous year to date basis.
Forecast 5 presents this analysis very clearly, showing movements in cashflow, profit (ie productivity), and in an entity’s underlying balance sheet.
And beyond this, Forecast 5 allows the entity to extrapolate forward – taking the achieved results blended with the anticipated results to the end of the year to provide the best estimate to the year end.
These functions – variance analysis and rolling forecasts - are absolutely crucial management information tools providing “decision ready information”; without these tools, management operates in the dark.
In addition, Forecast 5 provides management with a “What if” scenario planning tool, enabling the finance team to assist the Board of Directors “war-game” differing future market situations.
Not many of us are blessed with Nostradamus’ foresight. However, with the best intelligence and Forecast 5’s sophisticated analytical tools, each organisation can do whatever it can to achieve 20/20 future vision, whilst doing its bit to improve national productivity, along the way!
If you’d like to try Forecast 5’s impressive range of features and give a boost to national productivity, check out our options below:
