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Zero-Based Budgeting Is Not a Wonder Diet for Companies

Harvard Business Review

Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is elegantly logical: Expenses must be justified for each new budget period based on demonstrable needs and costs, as opposed to the more common method of using last year’s budget as your starting point, then adjusting up or down. We believe the exact opposite to be true.

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Can You "Re-Anchor" Your Next Budget Meeting?

Harvard Business Review

Zero-based budgeting is one such technique, but it is a time-consuming approach that cannot be used systematically. On the other hand, data from competitor benchmarking can be very useful here (and not, as is too often the case, to ape competitors' practices). Build and calibrate a model based on these criteria.