Connected Planning

Connected Enterprise Planning is the evolution of traditional FP&A to connect more data and inputs from sales and operations, human resources, and supply chain to improve decision-making and performance.

The Big Idea.

Finance teams, who serve as the central keepers of plans and planning data, need to synchronize with sales, HR, operations, and other departments to improve collaboration and decision-making—the greater the alignment, the better the results.

No More Silos.

Every department has a part to play in planning for future success, and finance is the data hub that connects them. Data can’t exist in silos spread across the business— consistent, accessible, and accurate data drives performance and execution.

Disruption and change have become a constant. Businesses are increasingly digital, and as recovery from the pandemic switches to reimagining their operating models, removing planning silos and fragmented systems is a priority that boards are funding.

The problem is that siloed data and fragmented systems limit visibility across the business. Disconnected planning systems that, for example, don’t connect financial plans to ESG targets drastically hinders the ability to understand the impact of change across the business and to use those insights to know how and when to react.

The business case for synchronizing financial, operational, and line-of-business planning is robust. Case in point: A connected approach has helped Oracle customers improve margins by 35% and decrease planning cycle times by 30%.

Oracle clients adopting a connected enterprise planning strategy are experiencing tangible results in critical areas, including increased margins, lower inventory costs, workforce efficiency gains and improved decision-making.

Many our of clients are actively working with us to break down these planning silos. By connecting financial, operational, and line of business planning on a single cloud, they’re improving agility and the visibility to model how a change in one area ripples across the rest of the business.

Build a financial nervous system that allows you to synchronize across the business and outperform your competitors

Financial Planning

Do more than just build a budget. Orchestrate execution across the business and increase the visibility of performance across your organization to make better decisions. Embed advanced modelling and predictive analytics to surface data-driven insights that will help you to take action faster.

• Connected Plan
  Extended integrated business planning across all critical functions, including supply chain, S&OP, workforce, and financials, to fully orchestrate planning and execution.
• Strategic Modelling
  Understand the impact of strategic decisions across your bottom line, balance sheet, cash flow, and shareholder value before pushing to your operational plan.
• Advanced Simulation
  Use Monte Carlo simulations to determine the likelihood of various forecast scenarios, giving you confidence in your decisions.

Sales & Ops Planning

The sales forecast is the most critical input to the financial forecast, especially in B2B organizations, and can be the primary driver of strategy. When pushing down revenue targets from the corporate plan, it is vital to align operationally. Maximize performance by quickly balancing demand and supply alternatives using best practices.

• Connected
  When financials and sales are on the same platform, everyone has a continuous view of performance.
• Scenario Planning
  Many big business decisions involve modeling assumption changes. Rapidly model various sales outcomes and see the impact on the financial plan.

Workforce Planning

Workforce costs are frequently the most significant operating expense, but the ability to model a change in costs based on a new strategic imperative is frequently time-consuming and disconnected. Can you quickly model answers to critical questions like “what is the cost implication if we moved these roles from location a to location b?”.

• Supply & Demand Matching
  Connected HR and finance plans HCM and finance allows you to perform effective talent demand and supply matching.
• Transparency & Integrity
  Increase transparency and push integrity for compensation data beyond consolidated financials into the HR world.

Projects Planning

To maximize the ROI of projects and de-risk their delivery requires a complete view of a project’s expenses, resource needs, and financial performance – a connected approach. Combining your projects, workforce plan, capital expense plan, and financial plan ensures each plan reflects the latest changes across all of them, which improves decision making.

• Complete Visibility
  Connected project planning reveals the complete picture by combining financial, workforce, capital, and cash-flow into a cockpit view of project execution.
• Financial Control
  Bring the full power of financial control and analytics to projects to predict future budget variances before they happen. Take control of projects and de-risk cost overruns.

IBPX Planning

Integrated planning and execution (IBPX) is a specific approach to planning for the unique needs of manufacturing businesses. The IBPX architecture extends the principles of Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) throughout the supply chain into product and customer portfolios, customer demand and strategic planning to deliver one seamless execution and analytics system.

• Connected Plan
  Extended integrated business planning across all critical functions, including supply chain, S&OP, workforce, and financials, to fully orchestrate planning and execution.
• IoT and Machine Learning
  Monitor the execution of plans in near real-time to detect unexpected events using IoT, AI, and prescriptive analytics. Every event that can impact a plan can be intelligently monitored, and plans adjusted rapidly.
• Advanced Simulation
  Extended integrated business planning across all critical functions, including supply chain, S&OP workforce, and financial, to fully orchestrate planning and execution.

Connected Planning better aligns operational planning with your financial performance. It is a platform-centric strategy that extends FP&A use cases beyond finance by incorporating functional applications to unify data, processes, collaboration and core planning activities.  The result is greater visibility and decision-making, driving improved business performance.

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IBPX Capabilities

Integrated Business Planning and Execution (IBPX) is a specific architecture designed for manufacturing businesses designed around three core capabilities:

Plan — connect all planning activities across financial, projects, capital, workforce, sales & operations and supply chain planning into a single integrated platform: overlay top-down and bottom-up strategic targets.

Execute — a cock-pit view of execution gives leaders the critical tools they need to maximize profit winners. Provide multiple simulations and what-if analysis of future scenarios to evaluate alternative strategies to maximize the probability of meeting targets.

Monitor & Adjust — connect every aspect of the value chain to provide near real-time monitoring of critical systems and sensors (IoT). Apply machine learning and advanced analytics to unexpected events to receive recommendations on addressing issues to get back on track to hit targets faster.

Intelligent Automation

It’s not science fiction. You can achieve touchless forecasting using intelligent automation; replacing spreadsheets with a connected planning platform is just the tip of the iceberg.

Don’t waste time loading actuals. Automatically see actual data from operational or financial systems surface into your planning platform and review the most likely plan calculated by the data science capabilities. This approach increases forecast accuracy and significantly decreases time spent on forecasting.

Intelligently monitor your plan and receive notifications of any anomalies, trends, or issues that need immediate action. Instead of spending valuable time recreating your plans or forecasts, you can spend time making critical decisions and taking action.

Flexible & Configurable

There is no need for a big bang approach. Set the pace and timing of your transformation journey by starting in one area, for example, longer-term corporate planning, before adding on or enabling new modules when it is right for your business.

Avoid the mistake of trying to build customized solutions or adding bolt-ons to other apps. This approach results in siloed applications, increased risk, longer implementation times, and often failed transformations.

We can help

Version 1 has helped hundreds of businesses to transform their planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes.

We can provide an end-to-end solution. Perhaps you want to start with a Maturity Assessment of your current processes to define and budget a roadmap for change? Or you are ready to begin connecting your siloed planning applications today? We can help.