Alight CEO to Present at Financial Forecasting & Planning Summit
PLACERVILLE, CA; January 27, 2010 — Alight LLC, developers of the industry-leading Alight Planning financial planning and reporting software, today announced that Rand Heer, Alight CEO and founder and architect of the original Pillar software, will present a pre-conference workshop to address the challenges and application solutions for implementing rolling forecasts at 1:00 pm, Wednesday February 24th as part of the Financial Forecasting & Planning Summit set for February 24-26 at the Doubletree Mission Valley in San Diego.
“Reflecting the continuation of difficult economic times, recent surveys by analyst firms confirm that a top priority of best-of-class firms is to implement processes for re-forecasting, especially incorporating “what if” scenarios and business drivers,” Heer said. “In the workshop, we will examine the critical processes involved in generating rolling forecasts, including scenario analysis and driver-based planning, and how better forecasting can improve decision making and profitability.”
True to the FP&A Summit’s theme, “Successful Planning Through Strategic Finance Initiatives: Effective Decision Making In Financial Planning & Analysis,” Heer’s workshop will examine planning application requirements to enable companies to stay ahead of the curve in the current economy. In this fast-paced workshop, Heer will employ customer case studies, along with current forecasting theory and best practices, to highlight the three critical requirements for effective rolling forecasts, including:
• Scenario analysis for establishing “what if” scenarios and exploring alternative decisions or actions in real time to understand possible outcomes.
• Driver-based planning where financial forecasts are driven by operational assumptions about the business.
• Integrated actuals where imported actuals data are modeled to provide visibility into operational and financial trends for forecasting purposes.
For a live demo of Alight Enterprise 5, or for more information about Alight’s budgeting, reporting, and forecasting solutions, visit www.alightplanning.com.
For more information about the I.E. Group’s conference series including the upcoming Financial Planning Summit in San Diego, visit www.theiegroup.com
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Risk Management
Whenever you undertake a project you expose yourself to risk. Risk is an inherent component of any project and every project carries with it a certain amount of risk. This includes the risks and uncertainties encountered
throughout the project life cycle, as well as the business risk associated with not doing the project.
Risk is the net negative impact of a vulnerability exercise, considering both the probability and the impact of an
occurrence. A risk management exercise is the process of identifying risk, assessing risk and taking proactive
steps to remove risk or reduce risk to an acceptable level.
Risk management is the continuous process through which the relative risk of harm to an application or project is evaluated, mitigated, and continuously monitored. A team led by the Risk Manager and consisting of other
interested parties first performs a risk assessment for all new projects and systems undergoing major modification. The risk assessment team identifies the controls in place and additional controls needed to provide confidence for the project or system and reduce the level of risk to one acceptable to the stakeholders. The Risk Manager then performs periodic vulnerability testing of the controls to monitor the continued adequacy of system confidence.
Structured risk management activities conducted by the project office seek to identify at an early stage any critical success factor that appears unfulfilled. This allows the project management team to raise the issue in the appropriate forum and begin efforts to mitigate any potential risk.
Top 10 CRM Implementation Project Risks
Through dozens of risk analysis projects, we’ve prioritized common risks below.
Invalid project assumptions (different expectations among stakeholders)
Project planning omissions. Significant delays incurred not because project planning tasks were underestimated but because project tasks were completely omitted (forgotten)
Data conversion delay. Unanticipated data scrubbing due to poor data quality
Lack of continuity or consistency of business processes among multiple locations (as well as the introduction of sub-optimization by some locations)
Failure to proactively anticipate and mitigate user adoption challenges – fear of change, sub-optimization and/or sacred cows. Closely aligned with failure to recognize the change in cultural due to a CRM implementation
Missing or infrequent active and visible executive sponsorship
Project is perceived by users as optional; Failure is an option
Failure to backfill project team schedules/workloads
Failure to recognize weak (basic PC operation) user skills assessment prior to training
Failure of Risk Management and proactive risk mitigation
Whenever you undertake a project you expose yourself to risk. Risk is an inherent component of any project and every project carries with it a certain amount of risk. This includes the risks and uncertainties encountered
throughout the project life cycle, as well as the business risk associated with not doing the project.
Risk is the net negative impact of a vulnerability exercise, considering both the probability and the impact of an
occurrence. A risk management exercise is the process of identifying risk, assessing risk and taking proactive
steps to remove risk or reduce risk to an acceptable level.
Risk management is the continuous process through which the relative risk of harm to an application or project is evaluated, mitigated, and continuously monitored. A team led by the Risk Manager and consisting of other
interested parties first performs a risk assessment for all new projects and systems undergoing major modification. The risk assessment team identifies the controls in place and additional controls needed to provide confidence for the project or system and reduce the level of risk to one acceptable to the stakeholders. The Risk Manager then performs periodic vulnerability testing of the controls to monitor the continued adequacy of system confidence.
Structured risk management activities conducted by the project office seek to identify at an early stage any critical success factor that appears unfulfilled. This allows the project management team to raise the issue in the appropriate forum and begin efforts to mitigate any potential risk.
Top 10 CRM Implementation Project Risks
Through dozens of risk analysis projects, we’ve prioritized common risks below.
Invalid project assumptions (different expectations among stakeholders)
Project planning omissions. Significant delays incurred not because project planning tasks were underestimated but because project tasks were completely omitted (forgotten)
Data conversion delay. Unanticipated data scrubbing due to poor data quality
Lack of continuity or consistency of business processes among multiple locations (as well as the introduction of sub-optimization by some locations)
Failure to proactively anticipate and mitigate user adoption challenges – fear of change, sub-optimization and/or sacred cows. Closely aligned with failure to recognize the change in cultural due to a CRM implementation
Missing or infrequent active and visible executive sponsorship
Project is perceived by users as optional; Failure is an option
Failure to backfill project team schedules/workloads
Failure to recognize weak (basic PC operation) user skills assessment prior to training
Failure of Risk Management and proactive risk mitigation
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