The pandemic has highlighted one truism to finance teams—that financial plans need to be managed on a continuous basis. The impacts to the economy have radically changed the financial outlook for most organizations and the evolving situation has required financial planning and analysis (FP&A) to revise and update plans on an accelerated basis. While continuous planning has been a conceptual goal for many finance organizations, many have not had the technologies in place to achieve that end.
Continuous planning drives agility across several areas of the FP&A spectrum. First, it enables quick reforecasts based on macro/micro economic events, changes in demand and competitive pressures, to name a few. Second, it facilitates the creation of multiple scenarios. Effective scenario planning enables companies to model impacts to revenue and expense, explore new workforce strategies, mitigate business risk, and make more proactive decisions based on data. These scenarios can be rapidly implemented into the plan. Third, it provides the ability to serve up the latest data and analysis in the form of reports and dashboards to stakeholders and the executive team.