Portfolio Optimisation - driving increased effectiveness of the investment decision processes

Our customer is a UK-based global media organisation that touches every aspect of the value chain, from financing new content, to producing and distributing it globally.

Crucial to their success is making the right calls on content investment decisions. Choosing from a longlist of possible content and genres for an individual title, there are often multiple options in terms of rights distribution and investment partners. These myriad of factors all influence the success of an individual title, and the portfolio as a whole.

Managing this process using a large and complex network of spreadsheets was inefficient, tying up finance business partners’ time in copying data and consolidating spreadsheets, which ultimately only gave half the picture. Questions posed during investment boards required time consuming rework of the spreadsheets to provide answers, and constrained the analysis being provided to the board, to assist making their investment decisions.

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Improving usability, tightening integration and enhancing scenario modelling and analysis

There were several reasons why Anaplan was chosen as the modelling and analytics platform to support the automation and enhancement of this critical process:

• The flexible and user-friendly planning engine supported modelling the nuances and complexities of content investment. This was achieved using a joint development team, with Fidenda coaching the customer’s own model builders.  This approach ensured that the company has internal capability to extend the model further as the business evolves.
• It was important to be able to merge data from a variety of source systems, including SAP S/4HANA. Anaplan’s ability to consume source data in any structure was key to grasping the opportunity to automate the process.
• Anaplan’s ability to support the creation of alternative scenarios with a few clicks gave our customer the confidence that they would be able to proactively report multiple, fully worked-through scenarios to the investment board, and quickly turn around questions.
• Anaplan Optimizer was identified as an important tool to assist the customer in making decisions.  The solution suggests which titles should be invested in, given constraints in capital and genre mix to optimise ROI on the portfolio
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Rapid delivery by a joint team, with additional phases ramping up

The initial content investment solution was delivered by a joint Fidenda and Customer team in 8 weeks.  This enabled the content investment team to quickly build multiple scenarios of investment cases for a single title.  

The outcomes of those scenarios are immediately available in a suite of reports that present the financial business case for the individual title, and the impact that the title would have on the portfolio, both financially and in terms of portfolio objectives such as genre mix.

Anaplan Optimizer suggests the most optimal title mix in terms of either ROI or other portfolio objectives.  Once titles are approved, their actual performance can be tracked against the original investment case to ensure benefits are realised.

The solution improves efficiency of the process, whilst delivering enhanced analysis through scenario modelling. Decisions made on which titles to invest in benefit from more analysis.

The next phase of the project will see the customer extend the use of Anaplan to improve sales forecasting, by providing a standardised forecasting model, scenario analysis, and in-built workflow. Beyond that, there are benefits further down the value chain in areas such as production cost management and sales incentive compensation.