Due to the unpredictable nature of the global economic climate, modern businesses need to be adaptable, and traditional planning is proving inadequate. Businesses are failing to create an environment that allows responsive and agile decision-making due to the inefficiency of the planning systems they have in place.
Traditional planning methods, such as the circulation of multiple email-shared spreadsheets, cause irksome manual micro-logistics around delivering reports, collecting plans from managers, and collating the information into a cohesive management strategy. This highly manual process holds businesses back from succeeding in the market, forgoing the ability to seize immediate opportunities and disrupting the real-time collaboration between business units that is required to allow the formulation of cohesive and effective strategies.
For a business to thrive, it is imperative that they evolve and adapt to the new world of connected planning, or risk being left behind. Fortunately, with MODLR, you will have a smooth and cost effective transition that will leave your company with a reliable, durable and effective planning process.
What is Connected Planning?
The process of connected planning requires a business modelling platform which links together every aspect of planning within the business in real-time to create a cohesive and collaborative management strategy. Various stakeholder strategies, cross-departmental plans, promotions, updates, trends, and any other relevant information are all unified together under one simple and easy to navigate platform. Connected planning provides a business with the ability and agility to adapt to the challenges of a dynamic market, that traditional planning simply cannot.
5 Reasons to Adopt Connected Planning
Need more convincing? Here are five reasons your business should adopt a "connected planning" process.
1. Traditional planning cannot survive within modern business.
The archaic processes and capabilities of traditional planning are not appropriate for the new data economy in which we all now compete, preventing the adaptation, swift decision-making, and clarity of information that is necessary to steer through the uncertainty of the current competitive business market. The traditional planning methods of spreadsheets and other legacy software systems are often inefficient and time consuming, any edits that are made to plans feel laborious, inciting frustration for all involved. These processes not only obstruct innovation, but are lumped with constant and counterproductive backtracking.
How often have you heard that the annual budget is redundant the day it is finished?
2. Traditional plans are historically based and static.
A large amount of time is spent within traditional planning cycles, manually gathering historical data and re-evaluating it with current data. The sheer amount of time and energy required to complete this routine task diverts productivity from more beneficial tasks, and tricks a business into only analysing past circumstances that may no longer be indicative of the future. Connected planning accounts for the dynamic reactions within the market and dictates paths towards the future, not the past.
With connected planning, your business will have more time to evaluate threats and opportunities, in order to strategise the optimal solutions.
3. Traditional planning prevents real-time decision making.
It is a familiar and painful fact that with legacy planning methods, building a consensus around a plan is difficult. The unnecessary micro-logistics of re-editing and redistributing a plan alone inhibits the ability for decisions to be made in time to be effective, resulting in the loss of opportunities. With connected planning management, companies can model multiple scenarios and gather feedback from managers across relevant departments, all within a short timeframe. This enables management to chart a course towards the best possible outcome, while empowering managers to take responsibility for their teams. Assumptions and data samples will no longer be needed when making snap decisions, with up-to-date information always readily available.
Companies will be far more aware of changes to the management strategy, reducing the delays between decisions and implementations.
4. Connected Planning is a collaborative process.
Planning cycles are vital to a business, relying on company-wide collaboration and cross-departmental feedback to be effective. By integrating planning into one single platform, adjustments made by each user are automatically updated in real-time for all relevant parties and the integrity of data is maintained as any human-made errors can be immediately identified and fixed. This means all Connected Planning processes utilise shared data to construct reliable, accurate models. The resulting insights from these models are immediately accessible to every department of the company. Strategy adjustments and their implications can be efficiently analysed, with decisions made collaboratively and implemented quickly.
The more collaborative the planning and the swifter the implementation of ideas, the more effective your company's decision-making will be, keeping business moving forward at all times.
5. Connected Planning encourages creativity and innovation.
Ongoing transformation is inherently necessary within a business's life cycle for it to survive. By implementing connected planning you are allowing this necessary adaptation to take place.
A place is given for end-users of different departments to easily collaborate and voice their ideas.
Managers can immediately voice important changes and trends that may affect the business.
Decision-makers will be far more confident and comfortable taking risks with consistently accurate information in conjunction with running multiple forecast scenarios ("What-If Analysis").
These extended capabilities ensure everyone in your business not only functions effectively, but also becomes an asset to the company. Connected planning gives your company the lifeblood it needs to grow and thrive.
Step forward with Connected Planning
If you are still deciding whether you should adopt Connected Planning into your business, begin by reviewing your business's planning systems and tools:
Do you struggle to run multiple forecast scenarios to model different outcomes?
Do you spend days each week or month transferring information from one spreadsheet to the next?
Are there lags in the distribution of reports and data to each contributor and stakeholder?
Do you waste time backtracking and re-editing information?
Do you have concerns about the accuracy of the information or spreadsheet formulas?
Could you benefit from a faster decision-making process?
If the answer is yes to any of those questions, Connected Planning with MODLR could be a critical investment for your company.
MODLR can provide you with a connected planning model to transform your strategic decision-making process. With a cloud-based real-time platform, unique and innovative capabilities, and custom builds for each client, MODLR provides a platform which evolves with your company. Ensure the correct information is provided to the right audience in real-time through a simple and customisable interface for individual users, with relevant analytical insights accessible with ease. Allow the most effective business strategies and decisions to be made in a fraction of time of your competitors. By choosing MODLR, you guarantee that your decision-making will be responsive and reliable, ensuring certainty in a highly uncertain economy.
