Many current budgeting and planning "solutions" do little more than simply automate the traditional spreadsheet-based budget. Whilst this may improve the efficiency of the process, saving time and cost, the opportunity is now available to generate value from the budgeting process. By integrating non-financial data into the budget, a process-based view of the business can be created that allows for driver-based budgeting, shared services modelling, intelligent capacity management, and fully integrated activity-based costing so that true cost and profitability data can be provided to users in a real-time closed loop solution. This allows organisations to undertake predictive planning as operational and financial managers are able to model resource requirements and capacity constraints inside the application as well as cost data, to build a uniquely dynamic budget capable of delivering near real-time re-forecast. Changing business drivers in one department allows users to see the impact ripple across the organisation.