Hello everyone;

This is a bit tedious, but important to consider regarding the impact upon the end user experience and process in a forecasting or planning cycle.

The scenario:  As an ITP user, I want to define a planning process in which the planning/budgeting for Year n+1 is informed by the a plan containing current YTD actuals for Year n so that I can more effectively budget for Year n+1.

Just a couple of observations regarding the best practice that ITP supports for leveraging actuals from CT – particularly in regard to the end user experience implications.

First, when actuals are published from CT to a Forecast or Plan in ITP, those actuals populate the Summary tab for the months of that year published to ITP. 

This creates an end-user experience related to the best practice supported by ITP that will need to be considered. 

For instance:

• Users will see the actuals from CT populating only the Summary tab for the months represented by the actuals.
• For the remaining months, the user has the option to add estimates in the Summary tab directly or leverage the other tabs (Labor, Contract, Asset) which will then populate the Summary tab.
  • This creates an interesting scenario for the data to be viewed whereby only a part of the year has data in the Labor (and possibly the Contract and Asset) tab.
• If the Forecast or Plan were being created in ITP apart from first populating it with anything from CT, the user would most likely enter Labor in the Labor tab and leverage whatever rule set has been established there – the same applies for the Contract and Asset tabs. 
  • The remainder of the Forecast or Plan would be created in the Other tab in most scenarios as it is probably rare for most customers to budget at a Contract and Asset level – even though the capability is present.
• Thus, a difference in end user experience exists and needs to be factored into any budgeting/planning/forecast process design discussions involving a holistic and integrated usage of ITP and CT.

Second, if CT actuals are manually loaded into ITP, the option exists to load the Labor (as well as Contract and Asset) tab data separately.  All other data would populate the Other tab.  This has an end-user experience impact as well, just a slightly different nuance.

These are simply observations with a focus upon end user & process implications when a planning process involves the integrated usage of CT and ITP.  

Any observations or experiences to the contrary or any recommendations of alternate ways of addressing the scenario are welcome.

Helpful information.