Timestamp Captions 00:00 – 00:03 Hi there. My name is Zaf Kamar, Founder and CEO of 00:03 – 00:06 Constellaition, and I’m here with a new series called How to 00:06 – 00:08 FP&AI. In less than 5 minutes each video in this series 00:08 – 00:11 will walk you through how our Anaplan FP and AI application 00:11 – 00:14 can make your life easier. As a financial planning and 00:14 – 00:17 analysis practitioner, likes, comments, and follows are 00:17 – 00:20 always appreciated. Today we’re going to be talking about 00:20 – 00:23 managing your planning process and the distribution of your 00:23 – 00:25 planning calendar. 00:25 – 00:27 Now, typically organizations will send out a big, long 00:27 – 00:30 e-mail, or they’ll send out an Excel document, or they’ll 00:30 – 00:33 put placeholders on folks’s calendars to let them know what 00:33 – 00:35 the process is overall around their budgets and around 00:35 – 00:38 their forecasts. In this session, we’re going to be showing 00:38 – 00:41 you how you might be able to use the process administration 00:41 – 00:44 section of the FPN AI application to be able to make that 00:44 – 00:46 process quite a bit easier. 00:46 – 00:48 OK. So we’re in the FPN AI application and we’re in the 00:48 – 00:51 process administration section. 00:51 – 00:53 And the first thing that I can see here is a Gantt chart 00:53 – 00:56 and let’s step through and understand what this example 00:56 – 00:59 companies process looks like. Now as you can see here, we 00:59 – 01:02 have a list of steps going down the left hand side that 01:02 – 01:05 represent the ultimate steps of the planning process. And 01:05 – 01:08 for this organization they are leveraging a four by one 01:08 – 01:11 process and that is to say 4 quarterly re forecasts and one 01:11 – 01:14 annual budget. That is the most common planning paradigm 01:14 – 01:17 that organizations will run. 01:18 – 01:20 Now for the budget process here we can see that this is 01:20 – 01:22 split up into multiple different steps including target 01:22 – 01:25 setting which could be a five year plan where you take the 01:25 – 01:28 first year that plan and you put that into the budget. 01:28 – 01:31 Opening your budget for operating expenses and revenue 01:31 – 01:32 planning. 01:32 – 01:35 Corporate planning activities that can be below the line as 01:35 – 01:37 well as centrally managed accounts management reviews, 01:37 – 01:40 that’s going to be that back and forth and ultimately 01:40 – 01:44 deciding what components of the budget get prioritized. 01:44 – 01:46 Touches, finalization of the budget and moving all the way 01:46 – 01:49 toward board presentations. 01:49 – 01:52 And then from an throughout the year process, this is where 01:52 – 01:56 we’ll take a look at our quarterly reforecast a 0 + 12, A 3 01:56 – 01:59 + 9, six plus six and a 9 + 3. And then in the intervening 01:59 – 02:02 months, we have your actuals versus forecast, actuals 02:02 – 02:07 versus budget variance analysis and forecast accuracy. 02:09 – 02:12 Now, this screen here allows corporate FN administrators a 02:12 – 02:15 place to manage the steps and activities involved in the 02:15 – 02:18 budget and forecast processes. Here you can define steps in 02:18 – 02:21 the process as we’ve done here, and you can indicate, OK, 02:21 – 02:24 what is the name of the process. You can indicate various 02:24 – 02:27 start dates and end dates, and it’ll tell you the duration. 02:27 – 02:29 You can also influence the colors associated with that as 02:29 – 02:32 well. So if I wanted to change this to a different color, 02:32 – 02:35 for example, I absolutely can’t do that. If I wanted to 02:35 – 02:38 change it to something else, group certain activities and 02:38 – 02:39 certain colors. 02:39 – 02:41 No problem there. 02:41 – 02:43 I can put in notes here that can provide additional context 02:43 – 02:46 as far as what that particular process step is involved, 02:46 – 02:49 and then I can indicate dependencies as well and I can say 02:49 – 02:50 hey. 02:50 – 02:53 Before this particular step in the process is able to start, 02:53 – 02:56 something else needs to be completed. Instead, I can 02:56 – 03:00 further define new budget process steps. So let’s say for 03:00 – 03:02 example that I wanted to I have a quarterly recasting 03:02 – 03:06 process, but let’s say I wanted to add on an additional 10 03:06 – 03:08 + 2 reforecast. 03:08 – 03:11 Into my process as well. It’s just simple as going ahead 03:11 – 03:15 and adding that in. I can see my 10 + 2 reforecast has been 03:15 – 03:18 added to the bottom. Let’s go ahead and specify the dates 03:18 – 03:19 for this. 03:19 – 03:24 So let’s say this happens from November 13th. 03:24 – 03:27 Through November 17th and I want to color this in the same. 03:27 – 03:30 Maybe I’ll color this is a slightly different color and I 03:30 – 03:34 want to include this as far as my forecasting processes. 03:34 – 03:38 First of all, what I can see here is that now in my Gantt 03:38 – 03:40 chart up above, in addition to all of the quarterly 03:40 – 03:43 forecasts, I now see my 10 + 2 reforecast showing up in 03:43 – 03:47 there as well. And probably most importantly, if I were to 03:47 – 03:50 go to my forecast sections, because I’ve included this 03:50 – 03:53 particular process in the list, it now shows up in the 03:53 – 03:56 Gantt charts associated with the forecasting sections. The 03:56 – 03:59 benefits of this process are that this first and foremost 03:59 – 04:02 is going to aid in communication between FPNA and field 04:02 – 04:03 finance. 04:03 – 04:06 It is going to make your planning platform a one stop shop 04:06 – 04:09 for all the people and the processes in addition to the 04:09 – 04:12 technology and it ultimately makes it easier to communicate 04:12 – 04:15 changes to the budget or forecast processes that you might 04:15 – 04:20 have. That’s all for today. I’ll see you in the next video.
