Skip to main content

Posts

Driver-Based Modeling

  Driver-based Modeling Driver-based modeling presents major advantages when budgeting, forecasting, and running scenario analysis. A driver-based model allows you to test out individual assumptions and see how minor (or major) changes may affect your business. Further, a driver-based model allows for more detailed variance analysis and dynamic forecasting. For instance, if you are a hotelier and your hotel’s occupancy changes, then you would expect variable expenses such as housekeeping to change. A great driver of expense in this scenario would be rooms occupied. If your occupancy changes, then the difference in rooms occupied times the cost per housekeeping clean is the amount of variance you would expect to see at month-end.     How do you build a driver-based model? First, identify the cost and revenue drivers in your business. What data can you get ahold of, and what impact does that data have on your business. While initial drivers may be statistics captured as part of your mont
Post a Comment
Read more
Recent posts

Explaining Variances

As FP&A professionals, we’re tasked with relating the story of the business to the numbers in the P&L. Often, however, the story has many twists and turns that can be hard to break down. Seeing average cost per unit rising drastically over a short period of time can be alarming, but breaking it into the component (i.e. rate, volume, mix, etc.) can help us understand whether the change is a matter of poor management or favorable shift in business volume.   One of my favorite ways to present variance analysis is by breaking the variances down to their components – or drivers. For instance, in a manufacturing scenario, your drivers of expense might be wages & benefits, material costs, and hours worked. I’ve broken such a scenario down for you below which can explain the approach.   In this scenario, a manufacturer ran production for an order of one of its products   Budget Production Cost $73,000  Actual Production Cost $71,100  Cost Higher/(Lower) ($1,900)   On the surface, p
Post a Comment
Read more

Making the Budget Process Effective

For many of us in the Finance world, “budget season” is a meaningless measurement of time because we always seem to be in the middle of working on The Budget. Whether we’re looking at capital requirements for the next one, three, five, or even ten years out, planning head counts, or building pro formas, finance professionals spend a considerable amount of time planning for the future. Unfortunately, our prognostications rarely hold true. As actor-director-writer extraordinaire Woody Allen once said “if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” With all the time spent on planning and sharpening the pencil just to miss the mark, why do we even bother with budgeting?  As always, the reality is clouded in shades of grey. No business can truly operate for long without some semblance of a plan. Try taking your latest app idea to the angels of Silicon Valley promising your potential investors that they’ll get their money back “eventually”. Ultimately, we’re forced to admit that p
Post a Comment
Read more

Game of Data - A Story of Muffins and Metrics

I’ll begin this post with a confession: I don’t have the best dietary habits (though I swear I’m working on it). My office has a self-service cantina stocked with a variety of foods including candy bars, soft drinks, frozen meals, and, stored in a round wicker basket, the most addictive muffins on the planet. Many mornings, despite my best efforts, I cannot fight the urge to grab my $1.80 muffin from downstairs before plowing into the depths of spreadsheets and ad hoc reports. It’s an addiction, but at least it’s not crack… right? Addictions and self-control aside, nothing frustrates me more than when that little wicker basket is empty when I’ve already committed to quenching my muffin madness. What’s even more frustrating is when I see the vendor’s truck parked outside the loading dock and the rep inside the cantina early in the morning only for the muffin basket to be empty… again. I should take that as sign that it’s time for me to squash my sweet tooth once and for all, but
Post a Comment
Read more