White Paper

The promise of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is a compelling one. Deploy the right solution and it can help deliver a complete view of your business, integrate processes and data, drive efficiency, boost productivity and sharpen your competitive edge.

But as with any major software implementation project, success is not guaranteed. Even a seasoned procurement manager can be captivated by the bells and whistles such as swish visualisations and impressive-sounding AI capabilities, while potentially losing sight of the nuts and bolts: i.e. the ability of the system to meet your real-life business problems.

Read our guide to identifying your best-fit solution for maximum return on investment.

This whitepaper discusses how FP&A teams can harness the power of scenario-based planning to guide business leaders towards making informed decisions that ensure optimal performance during difficult times.

It is the responsibility of the FP&A team to guide business leaders towards making informed decisions that ensure optimal performance during difficult times. In doing so, they must harness the power of scenario-based planning. Below are the critical factors and steps in this process that we will discuss:

• Identifying the key business drivers and critical uncertainties.
• Generating multiple scenarios through decision tree thinking.
• Being mindful of possible cognitive errors and be receptive to the external environment.
• Harnessing the technological tools available to enable real-time planning solutions.

Our “Steering the Ship During Times of Extreme Uncertainty” paper looks at how critical FP&A is as we enter the phase of the unknown during & after COVID-19. It highlights important approaches that may prove valuable to those in FP&A across all verticals.

One of the key factors in successfully navigating through levels of uncertainty is a simple acknowledgment that you don’t know. You don’t know what will happen. You don’t know how long this will last. And you don’t know what the best way to handle it will be.

Therefore, in acknowledgment that we do not know, and fully encouraging alternative views, we attempt to highlight a few approaches that may prove valuable to you. We discuss:

• Dumping your long-term plans.
• Thinking short-term and scenario-based.
• Developing an ‘options’ mindset.
• Communicating and aligning teams.

“The big times are now”. This is how KPMG described the landscape in its June 2021 UK Economic Outlook. Certainly for sectors such as hospitality, leisure and nonessential retail, we seem to be firmly within revenge buying mode as pent-up demand is unleashed.

Here’s a closer look at the forecasts, and at the steps businesses can take to boost their ability to take advantage…