The New Planning Method – Post Covid
The “New Normal” will impact how corporations are planning and forecasting business operations. The Hackett Group has put together an analysis and some predictions in this report: The Impact of Covid-19 on Planning.
Since you are reading our blogpost it is likely that you already have implemented Power BI or your corporation are in the process of doing so. This is good news if you read the report:
Here are some of the key takeaways on how Planning will change:
| Report Finding | Power BI with Visual Planning (VP) |
| Implement rolling forecast or more frequent planning processes | Forecasting and Planning in Power BI is an inexpensive alternative to costly FP&A solutions. Visual Planning from Power ON enables you to generate new scenarios, share it with you peers and collaborate throughout the organization to get everybody to understand and commit to the new Forecast. |
| Stop Actual, Budget, LY Comparison | The budget is already outdated, and Last Year’s data is just a good memory, not a management tool. With Power BI it is easy to download external data like stock market data, growth projections, competitor information to develop a baseline for comparison of how the organization is really performing. |
| Automate and diversify data collection processes | Power BI is very cost-effective solution compared to other solutions. When combining an agile rolling forecast with collaboration from a cross-functional team, the report finds that modeling and forecasting becomes more accurate. VP enables easy collaboration, workflow and commenting on data-points. |
| Spend more time analyzing | Corporations that spend more time analyzing data have better predictions to the actual outcome the report suggests. Power BI and Visual Planner forms a comprehensive analytical platform with 300+ custom visual to choose from. Legacy FP&A solutions have very limited analysis and relies heavily on “Export to Excel”, which is like taking the gravel route. Power BI and Visual Planning, on the other hand, is modern BI & FP&A. |
| Implement driver-based model | Power BI framework enables a unique way of implementing Driver Based Modeling and make changes to drivers throughout the Forecasting process. |
| Power ON’s additional suggestions; | |
| Start measuring what matters and can be measure and impacted | Traditional FP&A processes starts with the General Ledger, creates an Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and a Cash Flow Statement. Agile forecasting and Covid Planning need to focus on customers, cost of production, reduce inventory, shorten supply chain, solidify payables, secure the workforce, and optimize marketing spend. Shy away from non-discretionary spend. By managing and measure these metrics, the IS, BS and CF can be automatically generated. (if required.) Visual Planning can help with all aspects of this new planning and tell you what Customers, Products, Markets, Vendors, Employees and Sales People develop to focus on. |
| Add Business Intelligence to FP&A | Power BI and Visual Planning provides a basis for Machine Based Learning and Predictive Analytics and Impact Analysis. Two tools in one. BI + FP&A |
| Collaborate with commenting on datapoints and perform what-if analysis. | Power BI is by proxy a collaborative platform. Users can work on Forecasts in Teams, provide comments, add videos for explanation and easily record planning sessions and share them among the cross-functional teams in order to reach more unified decisions. |
| Implement workflow and audit-trails for quality assurance and avoid errors | VP adds Workflow with email notifications for Power BI. All transactions are tracked and can be audited for better accuracy and ensuring more error-free forecast and planning scenarios. |
Try Visual Planning for Power BI today with our 100% Money Back Guarantee. It is Planning inside Power BI without ever leaving the familiar user environment with slicers, filtering, drill-though and secure data in Azure or on-premises. It IS Power BI. Nothing less, but a LOT more. Learn more about Planning in Power BI.
