Developing a Profit & Loss Forecasting Solution
The Situation
A large media advertising company was in need of a new P&L forecasting and budgeting application to allow a more collaborative and real-time planning process for the finance teams. Given that the Company had already begun to use Anaplan in other use cases, Accordion was brought in to develop a P&L forecasting and budgeting process using Anaplan, which could then integrate with their other Anaplan use cases.
Services
Budgeting/Forecasting Solution Implementation
Reporting & Analytics
The Execution
- Worked closely with the Company’s finance & IT teams to develop a framework that would address the needs of the solution.
- Built integration processes into and out of Essbase and other Anaplan models using Wdata, with scheduled integrations updating model data several times daily.
- Calculated workforce expenses at the employee level, including projections for bonus, benefits, taxes, and merit increases for rostered employees, to-be-hired, and open seats.
- Calculated non-personnel expenses based on driver-based methodologies.
- Designed reporting and analytics dashboards to display the calculated forecast and budget data, as well as present variance analysis, roster comparisons, and archived prior forecast data
The Results
Accordion successfully built an Anaplan model that provided the Company with a P&L forecasting and budgeting tool that easily integrated with their other Anaplan use cases. The Company’s finance teams can now plan in a more streamlined and collaborative way, leveraging Anaplan’s real-time calculation abilities to reduce the time needed for the overall planning process.