How Data Can Drive Agility In Business Planning

Change is the only constant.

In a world where customer needs evolve every day, and technology changes constantly, companies have to think fast, implement their strategies quickly, fail fast, learn from mistakes, and continue innovating.

To do all this, agility is important in business planning. Companies must be willing to respond to changes quickly without disrupting their existing processes entirely. That’s how companies can thrive in uncertain times.  

While agility in business planning sounds good on paper, it cannot be implemented without the help of data.

Data analytics enables companies to understand the needs and challenges of customers and provides actionable insights to help design solutions that can address the challenges.

In an unprecedented time like now, data has become even more critical than ever before to empower the process of business planning.

How Data Drives Agility In Business Planning?

From sales planning to designing marketing campaigns, and planning and allocating budget, data is the main driver to create a robust business plan. Let’s dig deep to understand better.

1. Improves decision-making

Decision-making has never really been about relying on gut-instinct or speculations alone. It must be more data-driven. Data exposes even the hidden opportunities that might go missing while using traditional methods of making decisions. Take Landmark Group for example. They leverage IBM Planning Analytics to streamline their entire planning and forecasting process across the enterprise which enabled them to optimize costs and instead use that money for other important purposes. Similarly, data can be used to decide the best price point for a product, manage the inventory of products, and determine the focus areas that could grow the business to the next level.

Data brings a structure to how businesses make decisions. It enables companies to save costs on unnecessary expenditure. Most importantly, it gives the company an edge over its competitors as it helps them make smarter decisions.

2. Streamlines budget allocation

Budgeting and budget planning can be cumbersome, especially when there is a lot of unstructured data to manage or when companies use disparate systems to manage the data. Using traditional Excel sheets is equally time-consuming and error-prone. So, how can companies plan their budgets effectively?

Well, that’s where data helps. Take the example of one of our clients that have been using an ERP tool to plan a budget. Their PMS application, budget, and MMI applications were interdependent. So, if the end-user had to see a project’s PBIT, they had to rely on the IT team to run the admin link. This used to consume almost 30 minutes. With almost 160 projects running in each BU, the company had a tough time arriving at PBIT for each project. They wanted to remove the dependency on IT to run the admin link and get data in real-time. We developed all the applications in a comprehensive solution called IBM Planning Analytics, which enabled the company to get real-time budget details. The budget process cycle time crashed to 12 days from 1 month, and it required just three resources from the finance and accounts team to finalize it. The company was able to accelerate its budget planning process. This enables real-time decision-making and faster time-to-impact.

3. Improves sales planning and marketing campaigns

An extraordinary number of sales strategies are driven by gut instincts. According to a Forrester report, only 34% of sales leaders make decisions based on data. This is often because the data is too cumbersome to collate and analyze. Typically, companies rely on spreadsheets and manual processes to forecast sales. These don’t deliver real-time insights that are essential for accurate results. Take COVID-19, for example. Toilet paper manufacturers, FMCG companies, hand sanitizer manufacturers, etc. literally went out of stock. In a normal condition, lack of access to real-time data could have delayed the decision-making process and impacted sales. However, some companies had access to real-time data that enabled them to predict the demand for their products accurately and ramp up their production quickly.

With such data in hand, the sales team can base their decisions purely on facts and plan their sales strategy effectively to improve efficiency and build the company’s bottom line. Data also helps to improve marketing campaigns by targeting the audience accurately and personalizing the messaging based on segmentation done with the help of insights received about the audience. Data guides the marketers to focus on creating winning strategies rather than maneuvering in the dark.

4. Encourages data-driven product development

Customers constantly look for new features in the products they use. The novelty surrounding the app dies if there are no innovations in the product. However, new features cannot be developed or removed on a whim. Such actions must be backed with data. Airfocus, a product development software company, used data to find out that some of the features that they developed for an app were under-utilized. FMRU Clothing, on the other hand, found out what customers look for in their website and made changes to it to improve user experience. Any company, start-up, or large enterprise must use data to develop their product. They must let the data guide the process of ongoing innovation.

5. Maximizes profit

Companies can earn an average of $10.66 for every dollar spent on the deployment of analytical applications. Data-driven business planning allows companies to take decisions quickly, predict forecasts and customer behavior accurately, and create the right strategy depending upon the market conditions as they exist at the time. It helps companies to acquire more customers, engage them, and reduce churn in the process. The combined efforts of all teams within the company will boost their bottom line and maximize their profits.

Conclusion

As we draw close to the end of 2020, corporates have already started to kick off their planning cycle for the next financial year. The unpredictable market may have made the corporates cautious about creating ambitious plans for next year. However, with the help of data, they can predict the general sentiments in the market and create a well-defined strategy quickly to implement next year. Veracitiz can help companies to streamline their processes and plan strategies to help them achieve their set goals by leveraging IBM Planning Analytics

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