What to Consider When Creating a Corporate Financial Model?
A financial model should be customized to your company's specific needs, regardless of its size, scale, and financial maturity. Creating a corporate financial model requires a thorough evaluation of your business.
These considerations include the financial objectives, assumptions, and constraints that need to be addressed by the model. Below, we explain how to identify and incorporate these elements into your financial model.
Considerations For Creating a Corporate Financial Model
When creating a corporate financial model, you will want to consider the following factors.
Analyze your company's financial history, market position, and industry outlook to understand your financial potential. Use this information to identify key factors affecting the company's financial performance.
Let's say you're a fintech company. Around ten years ago, your industry was relatively new, and you had a small user base. But due to the recent surge in digital banking, your industry is now booming. In fact, 66.7% of bank executives believe fintech will impact mobile payments worldwide.
Now, how does that information affect your corporate financial model? You'll need to consider the impact of this industry shift and revise your assumptions accordingly.
For example, you'll likely want to factor in the possibility of higher revenues due to increased demand for your services.
Every industry has its own set of growth drivers. Identify and analyze the factors that are driving your company's performance. For instance, the growth drivers in the e-commerce landscape may include the following:
Increase reliance on digital payments, digital advertising, and mobile commerce
Ease of use and convenience of online shopping
Enhanced customer experience through personalized recommendations
Knowledge about these growth drivers can help you incorporate the latest industry trends into your financial model.
Another important consideration in a corporate financial model is the analysis of historical data. It is often referred to as a "lookback period."
Understanding the past performance of a company can provide insight into what may be expected in the future. An analysis of historical financial data can also provide a basis for making decisions about capital structure, dividend policies, and strategic planning.
Analyzing past performance can help you identify any potential weaknesses in your company's operations. For example, you can look at your performance in the past year or quarters.
Have you been able to generate a consistent cash flow? Are your net profits significant, or have they been declining? Is there a trend of increasing or decreasing customer satisfaction?
By understanding the underlying trends in your historical performance, you can understand where your business is heading and make adjustments as needed. Additionally, you can include specific sections in your financial model.
For example, if there's a declining trend of cash flow consistency, you can use scenario analysis to determine the effect of a potential drop in sales. In this way, you'll have multiple potential outcomes that could help create a close-to-actual budget and forecast.
What are the overall objectives of the business? What is the desired outcome from this corporate financial model? Knowing what the business wants to achieve with the model can help you create a model that meets those goals.
According to Forbes, you should prioritize the following goals in 2023:
Now, how do you incorporate these business objectives into the model? Let's explain this with strategic flexibility.
Strategic flexibility will involve quickly adapting to changing market conditions, allowing you to identify and capitalize on new opportunities. Suppose you're a SaaS business. In recent years, AI and machine learning have become increasingly prevalent in the market.
You may want to incorporate AI and machine learning into your startup financial model to better anticipate changes in customer behavior. For instance, your assumptions about customer demand may need to be adjusted more quickly than before to reflect the new environment.
The corporate financial model should consider the business's current financial structure. Analyzing the company's current balance sheet, income statement, cash flows, and other financial data will allow you to create a more accurate model.
For example, if your business provides subscription services, you must consider the current customer base and revenue streams. Plus, factor in other revenue sources, such as advertising or consulting.
No financial model is complete without factoring in risk and uncertainty. You must consider the potential risks associated with your assumptions and develop ways to mitigate them.
For instance, you can incorporate a scenario planning approach to evaluate the effects of different assumptions on your financial model. It could include multiple scenarios, such as a worst-case and best-case scenario.
Suppose you're an e-commerce business. The base scenario can be selling 100 products a month. Meanwhile, the downside scenario can be selling 50 products a month, whereas the best-case scenario is selling 200 items.
Who Should Create a Corporate Financial Model?
In general, corporate financial modeling should be done by individuals who have the necessary experience and skills in this type of work. These include individuals with extensive knowledge of finance and accounting.
Additionally, any individual who is comfortable working with spreadsheets and Excel should be on the team. A corporate financial modeler should also have excellent problem-solving and communication skills as they are often required to work with a variety of stakeholders.
Plus, they should be familiar with Excel's advanced features, such as:
Charting and data analysis
Finding all this can be hard in a startup. That's where professional third-party help comes in.
Let Numberly Handle Financial Modeling For You
While you might know how to use Excel for basic reporting and budgeting, corporate financial modeling requires an entirely different set of skills. Numberly has a team of experienced corporate financial modelers who can help you with all your needs.
We'll create a detailed financial model for you that is built to specifically highlight your company's strengths and derive insights to inform decisions. By using dynamic assumptions, we keep the model customizable and scalable. Schedule a call with us to learn more about our services.