[Tanbir Jasimuddin]

There are two types of planning applications – pre built for your use case, or a blank canvass.

The former can be limited if you go beyond the use case for which it was designed. The blank canvass works well, but you have to invest a bit of time designing how you want the model to work. In most cases, not enough time is spent on this, so you end up with a data repository rather than a predictor. This isn’t the fault of the software.

[Chris Argent]

I think this sums up the apathy to move away from Excel.

The thinking goes…. Excel is in place and flexible versus a new fixed Saas app. Planning apps are much more than Excel but Excel it’s ‘OK’ for now.

Personally I feel this shows a lack of understanding of the upside and the lack of care for the team who have to muddle through Excel chaos.

[Dima Rezaev]

Agreed, very well put! Seems like with any off-the-shelf kit there will be more of ‘adapting to the tool’ as opposed to the other way around.

We are building an internal ‘analytics platform’ and it’s a bit of a nightmare with delays due to staff being cycled on the project a lot, but we might finally be rolling out a bespoke invoicing feature soon. The journey to get to that stage was difficult and to me, shows how spending some more time in discovering your needs and building the custom solution doesn’t always work out.

[Chris Argent]

Hi Dima

Are you looking for support or is this a research request from a vendor?

Each member profile has a question, “What tech and tools do you use today?” and “Are you open to questions about the tools you use?” so you can search and find people that way.

Or you can tag people to include them by searching a topic, and then selecting Members. See image.

OR

As a Pro member, I am also available for a Tech Clinic chat – https://gencfo.codeomega.co.uk/the-tech-expert-clinics/Let me know,

Let me know,

Chris

[Dima Rezaev]

Thanks Chris! Would be great to have a chat!

I was mostly trying to get a bit of a talk going as I am ever curious to see and hear what others are going through, and when one of our MD’s was approached by someone building their own software, it seemed natural to try and get some more information. I think the answer to your question is – it’s a bit of both 🙂

[Chris Argent]

Cool, just tagged a few people who you met today, they may have an opinion @Prem @Chengai @david ????????

[Premal Parekh]

Hi @drezaev

If you’re looking for a FP&A tool, I came across Pigment (https://www.gopigment.com) recently which enables driver based forecasting and allows folks across the business to see inputs / assumptions and outputs in a standardised way.

At my last employer (London Stock Exchange Group), they were adopting Oracle Fusion and continue to use Hyperion and Workday for all finance and people planning, with reporting using Power BI.

gopigment.com

Pigment: the business planning platform for forward-thinking organizations

The all-in-one business planning platform for finance and revenue teams to plan & forecast your business in real-time, model scenarios and make better decisions

[Dima Rezaev]

Thank for that! Really cool to know. I’ve been looking at Pigment for a while, certainly going to participate in their demos/events in October to find out more!

I’ve also been recommended mosaic.tech and basis.so ????

[Chris Argent]

And Planful (who sponsor us!), but my strong advice is to not start with the tool, think about what you want to do (in detail with your stakeholders) then compare that to a tools shortlist, and make sure you get the best price from the start (licenses build up!).

[Lynne Titley]

The strap line made me laugh – “Runway – the finance platform you don’t hate”????

I’d like to talk about this too! – I searched & found this thread so thought would use it rather than starting a new one. I am on the hunt for a cloud xP&A tool that can cope with complexity & scale, but doesn’t a) cost the earth and/or b) require you to become a specialist developer to build in it. Anyone got any more recommendations? @drezaev , have you made any progress?

[Dima Rezaev]

I’ve had to pause the initiative for various personal and work reasons over the last few months, but am finally leading serious conversations about moving forward with trying out various tools. We will have a demo with Workday adaptive planning next month! I’m just trying to find the headspace and diary space to make this a reality ???? Pigment is also top of my list, though without clear price estimates it’s difficult to know if it’s a fit.

[Lynne Titley]

@drezaev Great to hear you’ve been able to start your project moving along again. I’ve seen a failed Adaptive implementation actually – the contributing factors to that perfect storm were:

– the business didn’t have in-house expertise to build in Adaptive, and it can get pretty complex, so they hired in one of the prominent consultancies to build it, but they were on a T&M day rate because those were the only terms they would trade on, so financial risk sat with the business

– a gap emerged between the business logic that the end users wanted and what the consultant was able to build. The product repeatedly failed UAT. The end users weren’t willing to compromise on the complexity/business logic to get to something that could actually be built, so it went round and round in circles, the consultant racking up fees along the way

– a hard deadline was set for the project team to deliver a model, but some SMEs/end users in the business weren’t freed up from BAU early enough in the process to be closely involved, so some time and cost was spent partially building the model before those SMEs belatedly became involved and introduced their requirements, which weren’t feasible to deliver in the time available – and again, they weren’t willing to compromise to hit the deadline

– eventually the project was shelved, after quite a bit of money had been spent.

My obvious takeaways from this – which could happen with any tech and any project – are:

– try to get the implementer to take some of the commercial risk. T&M means they get paid the same (and probably more) for failure as they do for success

– have the time/cost/quality triangle conversation with the bill payer at the beginning, and establish what is most important to them, so you can reference it when things get tricky

– scenario plan, at the beginning, for what your response will be if either the product can’t support the business logic you want, or the implementer can’t make the product do what you want, so you’re not floundering if it happens. Talk about what you are willing to compromise on if you need to. Establish what the MVP is, and try to get proof of concept work done to prove that it’s achievable before you commit fully to the project if you can

– refuse to start work until you have the right people on the team, with the right bandwidth… or at least make sure you point out to the bill payer that there is a risk of project failure and wasted money if they don’t make this happen

I find that sometimes tech project best practice gets abstracted to the point that it doesn’t feel relevant/actionable. You read about requirement setting, stakeholder engagement, project management – these things sound really dry in theory, but in practice are the things that went wrong on this project. Hope some of this is helpful!

[Dima Rezaev]

Thanks Lynne, this is amazing advice and really insightful! (Apologies that my reply comes with some lag but I am still under a lot of time pressure at work so am not keeping up with everything). I thought I’d leave until I get a few demos in before replying ????

You are absolutely spot on! The biggest problem I am facing right now is lack of commitment from, as you say, the ‘bill payer’. Without all stakeholders being involved, it’s mostly myself making the operative decisions for the entire organisation ???? So I am slowly plodding along on this discovery route to gain the best understanding of what the most fitting tool would be.

We’ve recently hit cell limits in GSheets which will definitely inspire more stakeholders to take this seriously, so that makes me happy.

I’m also encountering arguments that people think they can implement such systems themselves, but from quotes I’ve seen thus far I am skeptical on both internal and external / consulting implementation expertise, so, the journey goes on…

[Chris Argent]

Fyi – https://gencfo.codeomega.co.uk/groups/gencfo-clubhouse/forum/discussion/looking-for-an-fpa-tool/

Ps did someone say row limits! Check out our Excel session later today.

[Lynne Titley]

Hey @drezaev! – how you doing? Just thought I’d check in on this thread and see if you were making any progress on your planning tool project?