During Phase I, the CEO and CFO will be using S&OIS to provide insights into improving the firm’s financial performance without disrupting the traditional budget’s processes The author’s suggestion is that S&OIS support should be provided by small CHQ department reporting to the CFO.

It’s a small department because S&OIS is a model so the turn around is quick and the staff requirements are modest. The department becomes, in effect, an advanced analytics “wheel house” for the CFO/CFO.  In fact, such function was out-looked in 2014 by the then CEO of Deloitte. In addition, in 2016 Thomas Davenport published another article in CMO describing Finance as currently behind in advanced analytics’.

There are at two kinds of analyses the staff will provide for the CFO/CEO:

• Those that associate with budget-related financial planning, as described below
• Those that don’t as described in the “Additional S&OIS Advantages for CEO/CFO” tab.

Support for financial planning includes:

• S&OIS is updated and a new forecast developed. If significant new profit opportunities are identified, the CFO/CEO can make “in flight” course corrections to the budget to achieve themit.

The data is readily available to assess the extent of the budget’s misalignment with the new profit opportunity. Simply compare S&OIS’s departments’ costs with the departments’ budgeted costs and make adjustments, as appropriate, to the budget.

• Use the  activity-based costing data available to each department manger to shift focus from controlling its costs to improving its efficiency.
• Share S&OIS’s results with firm’s stock analysts

Phase I is is also the time during which the CEO/CFO develop the plans to replace the current budget in Phase II. See “S&OIS Phase II tab for details.