Executive LRP meetings are massively tech-constrained considering those in the room (CXO’s and BU Leads 👨💼👩💼) and the subject of their discussion (the literal future of the company 🔮).
Those meetings are held back by
🐌 static decks,
🐌 analog whiteboarding, and
🐌 the fundamental inability to immediately perceive the impacts of the ideas being proposed.
But what if you – humble FP&A leader – had enabling technology that could facilitate that discussion in real-time?
In this video, we’ll show you how FP&AI gives you the power to intelligently facilitate long range planning using the phenomenal power of Anaplan’s breakback functionality.
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Series: How to FP&AI
Ep. 8: LRP Like a Boss #fpanda#lrp
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👋 I’m an FP&A Tech expert at Constellaition
🏢 100+ successful solutions for 40+ customers over 12+ years
💡 Our FP&AI solution is a best-practice budgeting and forecasting application built on the Anaplan platform.
💸 Combine your business data with our Anaplan/FP&A experience for a flexible and future-proof foundation – without reinventing the wheel or breaking the bank.
❓ Interested in learning more? Reach out today!
Timestamp Captions 00:00 – 00:04 Hi there. I’m Zaf Kamar and I’m back with another episode 00:04 – 00:08 of our series How to FP&AI. In today’s video, we’ll go 00:08 – 00:11 through the LRP and target setting process and demonstrate 00:11 – 00:14 how this comes to life in FP&AI and how it’s directly 00:14 – 00:18 integrated into the annual operating plan process. With 00:18 – 00:21 this immensely powerful functionality, FP&A is empowered to 00:21 – 00:25 facilitate impactful business strategy sessions with 00:25 – 00:28 executives and in communicating those strategy outcomes to 00:28 – 00:31 the field. Let’s get started. 00:31 – 00:33 Now, I’ve already done a video on why you should set 00:33 – 00:36 targets linked to. That video will be down in the comments. 00:36 – 00:38 That was tell. Now let’s show. 00:38 – 00:41 At some point in the back half of the year, your executives 00:41 – 00:44 will get together to do some long range planning or target 00:44 – 00:47 setting with the first year of that plan turning into the 00:47 – 00:50 starting point or the benchmark for your annual operating 00:50 – 00:53 plan when you’ll open up your plan for budgeters. 00:53 – 00:56 Now we’ll go into our target settings, screen A2. 00:56 – 00:58 This screen will present my current year, budget and 00:58 – 01:00 forecast. 01:00 – 01:03 And we’ll give me the ability to plan five years of a long 01:03 – 01:06 range plan or a target, the first year of which is going to 01:06 – 01:10 be cascaded and be the target for my annual operating plan. 01:10 – 01:13 Now there are multiple grids on this board that are gonna 01:13 – 01:16 allow me to plan across account categories or business 01:16 – 01:19 units or departments or even down to the account level if I 01:19 – 01:23 need to. Now let’s go ahead and do some long range planning. 01:23 – 01:26 First thing, you’ll see this little purple triangle on the 01:26 – 01:29 top left of each cell. That’s Anaplan telling me that break 01:29 – 01:32 back is enabled for these cells. Break break back is a 01:32 – 01:35 powerful piece of functionality that lets me do 01:35 – 01:38 bidirectional input. First example of this, let’s say I 01:38 – 01:41 wanted to set profit targets for each year. 01:41 – 01:44 As I input at the top level here and this is going to be at 01:44 – 01:46 the total company level. 01:46 – 01:49 Keep an eye on the chart of accounts below to see that they 01:49 – 01:52 will prorate their amounts properly according to the 01:52 – 01:54 percentage of total. 01:54 – 01:58 So we’ll get go ahead and do some inputs here. 02:08 – 02:11 Now what you’ll see is happened is that the amounts have 02:11 – 02:14 been prorated accordingly, and as I scanned down to the 02:14 – 02:17 other grids here, you’ll see that Anaplan has executed this 02:17 – 02:19 break back across multiple dimensions. Millions of 02:19 – 02:22 intelligent cell changes all at once, and neither Excel nor 02:22 – 02:26 any other major planning platform can do this at scale. 02:26 – 02:29 Next we’ll demonstrate break backs, ability to hold values 02:29 – 02:32 constant as I highlight my operating profits and right 02:32 – 02:33 click. 02:33 – 02:36 We’ll see a menu that pops up that allows me to hold these 02:36 – 02:38 values. 02:38 – 02:40 Now I’m going to turn my attention to planning my top line 02:40 – 02:43 revenue with the hold enabled. Let’s see the behavior of 02:43 – 02:46 this functionality. 03:03 – 03:06 Here we can see break Back has helped my profit consonant 03:06 – 03:09 and has adjusted COGS and OpEx to meet those profit targets. 03:09 – 03:13 Scanning down again, we can see this change has made its 03:13 – 03:16 way through millions of sales to finish this out. 03:16 – 03:18 Let’s see how this is integrated throughout our application. 03:18 – 03:21 This looks great, but it would be a shame if this were a 03:21 – 03:23 one off exercise that didn’t tie into our operating plan 03:23 – 03:26 process for the next year. Now as I change over to my next 03:26 – 03:28 year budget planning dashboard. 03:28 – 03:31 Can I scan down? 03:31 – 03:34 What I’ll be able to see here is that the amounts in the 03:34 – 03:37 variance analysis P&L are reflective of the target setting 03:37 – 03:39 changes that we’ve made. 03:39 – 03:41 This video is ultimately about closing the strategy 03:41 – 03:45 execution gap. On the strategy side, this functionality is 03:45 – 03:48 one that is skilled VP or Director of FP and A could use in 03:48 – 03:51 an LRP executive meeting to build the long range plan on 03:51 – 03:54 the fly during the meeting. This app could practically pay 03:54 – 03:57 for itself in that one meeting alone considering the time 03:57 – 04:00 value of the executives in the room on the execution side, 04:00 – 04:03 being able to convey those targets seamlessly to the annual 04:03 – 04:06 planning process, we’ll save you huge amounts of time as 04:06 – 04:11 well. That’s all for today. I’ll see you in the next video.
