Integrated Planning

Planning Analytics provides demonstrable value to organisations helping streamline plans, budgets and forecasts with high participation collection of submissions to improve accuracy and, amongst other areas, improve agility with what if scenarios and rapid strategic change based on rolling forecasts.

This value can be enhanced by adding new planning areas such as Human Resources Headcount and Compensation planning.  Understanding future headcount needs and their impact.

The really savvy companies take this a step further with value increasing as these planning applications become interconnected.

For example,  a forecast of increased demand from a demand planning application linked with projected sales feeds the need for a headcount increase in the headcount planning application.  Projected Sales figures, manufacturing costs and headcount all feed line items in the Financial plan and the top level executive dashboard helps understand the impact on the organisations KPIs.

Overlay this with some "What if" scenarios on a plan for what to market combining the marketing costs and you have a forward looking vision that the executive team can use to balance the whole business for success.

With this in mind,  where do you start? and what areas of applications may be considered?

For “where to start?”,  this is often in the office of Finance however,  my suggestion would be where it makes the most immediate impact to your business.  Then,  use a phased approach so that value can be delivered continuously, move to the next applications and link relevant information as you go.

A phased approach is exactly what this US based Retailer did over time leading to increased agility and integrated plans:

“What areas of applications may be considered?”,  here is a selection of example Plans, Reports and relevant metrics broken down by Line of business to provide “food for thought”.

As always,  Comments are welcome.

NB,  a selection of Customer videos and Case Studies can be found here.

Solution areas