Has anyone been using IT Planning (or Apptio Planning as we call it) to open forecasts throughout the year for parts of your businesses other than IT? We started using forecasting for Human Resources this year and while it was a slight change for those end users, it has been successful overall.

The forecasting process rolled right into the CY2020 budget process and we think that it has helped tremendously.

Please comment and discuss what other parts of your businesses you currently use IT (or Apptio) Planning for and what other segments could benefit. I appreciate everyone's thoughts!

Hi David, yes we are currently using IT Planning for both Budget and Forecast for whole Canada IS Tech spend.  

I'd say it's not super easy when we begin and we had a lot of challenges along the way, but we just completed our 2019 Multi - Year Forecast plan and we used that as basis for our 2020 Budget. It becomes easier because using a multi - year forecast will give us some "initialized" 2020 budgets that are up for review and updates by Cost Center Owners. It will lessen their review - time and turnaround time of our budget cycle as opposed to starting from scratch. 

Previously, we used a manual spread sheet to do our Forecast and even Headcount, but through IT Planning, we are now leveraging the Labor tab that automates base compensation calculation. So much easier! I'd say the process that we have now is good enough for our analysis and had helped our Leaders do their review.

We are planning to expand and adapt new cost centers that we will include in the Budget and Forecasting exercise. Also, we are looking into integrate Business Units which consumes our IS Tech services. Having this view would not only give a Direct IS view but as well as how their expense are being influenced by different cost drivers. A lot more to discuss but definitely an engagement with its stakeholder's and their Finance is needed for this collaboration. 

We are thrilled and excited to do more fun stuff in IT Planning! 

Hoping you are enjoying IT Planning as much as we are! 

Thanks, 

Rose 

Hi Rose- I can't imagine doing a full forecast and budget with manual spreadsheets... that would be so time consuming. I'm glad to hear other businesses are using the multi-year forecast as we just started forecasting in that way a couple months ago. Hopefully by doing that the 2021 budget process will be much much easier for everyone!

I know! That's why it's really good to have IT Planning and of course, CT on the side as most of our customize reports are presented there to have some views available to Leaders to fit their reporting requirements.  

Still looking on some improvements for our Forecasting as we see some challenges when we transition it to Budget Plan. Have you had a challenge as well to some Actual line items brought in to your 2020 Budget? This results to multiple line items tat has  -0-  values and so we need to manually delete those lines just to minimize and prevent confusion from Leaders. 

Unfortunately we did have some challenges when we created our 2020 Budget plan. Many line items were duplicated and we also had to go through and manually delete the lines before opening the plan to end users. There was good feedback throughout this thread. -> Budgeting in Apptio IT Planning

The comment at the bottom from @Rob DeLeo is very helpful as well.