My Excel model for budgeting is unmanageable and inflexible.

Many organisations still use Excel to collect planning data, collate and manipulate it to build the annual budget or periodic forecasts. In the absence of a specialist planning system, Excel is the obvious choice because it is easy to work with.

Often the budget model lives on from one year to another, gaining more content and becoming ever more cumbersome. Errors could be hidden anywhere. Responding to changes in the business is a headache. The model is so inefficient it holds the business back from planning more frequently. The focus of each Budget or Forecast exercise become all about the process and not the business outcomes.