Speaking of budgets..

As I was saying, marketing should start with an environmental assessment, leading to a well-planned integrated set of marketing mix strategies, and end with an ongoing process for control, including budget planning, performance measurement and strategy adjustment.

Today BNET provided a great, actionable strategy to follow regarding managing business finances and budgets - not just for overall corporate business planning, but for each department - in this case, marketing. Each great business or marketing strategy and its implementation will not succeed without having this kind of performance measures and budgetary controls to enable proactive management and timely adjustments.