Like a race car driver passing the competition and accelerating into the last lap, organizations need to remain sufficiently quick and nimble in order to take advantage of business and industry-wide paradigm shifts.

This is also the most direct and effective way to alter the perception prospects may have of you, in effect elevating you and your organization from vendor to trusted advisor.

The best example I can give of this is a personal one. My company, Revelwood, recently became increasingly clear that our primary audience — CFOs and senior finance executives at U.S.-based companies — were growing increasingly attracted to the concept of the rolling forecast, which by replacing or at least supplementing the traditional budgeting process discourages organizations from becoming too fixated on the present at the expense of the future.

The annual budget has long been standard operating fare at virtually all American companies – although it has been common in Europe for many years. But, as the concept of annual financial evaluations has begun to come into question here in the U.S., especially during challenging economic times like today, financial professionals have collectively started to embrace the idea of rolling forecasts.

With the financial executives of tomorrow now being schooled in their MBA programs on the benefits offered by rolling forecasts, where in the past their predecessors learned about the annual budget, this phenomenon will undoubtedly grow over time. And so, they will need an agile and flexible BPM solution to facilitate such a move.

Mitch Lapidus is Vice President of Sales at Revelwood, based in Parsippany, NJ. He can be reached at mlapidus@revelwood.com / 201-984-3038.