I’m back from the HOW Conference where enthusiasm was plentiful but some follow-up conversations with attendees are unfortunately confirming an article in today’s Wall Street Journal. The article, by Deloitte & Touche LLP Chair at UCLA, Kenneth A. Merchant, is titled “Companies Get Budgets All Wrong” and subtitled “The annual budgeting process leads to bad decision-making.”
At inMotionNow, we are already deep into the onboarding process for several new customers that discovered inMotion at this summer’s HOW conference. (If you’re one of them, thank you!) Many are already reaping the benefits of new efficiencies by adopting our Workflow Automation Solution for enterprise creatives – with online creative briefs, task and milestone management, review and approval automation and reporting and audit tools. At the conference, hundreds of attendees confirmed they need to take advantage of these new tools and technologies.
Here’s the rub: annual budgets are postponing their ability to adopt tools they clearly need.
My appeal is that if you are one of those leaders that has been directed to deliver faster time to market on campaigns (top line revenue growth) while reducing costs (bottom line revenue growth) – then take Kenneth Merchant’s article into the CFO’s office and highlight the section of his blueprint for budget success titled, “Allocate Money Where It’s Needed, When It’s Needed.” Merchant writes, “No business unit or department should have to wait until next year for more resources when an unexpected and important need arises. That discourages managers from taking risks or otherwise deviating from the actions proposed when the budget was prepared. . . Senior executives should move to relax the financial constraints. They should trust managers to make good decisions. ”
I appreciate that you need to present your case respectfully and we are here to help. So if we can combine the Wall Street Journal’s message with our ROI experience we are eager to help you make your case.
Don’t wait. Your competition is already moving.
by Rob Munz
Founder & Chief Product Officer