A recent survey by KPMG that was highlighted in a Supply & Demand Chain Executive article on how finance executives [are] at odds with dated, ineffective technology made it abundantly clear why finance needs to work with Supply Management. The global study found that the number one weakness in finance processes, as reported by almost one-third of respondents, was planning, budgeting, and forecasting.

It’s hard to plan without a budget, and its hard to budget without a forecast. To get a forecast, Finance could work with Marketing, but that’s not meaningful from a Finance perspective. What’s meaningful is how many units are actually bought and used / sold. And how much is actually paid. Who does the buying? Supply Management. And who is most likely to have a price locked in, or at least reasonably estimated? Supply Management. If Finance works with Supply Management, they can get meaningful acquisition/production forecasts (distilled from input from Marketing and Manufacturing), generate meaningful sales forecasts (using historical fill rates), calculate a realistic budget (once target sale prices are factored into account), and then construct an actionable plan. But if Finance doesn’t work with Supply Management, then everything is a crap-shoot estimate based on unrealistic interpolation curves.