Is offshore outsourcing a threat?

YES, BUT MORE FOR THE U.S. ECONOMY THAN FOR THEMSELVES, 66% OF THE 2,814 U.S. workers polled recently by Hudson professional staffing, outsourcing, and human capital firm said. In fact, 84% of the respondents believe that their jobs won't be moved offshore. And even the 15% who said their jobs

Hudson says that there was a stark contrast in attitudes among manufacturing and service workers. Thirty-three percent of manufacturing workers said their jobs could be exported, while only 11% of service workers thought that. Also, half of the respondents advocate government penalties for companies sending jobs offshore.

The company also publishes the Hudson Employment Index, a monthly measure of workers' confidence in the employment market.

Are You Still Using Spreadsheets to Budget?

If you answered, yes, you have a lot of company. When they conducted their latest budgeting and planning study, Ventana Research found that, of the 779 executives who participated in the survey, 64% still do their annual budgeting with spreadsheets, 21% use a dedicated budgeting and planning software application, 11% use an accounting application from their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and 4% use a variety of other methods. In a quick poll of participants on a webcast where the findings were released, the results were almost the same. Robert Kugel, VP and research director for Ventana Research, did say, though, that dedicated applications are becoming more prevalent in larger companies, particularly those with 10,000 or more employees.

Regarding how often they budget, annually still is the norm for all companies, regardless of size, with 62% reporting this way. Sixteen percent of the respondents do a rolling quarters budget, 13% budget quarterly, and 9% are on a different schedule. Yet 69% review the financials monthly; 18%, quarterly; 8%, weekly; 3%, annually; and 2%, never. Who sets the budgets? Most (61%) use a collaborative process in which the budgets are handed down from the top, then department managers provide their input, and then an agreement is reached. Regarding other ways, 19% use a top-down method where top management sets the budget, and 18% start from the bottom up.

When asked if they were satisfied with the budgeting process, most respondents answered "no," mainly because they thought the process wasn't accurate, took too much time, didn't let them spot problems fast enough, and didn't let them drill down in real time to resolve issues. As a result, 71% said they plan to change the process in the next year or two, while 29% said they were happy with current procedures. In the webcast poll, 63.6% of the listeners said their company was going to make significant changes to how it plans and budgets.

Obviously, budgeting and planning are crucial to companies and employees: 66% of the respondents said they were the most important or an important factor to company success, 70% said they were most important/ important to career success, 77% of CFOs said they were most important/ important to their career success, and 75% of other financial people cited them as most important/important to their career success.

What makes a budgeting and planning process effective and successful? Ventana says it's all about accuracy, agility, ability to offer insight, reviews for results, process consistency and quality, and alignment with corporate strategy. Here are a few excerpts from the findings about these issues:

* Companies that spend "about the right amount of time" on B&P are more satisfied with the accuracy of their budgets.

* 50% of the CFO respondents and 45% of finance staffers aren't happy with the accuracy of their company's budgets.

* Only 28% of the respondents can spot deviations from plan in days or hours (which is good enough), 66% can in weeks (maybe okay), and 33% take months to spot them (unacceptable).

* Once they spot deviations, only 30% can implement changes in days or hours, 71% in weeks, and 28% in months (unacceptable).

* 58% of respondents aren't able to drill down in real time to resolve issues, but 42% can. Of those who can't do real time, 40% can drill down in minutes or hours, while 18% require days, weeks, or months.

Would budgeting and planning software help users obtain more accurate results? Perhaps, says Ventana. It has a higher accuracy rate (63% above-average accuracy vs. 50% for spreadsheets), it offers deeper and faster insight into the numbers (53% in real time vs. 39% for spreadsheets and 86% in minutes/hours vs. 61% for spreadsheets), and it provides better consistency year to year and across business units because everyone can be on the same page.

Ventana Research also offers some recommendations as to what you should do to make budgeting and planning more effective for the whole company:

* Broaden and deepen participation in the budget process (it shouldn't just be finance's budget).

* Use the time saved for productive analysis in the budgeting and review process.

* Move to rolling quarter budgets.

* Set objectives with external benchmarks (sales targets, expense ratios, and the like).

* Think and operate contingently. The survey was undertaken to look at budgeting and planning processes and then to offer companies advice on how to improve performance management through integrated budgeting, planning, and forecasting.