Disconnected planning makes complex businesses do silly things

The case for joining up business decision-making. And: why IBP adoption needs realists

Tristan Colgate, MD of Fidenda, believes that Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is a gamechanger that delivers the sort of competitive advantage businesses can’t afford to ignore – and explains why Fidenda went all in on a “real-world” approach to IBP implementation with Anaplan.

The Finance team’s model for workforce budgeting only includes full-time equivalents, not contractors. When they get together with HR to discuss hiring needs, they’re comparing apples and oranges. Everyone ends up spending more time discussing reporting than coming up with plans to attract the talent required to digitally transform of the business (or whatever else your priority is).
Due to an influencer’s endorsement one of your products has gone semi-viral, resulting in increased demand for the item, which unfortunately wasn’t included in your supply chain team’s what-if-scenario. Now the shipment is delayed, you don’t have an alternative supplier and all those potential new Gen Z customers are irritated with you.
Sales ask Marketing to run a campaign to shift stubborn stock. The ads cost £20k but only end up selling 6k’s worth of goods. But you never find out because all marketing spend is bundled into one big budget at the end of the year.

These things may look like separate problems but they’re all symptoms of the same malaise: disconnected planning. It’s frustrating for everyone involved, it leads to less-than-ideal decisions, and it cost businesses millions in lost opportunities – which they can’t afford.

But, until not too long ago, it was simply the price of doing business.

The rise of Integrated Business Planning

Before Integrated Business Planning, or IBP, appeared on the landscape, every department in every organisation used spreadsheets for their planning, and everyone came up against the limits of that method:

Highly skilled people sinking loads of time into manual reporting
Spreadsheets that were outdated faster than you could say “monthly forecast”
No way to realistically collaborate on the same data even within a department, let alone across organisational silos

Not ideal, is it?

But, as long as everybody was working this way, it wasn’t really a disadvantage either.

Until, about ten years ago, IBP came along and started to change planning for early-adopter organisations. It enabled these businesses to use real-time data, drastically accelerate and improve reporting and forecasting, and use these insights to orchestrate activities across departments and inform decisions that made sense for the entire organisation. It often started in Finance (with FP&A), Supply Chain (eg with Demand or Supply Forecasting), or HR (Workforce Planning) and spread from there. And it truly changed the way these organisations operate today.

The IBP advantage

If you were among those early adopters, congratulations: you bagged a significant competitive advantage. If not (and don’t worry, this is way more likely!), the good news is that it’s not too late. In fact, it’s a great time to adopt to harness IBP for your organisation. That’s because:

The technology has matured. The early adopters have helped iron out any bugs.
There’s a support ecosystem now. There are a number of consultancies (like Fidenda) who can help with integration, training, and adoption.
Best practice exists. And you don’t have to figure everything out from scratch anymore.
There’s still a competitive advantage to be had. Many of your competitors will continue to drag their heels. IBP can help you run circles around them.

Wait a minute – isn’t that what you’re selling?

You might be thinking: “Of course you would make the case for IBP adoption – it’s your business.“ And you wouldn’t be wrong. I run Fidenda, (attention: pitch incoming) an Anaplan consultancy that helps complex organisations harness IBP. My team have helped dozens of businesses adopt Anaplan for one or several planning use cases, making them more productive and improving their decision-making.

So I’m not exactly an impartial observer. But I’ve built my business around IBP because I truly believe that it’s a better way for complex organisations to plan and make decisions. And that, if they’re not doing it, they’re leaving money on the table (which would be silly – see above!). You might never become a Fidenda customer – that’s okay. But I’m keen to get more people engaged in conversations about this relatively new discipline that has the power to transform operations. It’s in this spirit I’ve written a Fidenda “manifesto” that talks about our principles and how they inform our approach.. They come from over 7 years’ experience helping businesses adopt Anaplan and I hope they’re useful to you. And especially so if…

You’re IBP-curious. If you’ve read this far, I assume you’re at least a little bit interested in learning more about integrated business planning (otherwise, we don’t stand a chance anyway!).
You work for a complex organisation/ are interested in Anaplan. We don’t sell licenses, but we’re an Anaplan-only consultancy. That’s simply because we’re impressed with Anaplan’s comprehensive capabilities (even though most of us have SAP backgrounds). If your mind is made up on a different platform, you’ll never choose us as a partner. But the experience we’ve gained implementing IBP for dozens of complex enterprises will still be valuable to you (and we’re interested in your point of view!).
You’re sceptical about where I’m going with this. You’ve been around long enough to have seen a couple of shiny business visions and the disillusionment that inevitably comes when the vision doesn’t materialise overnight. And beyond the vision, you’re interested in a realistic plan to make it happen in your organisation (which, like even the best businesses, is bound to be dysfunctional or not-ideally-set-up in some way).

If one or more of these apply to you, then I think you’ll like the Fidenda manifesto. And whether or not you ever become a customer of ours, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Were better in person

There’s only so much you can say on a website. We’d love to learn about you so we can tailor our advice to where you are on your IBP journey.

Get in touch

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