Credit: I’m working closely on the topic Extended Planning and Analysis with michael.fox3 and most importantly, be sure to click “Follow” in the upper left portion of that page.
Our world is hit by many unpredictable events. Oil prices explode, supply chains collapse, currencies.... As well companies have to plan for the future capacities to be able to take investment decisions.... Just ignoring the unpredictable events and hope for the best?
Please do not!Just ignoring the unpredictable events and hope for the best?
A consumer goods company wants to roll out a new Yoghurt product line globally. Unexpectedly oil prices increase significantly. The different involved personas
"I will produce more Yoghurt and try to limit impact on the inboundprices . Let’s hope that a lower cost increase per Yoghurt by increasing the amount of Yoghurts is not too high for the customer?!"
"I will run all campaigns as scheduled and continue to plan with the original margin estimates. What else could I do? Let’s hope supply can keep up?!"
"To be on the safe side, I will lower the financial outlook for free cash flow by 5%. Let’s hope this will work out?!"
"Due to the lack of collaboration between the teams and lack of integration of their respective data and plans, nobody can provide a comprehensive perspective of how the oil price increase will affect us. Nevertheless, I need to take a decision, therefore Let’s continue the launch as planned and pray?!"
Persona | Assessment | Reaction |
---|---|---|
Supply Chain Planner |
| Produce more Yoghurt to have a lower cost impact per unit |
Commercial Planner |
| Don’t react, Supply Chain needs to deliver despite their cost challenges. |
Financial Planner |
| Lower the financial free cash flow outlook by 5% |
Top Management |
| Continue as planned originally and hope for the best |
A tool company can sell significantly more screwdrivers on short notice than it planned for originally. The manufacturing department of the company is asked to deliver the quantity that can be sold. In a quarterly cycle the financial planner is checking his plans compared to the actuals. The involved personas
I seize this sales opportunity and sign a contract with the customer. Our manufacturing now needs to produce and deliver more to fulfill the order. I help the company earn more money.
I need to ask the suppliers to deliver more parts and materials than originally negotiated. The extra transportation demand is as well not covered by the signed contract with the delivery partner. Therefore, I need to pay an extra premium for getting more delivery capacity short notice.
I need to ensure that transportation costs are not that high the next quarter. We need to have a better contract with the transportation partner.
Persona | Assessment | Reaction |
---|---|---|
Seller |
| Take the sales opportunity and sign a contract with the customer |
Supply Chain Planner |
| Pay an extra premium for getting more delivery capacity short notice |
Financial Planner |
| Sign future Transportation Contract for higher volume |
Different planners have different objectives and tend to use their own data and make their own assumptions. This is good and correct as each Line of Business (LoB) has its own requirements as well as subject matter expertise for planning. Nevertheless, the lack of collaboration amongst the planners and lack of alignment of their resulting plans leads to disjoint plans and no holistic transparency across the business in regards to impact of changes or unexpected events and their related costs and problems. To address this missing synchronization and support planners with their own relevant data, as well as data that may impact them from other departmental plans, the planning tools deployed need to be able to integrate and exchange information. This solution scope is described with the term Extended Planning and Analysis (xP&A), where the scope of planning is extended beyond individual departments. It is not sufficient to only focus on single LoB perspectives, or only define targets for Business Units driven by Finance. What is required is a solution which fosters and actively addresses the need of communication, enables inter-departmental sharing of information, and can clearly depict the expected outcomes of plans originating from different perspectives, even when facing sudden changes or risks. Furthermore the solution should support the measuring of progress over time and allow to understand where adjustments are needed. With this solution design it is relevant to follow a regular sequence, as the planning process never ends but rather is a cycle.
Within SAP Analytics Cloud, business content can be leveraged as a starting point for planning projects and activities. . Currently planning and reporting content is available for specific Lines of Business. Next to these LOB-specific content packages we are developing a Business Content Suite, focusing on the above described xP&A scenarios. Thereby some content packages are branded as xP&A Business Content Suite . With this brand we emphasize certain points for the design and build of the content:
A content package within the xP&A Business Content Suite must come with an integration objective for different LoBs. We design and build the content in a way that you can focus your planning tasks on the main addressed LoB, and as well can leverage the built-in integration functionality to synchronize with other content packages.
We define three planning time horizons and tailor each content package within the xP&A Business Content Suite for the time horizon it addresses:
Understanding that every company has unique processes that provide them competitive differentiation, the xP&A Business Content Suite aims to cover 80% of a holistic, best-practice planning framework which includes standard LoB planning processes. To allow for easy enhancements and adaptations for the remaining 20% of your requirements, we design the content with flexibility and modularity as top priorities. This is achieved by focusing on the individual use cases of involved personas within the standard planning process per LoB.
There are two primary approaches always required in an end-to-end planning process: top-down (decomposition) and bottom-up (aggregation). Therefore, we build the content with the possibility to enter the planning with your desired planning perspective per persona and use case, yet store the results in a single data model to allow for easy synchronization between both top-down and bottom-up perspectives. This is done in a modular fashion allowing for easy selections of the relevant personas and use cases for your specific requirements during the project implementation. The content is then presented with a comprehensive launchpad that brings the included personas and use cases together into a clear sequence of activities to follow.
The absolute most important step on your journey to xP&A is understanding the full scope of the planning processes across your company and how they are interrelated. That’s why you will find interactive documentation and process flows in our Signavio Process Library for the planning process addressed by each of the content packages in the xP&A Business Content Suite.
The long term vision for the xP&A Business Content Suite is to create and reuse LoB specific content, which are based on the strong SAP enterprise applications. We are leveraging the planning capabilities within SAP Analytics Cloud and use it as the central place for connecting and sharing information between the different planning perspectives as well as aligning and including the different planning outcomes
– In short collaboration is key-
In order to keep up with the disruptions to a globalized economy, we recognize that companies need to be more agile than ever and prepare for the unexpected. To support such a monumental challenge, we provide the SAP Business Content Suite for Extended Planning and Analysis (xP&A) within SAP Analytics Cloud. This content suite is free of charge for SAP Analytics Cloud customers and is designed to help you accelerate your time to value by providing a pre-defined framework for connecting various planning processes across the enterprise. Recognizing that every business is different, the planning content, reporting stories, and data models within the SAP Business Content Suite for xP&A are built in a modular fashion and fully intended for you to configure and customize to meet your specific needs.
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