The Benefits of Budget Time: Planning to Succeed

InReach — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 19:07:41 +0000

Annual Budget

Creating your annual budget is a necessary evil, but it also can be a time for measuring past performance and planning for greater success in the future. All too often, next year’s budget is a mere duplication of the prior year’s budget. For some of you, the education department is the last in your organization to budget because you are put in the position of filling any revenue shortfall to create a balanced budget. Am I the only one that has heard, “Can you increase your budgeted revenue to cover….”?

Budget Process

A typical budget process includes review of past costs and modifying as needed. As to revenue, you look at the last several years, especially for those of you that have a three-year compliance cycle and analyze your numbers for trends. From there you make conservative revenue and expense projections. Usually, that is the end of your budget work. However, expanding your process to include evaluation of your past performance and to reflect upon greater success is not only be healthy as an organization, but it also can impact both your revenue and expense lines.

As with any effort collaborate with your staff on creating a budget, especially those that are responsible for parts of the budget. Ask their ideas on how costs can be reduced or managed better. Ask their ideas on what could be done to enhance future successes. Not only do these conversations result in a better product, but it also results in getting buy in on the budget from your staff.

Past Performance

Did you make your net budgeted revenue and then some? Why?

If better marketing drove your revenue success, review those efforts. Compare the marketing cost with the revenue return and decide whether you should repeat or expand those strategies.
If new programming boosted your revenue, evaluate whether you should offer the program again. If the topic fell outside your usual CE content, brainstorm similar topics that may interest your audience and deliver comparable results. Offering related programs and expanding your catalog can create repeated success.
If discounting increased your revenue, analyze those numbers. Look at the discount level and the resulting rise in sales volume. You may find it worthwhile to offer discounted CE opportunities on a regular basis.

If your revenue success was a result of reduced costs, determine where you saved. Consider if the costs savings had a negative impact on quality of your product and services. If not, look for other areas where you may have the ability to save.

Budget Falling Short

Did you fall short of your net budgeted revenue? Why?
- If you fell short of your revenue goal, and it appears that it is a direct result of costs and there is no reducing the costs, consider raising your prices. Look at your competition, but don’t fixate on the competition. Don’t compare yourself to the low-cost, low-quality competitors, but consider the high-quality competitors. If you are delivering quality to loyal members, they will not notice a five to 10 dollar increase in your price. Depending on your registrant numbers, a small price increase can significantly impact your bottom line.
- If you fell short of your revenue goal because you provided in-person programs that weren’t economically sustainable, consider discontinuing the program, getting a sponsor for the program or changing the delivery type of the program. Costs related to a live online delivery are substantially less than delivering a live program. Break out of the habit of being focused on the in-person meeting as the starting place for all programming.
- If you fell short of your revenue goal because you lost member or market share, take a hard look at what you produce. If the quality of your programming, materials, speakers is on the decline, set in action plans to improve.

Greater Success

Can you increase your success by thinking outside the box or taking a few risks that require budget consideration?
- Increase staffing, so you can produce more products.
- Provide single sign on, so you make it easier for your learners to purchase.
- Produce more polished programming with enhanced videography services. The millennials expect it.
- Identify a value-add to your current programming – a follow-up program, forms, or an interactive opportunity.
- Develop a sponsorship campaign to secure outside funds to enable you to reduce your costs and to provide more goodies for your learners; for example, national speakers, better supporting materials, or better bagels can increase your learners’ enthusiasm and win their continued loyalty. Make sure the sponsorship has some link to the program and the learners. The learners need to benefit from knowing the sponsor, and what the sponsor offers.

Bottom line, you want to be realistic with your budgeting but use the budget process to evaluate and grow your overall success. Once you have a budget, review it constantly. If the budget is somehow flawed or unattainable, the earlier you know, the more time to adjust your action to correct. If you need any help in this area, give the experts at InReach a call.

The post The Benefits of Budget Time: Planning to Succeed appeared first on InReach Continuing Education Management System.

Ripping Out the Digital Shag Carpet

InReach — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 16:18:36 +0000

Digital Visual Trends

Shag carpets, crocheted owls hung on the walls, floral prints and orange: if you grew up in the 1970s, chances are your house was decorated with at least one of these (or most likely all) home décor trends and at the time, they looked great. Looking back on those trends now produces feelings ranging from, “Whatever happened to those ceramic mushrooms?” to “I’d rather die than have anything orange in my house.”

No, this article isn’t about a recent resurgence of trends that shouldn’t ever be popular again, but the nauseating visual I’ve (hopefully) created for you leads us into the topic at hand: modernizing and updating the look and feel of your InReach powered CE catalog. Now there’s no way your catalog is as bad as the average suburban home in the 1970s, but if you’re not keeping an eye on what’s considered modern, you could very well find yourself lagging behind the competition.

So what is considered modern in terms of website design and how can we help? Here are just a few things we can do to your catalog to give you the competitive edge:

Update: Flattening

Gone are the days of drop shadows and gradients, these days it’s all about flat, flat, flat. We’re talking about bold colors and fonts, borderless, self-contained elements and a clean appearance. Having trouble picturing it? Check out the before and after:

Before: After:

Before:

After:

Contact Us Pop Up

We pride ourselves in delivering world class support to your learners when they have an issue or a question. We’ve now made it easier to access that world class support with a collapsible pop up that follows learners throughout the shopping experience.

Enhanced Log-in Page

Tired of the same old log in page? We can give it a facelift!

Before:

After:

Like what you see? Ready to rip out the avocado green shag carpet? Contact your CSM today to explore all of the available options in modernizing your catalog.

The post Ripping Out the Digital Shag Carpet appeared first on InReach Continuing Education Management System.

InReach's Responsive Catalog Archives - InReach Continuing Education Management System

The Benefits of Budget Time: Planning to Succeed

Annual Budget

Budget Process

Past Performance

Budget Falling Short

Greater Success

Ripping Out the Digital Shag Carpet

Digital Visual Trends

Update: Flattening

Before: After:

Before:

After:

Contact Us Pop Up

Enhanced Log-in Page

Before:

After: