The Agile Planner

A quick glance at Google Trends data confirms that Big Data--at least as a marketing phrase--is at its peak. Over the past year the phrase has skyrocketed in popularity, most likely thanks to searchers both curious about what Big Data means, and how they should approach data management when information has more volume, variety and velocity than ever before.

The short answer is ‘yes’.

Today's guest blog is written by Mark Gandy of B2B CFO. Mark is a long-time associate of Alight who has leveraged his expertise to help businesses of varying sizes with raising equity capital, M&A, streamlining accounting and finance departments, and building complex, driver-based financial models using the top software applications available for the mid-market.

Our blog this week comes from Tom Hartman, from the Alight Planning sales team. Tom specializes in providing solutions for Healthcare, Higher Education, Non-profits and Membership Organizations. He is exceptionally knowledgable in the areas of driver-based modeling, budgeting, forecasting, reporting, analysis, continuous planning, scenario analysis, and volume-rate analysis.

Rob Kugel, of Ventana Research, has an interesting post on the Big Fat Finance Blog which discusses the role of the Rolling Forecast in developing a smarter financial planning process.  While the post is a year old, it is still relevant as he makes a strong case for integrated business planning, or what we refer to as Agile Planning^TM. In order to be able to navigate the volatility of the current economy, companies need to implement leaner, more agile processes. Relying on traditional budgeting processes does not allow for the kind of responsiveness needed.

We are so pleased to have Rohan Badenhorst as this week’s guest blogger. Rohan has a wide range of experience across the globe and brings a relentless pursuit to add value to his clients. I was lucky enough to meet with Rohan face to face at an FP&A conference earlier this year in London. We talked with great passion about the conference's main themes from including "planning level of detail" and "how to really do driver-based modeling." Take it away, Rohan!

As far as I’m concerned, doing the right thing is worth whatever amount of time it takes you to get there. With budgeting and reporting, doing it fast is the basic goal – reducing the number of approval cycles and automating consolidations. It’s a process we just want to get done. Some pundits refer to the budgeting process as a headache; the goal is to reduce pain. Others note that budgeting is about not failing*. Most agree that budgeting has very little to do with doing the right thing to drive your business forward. 

We are pleased to have Tony Pallante as this week’s guest blogger. Tony has 30 years experience in mortgage banking, credit card lending and merchant financing. He’s held senior and C-level executive roles at MBNA America, Avondale Federal Savings Bank including 14 years at Household Financial Services. Recently, he authored two books including Big Strategic Planning for Your Business 2009.

The summer conference season is here, and we are planning on attending several great events. Many are coming up in the next week! Please stop by to say hello. We'd love to talk to you about our latest products & services and how Alight Planning can help you with your budgeting, reporting, rolling forecasting and scenario analysis needs.

This is the first in a series of blogs aimed at anyone considering the purchase of budgeting and planning software. The series is designed to save you time and stack the deck in your favor should you decide to move beyond spreadsheets for any planning activities. Here is a preview of Rand Heer’s Buyer’s Guide for Planning & Reporting Systems focusing on 3 critical levels of Planning Maturity: Budgeting, Forecasting, and Agile Planning. Rand is Alight Planning CEO and founder of Pillar, the first Enterprise Planning application.

We start with a graph of Planning Maturity:


The hypothesis is simple. Companies start by installing straight forward budgeting and reporting tools which add value to the business. The value is accelerated; however, as the organization matures and moves to a monthly or quarterly rolling forecast regime that supplements static budgets with flexible forecasts that recognize changing conditions. This may be followed by what we describe as Agile Planning^TM—event driven planning characterized by scenario analysis with real time feedback as key assumptions are tested in a driver-based planning model.

What’s important about the curve is the functionality you need in planning software “builds”. You start with basic feature sets for budgeting and reporting—e.g. multi-user support and automated consolidation and rollups to the P&L. Moving to rolling forecasts requires additional functionality—e.g. adding and populating additional time periods and comparing forecasts. Finally, moving to an agile planning environment, the highest level in planning maturity, requires another layer of functionality—especially tools for driver-based planning and in-depth scenario analysis.