The benefits of adaptive planning are manifold and can transform your organization’s planning – IF you’re wise enough to give it a shot. I recall someone back in the day telling me about her new iPhone. She kept rhapsodizing about the product, urging me to get one. Meh, a phone was a phone, I told her. Surely the thing wasn’t THAT different, and besides, my phone worked just fine.
Naturally, the joke was on me since I soon lost my pocket-size dinosaur and bought a vaunted iPhone. Of course, I was soon astonished by this newfangled technology that turned the industry on its ear and seemingly could do anything short of make lunch.
Similarly, you may have been making strategic business plans from spreadsheets for years. Decades, even. And that’s worked for you. But did you know that, with adaptive planning, you can be much more efficient and on point with your planning? Well, scores of other companies do, and you risk being left behind if you don’t check out this transformational way of handling financials, workforce, and sales planning.
Read on for more.
What is Adaptive Planning?
Basically, adaptive planning is a process framework for organizing a host of analyses, issues, opinions, and info flows for the purpose of making strategic decisions. Adaptive planning stages include:
- Examining status quo. This involves analyzing all the factors that influence business performance, plus a comparison of how the enterprise performed based on goals and expectations.
- Identification of key issues. Here, you’ve begun thinking strategically about issues that will significantly affect performance, as well as strategic remedial options.
- Making decisions. When organizational objectives are agreed upon, you’ll turn to strategic thrust, choose among options, and allocate resources.
- Implementation. This adaptive planning stage consists of ongoing activities that will convert strategic decisions into functional action plans, programs, and projects.
What are Some Benefits of Adaptive Planning?
As we say, there are a myriad of benefits to adaptive planning, particularly if you go with Workday’s system through Mercer, which contributes, among other things, nonpareil datasets to help you make sound, forward-thinking strategic decisions. Other benefits include:
- Flexible modeling. In terms of forecasting, you’ll get flexible modeling for workforce ratios, financial viability, and sales capacity.
- Agility. Once you cease using those cumbersome spreadsheets, you’ll be able to pivot on a dime if things evolve. And they will.
- Easier and more decisive financials planning. You can create and explore disparate scenarios with a mere button click. Bid adieu to manually redoing and tracking work for various proposal evaluations.
- Better workforce planning. Adaptive planning can help you determine whether your enterprise is adequately and strategically planned to help you achieve your financial objectives. In addition, you’ll learn what positions are needed, who will need new skill sets, and what labor costs are in your area.
- Improved sales planning. With adaptive planning, you can structure your booking targets and quotas in a way in which a team update can be easily performed. You’ll also be able to swiftly update your planning to account for an economic or headcount change. What’s more, you’ll have the ability to ID industries or territories that will require more than your current staffing.
Now that you’re apprised of the benefits of adaptive planning, you can commence to getting the system in place at your enterprise. We recommend Workday Adaptive Planning. While that’s a standalone product, we suggest you purchase the software through Mercer, which provides powerful datasets and can help you launch the system and optimize its abilities.
