Axonify: Budgeting for Rapid Growth

In late 2016, Axonify, a Canadian technology company that managed a corporate online learning platform, was struggling to meet aggressive revenue growth targets while also controlling the costs of acquiring new customers. Axonify's chief financial officer had not imposed a top-down approach to developing budgets, nor had he attempted to closely monitor and control actual results against the budgeted costs. The members of the senior management team had been exercising considerable autonomy to develop their own functional area budgets and had been asked to explain only significant variances. The budgeting system had served Axonify well in its start-up phase. Would this “loose” budget system continue to work as the company grew, or should the chief financial officer have considered another budget process?