In which planning steps or flow would your position contribute to the most, and why? How can you contribute? How would your position interact with other functional areas, such as sales and HR?

Assignment – Forecasting and BudgetingForecasting is a crapshoot in finance. The firms still do it because forecasting helps with, among others, contingency plans and predicted future cash flows to evaluate a firm’s financing needs. Financial planning (used interchangeably here with forecasting) tools include the cash budget and pro forma statements.Download the assignment template below:Follow the instructions and complete both the Pro Forma and Cash Budget worksheets in the template.Discussion – Contributions to PlanningDirections:Planning is essential for the firm’s management to address the unavoidable problem: no one knows what will happen in the future. Managers, however, can reduce the risks that arise from uncertainty by having contingency plans that enable the firm to respond proactively to future difficulties. Planning for them involves people in many positions in the organization. Planning steps include gathering information about sales, analyzing historical data, making projections of future revenues, estimating costs, and others.Initial PostThink of yourself in a future position in a hypothetical manufacturing firm that produces baked cookies. In which planning steps or flow would your position contribute to the most, and why? How can you contribute? How would your position interact with other functional areas, such as sales and HR?Reply PostRespond to a classmate who has a similar future position. How different are their contributions from what you reported? Alternatively, find a classmate whose position is different from yours. How can you two collaborate to contribute to the planning?classmate Jon Simpson9/11/23, 7:12 PM NEWAs an operations manager of a cookie-baking firm, my position would work in many of the planning steps involving the business. The operations manager works with all departments to meet organizational goals. The operations manager contributes to a few specific process planning steps: production planning and scheduling and inventory and supply chain management.Production planning and scheduling contributions are made by ensuring the production of our cookies goes smoothly and ensuring the right around of cookies are produced when needed. By overseeing the production process, the operations manager can look for operational deficiencies and take corrective action, thus making the operation run more lean, reducing production costs, and improving profit margins.Inventory and supply chain management contributions by the operations manager by ensuring stock levels of raw materials are available when needed for production from suppliers that are not overpriced. Consistently reviewing these items Is necessary to keep production costs down. Additionally, inventory management includes working with the sales management team on their forecasts to ensure there are no shortages or overstock situations of the cookies being sold.This position would work with sales and marketing the most to ensure production expectations are met based on forecasted sales and ramp up production when marketing initiatives drive up demand. With this in mind, it would also be important to work with the financial team to analyze historical costs and production data to ensure forecasting can be completed efficiently.