Methodology for Budgeting a Business Unit and its Technology Support

In the present day planning and budgeting is a vital and an irreplaceable instrument for managers. Through planning and budgeting they control management and development of a company. Planning and budgeting no longer is a competitive advantage, but has become a necessary condition for an efficiently run company. Increasing complexity of the environment impacts the requirements for planning and budgeting -- the need to be more complex, the need to include more relations and more specifications. Company's reaction to these demands is usually an implementation of special tools that allow the company to accomplish these requirements. Although, implementation of these instruments along with planning and budgeting generally troubles many companies, some are already looking for new ways to further develop planning; better said budgeting. Today companies are believed to receive a competitive advantage from compiling consolidated budgets for a business unit that is to say from the possibility to budget a business unit as a whole. The main purpose of this research paper is to develop a methodology for budgeting a business unit and its technology support. This methodology due to its newness of this issue has not yet been defined. Reaching the set goal depends on completion of predefined sub goals. The main content of sub goals, as defined in literature and based on my own experience with planning and budget analysis, is to describe this issue and thus enable the reader to understand and be able to implement this methodology on the job. The text of this research paper is divided into five chapters. In the first chapter the reader is introduced to the issue of planning, and learns about the goals, results and conceptual solutions of this paper. The second chapter is dedicated to the issue of planning and budgeting -- it explains its importance, analyzes its functions and aspects that are influenced by it. The third chapter ties back to the general definitions of budgeting from the second chapter and provides further details. This chapter identifies and describes techniques of compiling budgets, the techniques' strengths and weaknesses. The chapter describes the most common shortfalls of budgeting and its solutions; also, outlines the best budgeting practices. The fourth chapter stems from chapter two and three -- following the issue in which the reader is introduced to the characteristics of budgeting for a business unit, and moreover defines the methodology presumption and the methodology itself. The end of the chapter evaluates the results of the execution of the presumed methodology and its usability on the job. The fifth chapter summarizes the conclusions and the level of success on execution of this paper. Keywords: Planning, Budgeting, Budgeting Techniques, Consolidation, Business Unit, Corporate Performance Management (CPM), Best Practices.