Carlson Thought Leadership in Finance & Technology

This year's conference has an incredible line up of speakers and sessions.  I hope that you will attend my presentation on Unified Data: A Central Hub for Improved Budgeting and Decision-Making on Wednesday, April 27th at 4:15.  I will[...]

Per unit planning is a key exercise that can help businesses formulate a realistic sales plan

Ethan Carlson, CEO and Founder of Carlson Management Consulting, was recently interviewed on The Price of Business talk show. The Price of Business is one of the longest running shows on news talk radio in Houston, Texas. Hosted by award winning broadcast journalist, Kevin Price, this programs brings fresh perspectives to national and business news. Kevin interviewed Ethan as part of his ongoing focus on the success factors behind firms ranked on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States.

Has the year-end budget cycle exposed shortcomings in your Adaptive Insights model?  Has your organization evolved since your initial implementation?  Are there additional sheets, reports, or metrics you’d like to incorporate? Are you making the most of all of the new features Adaptive Insights has released?

“Thanks to Adaptive and Carlson, we no longer have the Annual Budget Model from Nightmare on Excel Street!” stated a euphoric Kelly Richmond, Budget Manager and Financial Analyst from Healthwise, Incorporated, a global non-profit organization dedicated to helping people make better health decisions.

Let’s face it - spreadsheets will have a role and offer value to finance to some extent for the foreseeable future. As a “spreadsheet jockey” myself, I use them primarily for ad hoc analysis and reporting. One of the questions that needs to be asked though is, does your FP&A team spend 80% of their time getting data into reports and tying them out for analysis and only 20% of the time actually analyzing the data? Or, do they spend 20% preparing reports and 80% on analysis. If it's the former, which is actually quite common, then you should seriously[...]