Adaptive Planning: Operative Financal Modeling, Assessment and Control

To 'know' what to do...

is to have 'found' the boundaries,

by 'learning' the consequences,

from 'playing' wins and losses,

and 'experiencing' the difference.

The Beyond Budgeting Round Table, an industry research organization, estimates that the average corporation spends four months and 20-30% of senior executives' and financial managers' time on the budget, and that larger companies, with annual revenues over $1 billion, spend as many as 25,000 person-days per year budgeting. The same and more can be said for advanced financial modeling. With multiple-simultaneous business models, supply chains, costs of capital, alternative workflow processes, outsource options, and too many more variables to evaluate, model-based analytics is even more frustrating and costly.

And to what end? Among many companies, the consensus view is that the cost of budgeting and modeling/analytics-in terms of time and resources-is far greater than the value it creates. And the primary culprit is the inefficient, spreadsheet-based budgeting, forecasting, and reporting models still used by most companies.

Adaptive Planning:
An advanced web-based operational finance modeling, simulation and assessment application used for budgeting, forecasting and reporting.

Employing Adaptive Planning will enable the following benefits:

● Eliminate the Hassles Involved With Using Spreadsheets to Conduct Your Budgeting/Forecasting Functions

Today, the vast majority of businesses use Microsoft Excel, or a similar spreadsheet tool, as a means to capture data, compute, and mechanically facilitate their budgeting-forecasting-reporting process including the modeling their operating/reporting structure,. The reason for this widespread use of the ordinary spreadsheet to accomplish these functions has long been that spreadsheets were the only commonly available tool offered by the primary software vendors that were designed/meant to handle and compute numeric data. And since numeric data capture and compute is a central requirement to the activities of budgeting and forecasting, spreadsheets have been used.

However, in practice, the budgeting and forecasting processes are much more than just data capture and compute. Budgeting and forecasting are the means to control and coordinate business operations. So. to address this broader context, spreadsheets have been extended to address their shortcomings. Over the years, spreadsheets have been expanded, templated, triggered, networked and contorted in many directions which have improved their applicability, but at a cost. Though more enabling functional attributes are added to spreadsheets, deploying multiple interdependent spreadsheets throughout an organization is highly problematic. Evan the best inter-operational spreadsheet system designs include multiple copies of data representing the same value which can easily become mis-versioned/corrupted and the simplest of change to a model can render all interdependent worksheets or even the entire system inoperative and more! With spreadsheet-deployed budgeting and forecasting, the problems have always been many and the headaches, large.

As a functional successor to the spreadsheet, the Adaptive Planning platform serves as an easy to use/manage multi-dimensional data collection/analysis tool and as the means for a hierarchical organization to acquire, make actionable meaning from and disseminate financial information. Powerful planning and reporting have never been easier. Adaptive Planning also offers associated project management and documentation, social interaction and support for all operations-focused finance processes. (And, unlike other enterprise software spreadsheet-operational alternatives, our innovative solution is affordable, deploys in just days, and does not require new hardware, software, or IT support.)

● Enable an Entirely New 'Operative' Approach to Operational Planning

What if the process of doing your company's, division's or team's budgeting/forecasting for all operations was made easy... automated... and took just a few days, or even a few hours? Think about it for a minute. How would that change the way operational budgetary planning might be employed? What more could you do with the planning process? How might that ability change the constraints of the entire business?

The use of Adaptive Planning changes the dynamics of operational budgetary and forecast planning from a long, arduous and often contentious activity that is tied to annual allocations, to an 'always-on' resource that can be continually used as an in-line process with the means to analyze and control. With Adaptive Planning an organization can approach its budgeting/forecasting activities more simply and more often, and use the process more fully. By replacing the common spreadsheet mechanisms and methods with a planning-purpose-based database that can be easily modeled and remodeled, sequentially populated and/or versioned and alternatively populated with data as well as be accessed in a multitude of highly communicative , yet access controlled ways, the use of the planning process is opened up. Operations can be controlled by simply updating current data and making the necessary adjustments out into the future and alternatives can be evaluated by playing out multiple future budgets/forecasts. With Adaaptive Planning it's also much easier to drill down into past data to find the spend/save results. These results can help to weigh future objectives and correctly identify and monitor the key indicators of true operating performance.

And yet, with all of these advanced capabilities, Adaptive Planning is very easy and versatile to use. Accessed via a simple web browser, each user has her/his own simple dashboard with an easy-to-use tabbed interface. And because it's not a spreadsheet technology, all data is handled as named variables instead of cell locations - including formulas! There is no doubt, Adaptive Planning is just much easier use!

Given these new abilities, Adaptive Planning provides a whole systems approach to operational transparency which in turn sees new benefits such as...and drastically minimizing politics which has the subsequent effects of minimal confusion, higher morale, higher productivity and lower turnover.

The ability to operationalize budget/forecast planning using Adaptive Planning is truly a 'game-changer!'

● Enables Straightforward Modeling & Administration

Adaptive Planning’s modeling environment makes it easy for business users to set up and manage sophisticated, multi-dimensional financial models, including unlimited versions of actuals, budgets, and forecasts. The Excel-like interface, graphical Sheet Builder, and administrative capabilities enable users (not IT, or finance experts) to change assumptions, add dimensions, and update organizational structures with ease. This enables the operative members of the organization to be proactive in their forecasts, what-if analysis and decision making when possible and maximize their contribution to overall. operations, yet at the same time allows the finance to make rapid changes via centralized rules, assumptions, and formulas to ensure consistent hard-enforced procedures and assumptions across the company.

And, moving to a powerful, automated solution has never been simpler!

Adaptive Planning Provides Impact

“Adaptive Planning enables us to measure our planning process in hours per month, rather than months per year.”

~ Terry Wynn, CFO, Case Central, San Francisco, CA



“By being able to forecast more frequently and more easily, and to see how data rolls up across the enterprise, our finance department has dramatically improved its information sharing and gained a more complete picture of our financial health."

~ Shelly Skelton, Manager, Financial Analysis and Reporting, AIM Healthcare Services, Franklin, TN



“I had approval to purchase a traditional business intelligence application and seriously considered Cognos and Clarity. However, I felt that making a large investment in a BI solution was too risky due to high up-front license costs; the length, complexity and potential hidden costs of the implementation; and the difficulty in proving a payback in a short time period. Adaptive Planning proved to be the low-risk and high-value solution to our planning and forecasting needs.”

~ Pat Fleck, VP and CFO, Sitzmann Morris & Lavis, Inc. , Oakland, CAbr>


“The executive team knows the finance group is planning in a more sophisticated way because of the use of Adaptive Planning. Now the team has more faith in the numbers. This gives us a lot more confidence when we are producing our strategic and operating plan. Now I use Adaptive planning to populate actuals into the model for cash planning purposes. The time savings versus excel is enormous”

~ Caroline Lepiane, FP&A Manager, Affymax, Palo Alto, CA



“By implementing Adaptive Planning and moving our process online, we eliminated manual data entry and paper distribution, decreased our budget cycle by a full month, and saved considerable time and money.”

~ Trisha Logue, Budget and Finance Director, Skagit County, Washington State





 

Take a whole new 'operative' approach to budgeting, forecasting and running your operations with Adaptive Planning!

To learn more about how you and your team can do much more, please contact us!