Question

It is early December 2015. The shareholders and senior management of ThermoFisher have been waiting patiently for a couple of months to receive financial guidance for next year. The CFO is under significant pressure to release next year’s budget before the end of the year. Because of all the new product launches that have occurred in the last six months, the CFO has not been able to spend any significant time on developing next year’s budget. As a trusted project manager and leader within the organization the CFO delegates this task to you. The CFO has given direction to all business units that they will give your project team their fullest attention if you need it. As the project leader you have heard rumblings from your colleagues in various business units that there is no way that they will sacrifice their Christmas vacation to make this a priority. You find this troubling given the importance that senior management places on each business unit to achieve their budgeted numbers. You feel a little nervous to say the least in taking over this assignment. You do so any. Your first task is to decide on what budgeting approach or method to use in developing the 2016 financial plan. So what approach do you use? Why do you feel that your approach will be the most successful in giving shareholders and senior management accurate and timely information? What potential dangers or pitfalls do you see occurring by using this approach? Based on your approach what data or information do you feel would be absolutely critical for you to have in order to complete the budgets. In your own professional experience what forms of budgeting have you been a part of? Did you feel that the your company's budgeting process impacted behaviors in positive or negative way. Use course content to explain how behaviors were influenced. In addition, describe the measurement system you would developed to measure the achievement of each functional department's goals against the 2016 plan. What rewards systems would you put in place to ensure that there is a proper alignment between the actions of each department and the objectives of the budget?

Answer 1

1. Your first task is to decide on what budgeting approach or method to use in developing the 2016 financial plan. So what approach do you use?

1. Why do you feel that your approach will be the most successful in giving shareholders and senior management accurate and timely information?

Ans.     Since this approach makes every manager accountable, they have to submit to the project leader required information on timely basis regarding sales, production, consumption, purchases, etc. Hence information may be available to the management timely and accurately.

1. What potential dangers or pitfalls do you see occurring by using this approach?

It is time consuming as well as costly.

It faces various operational problems during the implementation of such technique

It requires full support of top management

Every personnel within the organization may not show interest for implementation of Zero Based Budgeting as this is an additional burden.

1. Based on your approach what data or information do you feel would be absolutely critical for you to have in order to complete the budgets. In your own professional experience what forms of budgeting have you been a part of?

Ans.     In this approach information is required like master budget. For preparation of master budget all functional budget information is required. Functional budgets like sales budget, production budget, consumption budget, purchase budget, human resource budget, etc. Hence all the above said budgets and related information would be critical for the above said approach.