Finance Consolidation- Performance Analytics

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Expanding Budgeting, Planning Forecasting with
Predictive Analytics
Performance Analytics Corporation
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Performance Analytics Corporation
For many FPA teams, theres nothing more
exciting than jumping into the trenches with
business partners. Why? Well, like our friends
in Sales, Marketing and Operations, FPA folks
love the action too. Some enjoy helping drive
strategic initiatives like new product
innovations, acquisitions and evaluating capital
investment decisions. Other FPA folks like the
budgeting, planning forecasting processes
that transform big picture goals into tactical
plans.
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Performance Analytics Corporation
Whats the common thread? In short, most FPA
teams want nothing more than to help to deliver
value to their organizations. And to help them
get there, many FPA teams would jump at the
chance to leverage predictive analytics to help
their business partners improve decision-making.
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• Theres just one problem. Most FPA teams dont
  have
• the right tools for the job.
• Consider the research from FSNs Future of
  Finance Systems Survey 2019. Here are some of
  the results
• 42 of Finance teams have the information they
  need to support functional business partners
• 31 of Finance systems provide a dependable
  platform for decision-making
• 23 of Finance systems enable finance teams to
  respond quickly to market changes

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Performance Analytics Corporation

• What do the numbers tell you?
• My take is simple. First, Finance teams require
  solutions with built-in analytical capabilities
  to enable collaboration with their business
  partners. And second, despite spending billions
  of dollars on corporate performance management
  (CPM) systems, Finance teams are sick of their
  status-quo legacy tools.

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Unleashing Finance with Built-In Predictive
Analytics
If your answers to the questions above are mostly
no, it might be time to take a look at
OneStreams unified platform for budgeting,
planning forecasting, analytics, financial
close and data quality. With over 500 customers
across the globe including Capital One, UPS
and The Carlyle Group OneStreams modern,
unified platform is quickly becoming an
attractive alternative to legacy CPM solutions
and cloud-based planning tools. And now, with
built-in predictive analytics (see Figure 1),
OneStream is unleashing finance teams to take
their budgeting, planning forecasting
processes even further to plan, analyze and
predict with confidence.
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Performance Analytics Corporation

• Spreadsheets and Legacy Tools Dont Cut It
• So how do you know if your legacy corporate
  performance management tools or Excel
  spreadsheets are up to addressing todays
• challenges? Start by evaluating whether your
  tools enable you to find new and innovative ways
  to ask why. Here are a few questions to
  consider during your evaluation
• Are you able to identify potential forecast bias
  in the bottoms-up operational planning process?
• Do your business partners in Finance, Sales and
  Operations have the ability to leverage
  analytics as part of their planning processes?
• Does your Finance team currently have predictive
  analytics capabilities? If so, are they handled
  with separate tools and products that are
  outside of your planning processes?

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Practical Use-Cases

• So how can FPA teams leverage predictive
  analytics? Here are a few use- cases designed to
  help increase collaboration with various business
  partner groups (for additional common use-cases,
  refer to Figure 2)
• Assist with the target-setting process to support
  Strategic Planning and/or Annual Operating Plans
  (AOP)
• Create baseline predictive forecast scenarios for
  comparison against bottoms-up, internal
  forecasting from divisional finance or
  operational business partners
• Automatically seed new forecasts with predictive
  models for AOP and rolling forecasts
• Adjust baseline predictive forecasts with known
  business changes, such as those with new
  customers, plant shutdowns, new acquisitions,
  etc.

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Performance Analytics Corporation

• Business Benefits Require Consistency
• Some Finance people may think, Shouldnt
  predictive forecasts
• replace all other forecasting processes? No. In
  fact, like many things in Finance, leveraging
  predictive models is not a one-time event, its
  an ongoing process. Thats especially true if
  the goal is to create tangible business value.
  But arent predictive forecasts ultimately
  designed to help increase forecast accuracy? The
  simple answer is yes.
• But its also important to remember that, by
  design, predictive models pump out forecasts
  based on history. Why does that matter? Well, it
  means that the impact of future business plans
  which are critical for budgeting, planning
  forecasting are not captured in predictive
  models. Wait, but arent ongoing business plans
  also essential for
• forecasting? Bingo!

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Performance Analytics Corporation

• Thats why leveraging predictive forecasting is
  so powerful. Rather than spending endless hours
  analyzing the organic business plan (i.e., the
  baseline forecast), Finance teams can with
  predictive forecasting
• focus on the initiatives designed to help their
  organizations increase margins and/or mitigate
  risks.
• And when predictive analytics are applied
  consistently within the planning processes, FPA
  teams can reshape the collaboration model with
  their business partners and continue to claim a
  stake as a strategic advisory group to the
  organization. And most importantly, by creating
  insights, increasing awareness and driving
  dialogue on how
• the why, how and who translate into
  financial goals, FPA teams are helping to seed
  their organizations with the strand of DNA thats
  required to achieve their goals and thrive over
  the longer term planning horizon.

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Thank you
Contact us
Phone [phone] Email Graham.Finney_at_Perfor
manceA nalytics.com