Short-time-work: Precise Forecasts help you out of the dark - Black Swan

Short-time-work: Precise Forecasts help you out of the dark

This is the time for acting, for captains who know how to deal with storms. In case your company manages to economically survive times like these, then it’s probably because of you. FP&A experts and their CPM systems make the difference in tough times – they prepare everything it needs to take the appropriate decisions. One of these truly crucial decisions is how save cost and keep key resources on board at the same time. Short time work is the most powerful instrument companies can leverage to be even more successful after the crisis.

It is key to take quick decisions; nobody knows how long local authorities will be able to afford this vital but expensive support for so many impacted companies. Throughout the past days, Germany and Austria have improved their ‘Kurzarbeit’ approach significantly, limiting risk for employees and employers at the same time. In Austria for example, employees’ risk is limited to 10-20% of their last net salary, and most of the non-wage labour costs will be refunded to the employers. Still, hundreds of thousands of employees have been laid off throughout the past days – and those people certainly will consider twice whether they want to return to an employer who has not considered short time work.

Due to the constantly changing crisis impact estimates, the mechanism of short-time-work is still evolving: We see adjustments to benefits and constraints every week. Calculation logic for cost savings has changed significantly, thus we have updated our HR cost planning module as part of our Integrated Business Planning. The module is now capable of forecasting cost savings, Cash Flow and productivity impact for several scenarios and legal regulations, including Germany and Austria.

This allows for significant forecast improvements: Depending on moving forward decisions on employee-, cost center- or business unit level (continue without change, lay off or go for short time work approaches), several scenarios can be compared and their impact on Profit/Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow simulated. Ultra-short-term liquidity can be monitored on daily and weekly level:

Our CPM modules reflect German and Austrian ‘Kurzarbeit’ regulations and are being adopted constantly in case of regulation changes. Since they are cloud based, your company specific forecasts and simulations can be up and running within a few days or weeks.

We provide pragmatic support to help you out of these challenging times: Just get in touch with us, read our COVID-19 First Aid whitepaper or watch the respective video. In case you want to discuss your requirements with me directly, you can book an appointment in my calendar.

 

How we help our clients in times of Corona:

“At Hillebrand we needed to adopt our Unit4 Prevero based CPM system quickly because we wanted to include in our reporting and forecasting system the COVID-19 impact estimates. That’s why we reached out to smartPM.solutions on Thursday. Their consultants started working on the requirements, and our system was up and running with the specified enhancements (we call it ‘COVID-19 impact overview’) in our productive environment next day afternoon. This is what I call agile and helpful.”

Grab our COVID-19 FIRST AID for FP&A experts Whitepaper

7 hands-on Suggestions for FP&A Experts to get out of ‘react’ and into ‘drive’ mode

Check out our VIDEO with hands-on suggestions from Finance guys for FP&A experts.

You never want to miss a post - follow us​

Share this post

Latest smartPM Blogposts

Flexible Rolling Forecasts for Agile Planning

Discover why flexible rolling forecasts are indispensable in controlling and create real value. From quicker responsiveness to enhanced risk assessment – we guide you on steering your company agilely with this innovative method.

Scroll to Top