Increase business agility through enterprise-wide planning

The success of a company increasingly depends on its ability to react quickly to changes in the market. Of course, this is not easy if the company is wedded to static planning and this is associated with long planning cycles and plans that do not draw on current data.

But what makes an agile company? Agility is the ability to respond effectively to new trends in a short period of time while continuously driving innovation throughout the organization. To be more agile, the following steps should be taken in the enterprise: reduce system friction, increase data trust, and better integrate the finance department with the other business units. This requires the latest technology that connects the back and front office.

Enterprise-wide planning: basis for more agility

Agility is important for business success - and an active planning approach is key. To enable companies to respond more quickly to market changes, the front and back office must work with real-time data. To do this, finance departments, for example, need modern systems that are easy to use and quickly adaptable - and the same applies to planning. Modern planning should be collaborative, comprehensive and continuous. This is the only way companies can minimize risks, maximize performance and create competitive advantages. Active planning models enable teams to expand the data foundation for planning beyond finance, as well as pull real-time operational and transactional data from enterprise systems to make better, data-driven decisions. The following three steps are important for enterprise-wide planning:

1. record the status quo

What is preventing your company from implementing modern and efficient business planning? If you want to conduct a detailed analysis, answer the following questions:

• What does the planning process in the company look like at the moment?
• What technologies are being used and how well do they support active planning?
• Do you have access to all the data they actually need?
• Is automated data integration possible?
• Is comprehensive workforce planning feasible today?

As a first step, it is important to get a feel for where to start when optimizing planning processes.

2. create a consensus within the organization

Initiating change in a company is sometimes no easy task. It requires an experienced advocate at the highest level who is committed to active planning. It also needs a project team that represents the various departments across the board; including Operations, Sales, HR, but also the IT department. It can help clarify the technological requirements.

A business case should then be created. How much time and money do the manual processes cost? What opportunities have been missed in the past as a result? This can be contrasted with the new opportunities that active planning would bring. For example, if the time spent on budgeting drops by 50 percent, employees can use their capacities for business-critical tasks such as "what-if" analyses.

Once the team has been assembled and the goal clearly defined, the plans for the pilot project can be outlined. It is advisable to select a function within the finance department for this so that implementation is subject to the department's own control. An implementation plan and the definition of the most important KPIs create additional orientation and weighty arguments to gain support for the project from the management.

3. build a company-wide planning

Of course, it pays off quickly to implement the modern planning model in the finance department first. But as soon as a certain routine has been established, it should be extended to the other corporate divisions as well. With the project team, the planning projects can be carried into the HR, Sales and Marketing departments - this is the first step towards active planning throughout the entire company.

The goal in this phase is to promote interdepartmental communication and cooperation. Success can be achieved here through regular discussions with the individual stakeholders, in which the findings to date are recapitulated or areas for improvement are identified.

At the same time, the process will help position the CFO as a strategic partner who orchestrates planning across the enterprise. The finance department will no longer be primarily tasked with collecting budget figures and producing reports. Rather, the finance team becomes the "strategic head" alongside the CEO, driving the change and innovation needed to not only weather uncertain times, but to thrive in them.

To the author:
Frank Mens is Regional Sales Director Financial Management DACH & CE at Workday. He is responsible for building and executing the go-to-market strategy for Workday Financial Management in DACH and Continental Europe.