Embracing uncertainty and planning for the future

The past few years have been characterised by upheaval, change and uncertainty. Looking forward, it’s obvious that we’re not going back to the old world. The pace of change is accelerating and those not frozen in the headlights are busy rethinking the structure of their organisations to allow them to continue adapting to change.

Macroeconomic headwinds, market disruptions, competitive pressures, and rapid technology innovations are shifting markets faster than ever. Businesses have had to make repeated, sometimes profound alterations in revenue, demand, expense, and staffing forecasts. In a world shaken by the fallout from lockdowns and layoffs, many businesses are facing falling demand for their products and services.

Legacy Solutions are Built for Yesterday’s Problems

The problem is, the legacy systems organisations often use to run their businesses are constructed from rigid architectures and dated data models. How can businesses adapt quickly to see off new threats and embrace promising opportunities when their systems were built to solve yesterday’s problems?    

Similarly, traditional planning practices can leave organisations poorly equipped to anticipate and respond to economic or market shifts – they find themselves hobbled by siloed and stale data, manual and time-consuming tasks, and a view of finance as little more than the keeper of transactional data. 

Finance leaders need systems that can respond to the dynamic changes in business but also minimise the impact of future disruptions. More progressive organisations are recognising legacy technology and traditional static planning are no longer suited to the moment we find ourselves in and are instead opting for a more collaborative, data-driven approach.

Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity

At Workday Adaptive Planning, we believe that businesses need an enterprise management cloud to turn uncertainty into opportunity. That means combining external and internal data to create a unified source of truth for a decision-ready organisation. 

What could that mean for your business? It means employees can run a report, drill down into the details, then take immediate action—without worrying about stale data or being slowed down by calcified processes. It means you can manage the balance sheet using real-time data to support and measure the outcome of investment decisions. It means team members across the business can easily collaborate and scenario-plan for what comes after a recession in one single system. 

Taking Control of the Future

Modern cloud solutions like Workday Adaptive Planning are helping companies take control of their futures by unleashing the power of data and giving them access to the very capabilities traditional planning lacks. These include continuous planning, companywide planning, deeper insights, and the ability to adapt and perform at scale. 

When combined in a single cloud platform, these capabilities provide the adaptability to support an agile organisation without compromise. With the ability to continually anticipate change and quickly operationalise a coordinated response at scale, organisations can stay ahead of the competition, even in the midst of instability and disruption.

More Innovation to Come

We also believe in delivering innovation that unlocks human potential. That’s why, with Workday Adaptive Planning, ML and AI innovation is built in and not an add-on. Because we were born in the cloud we can continuously deliver innovation for our customers. All Workday Adaptive Planning customers run on the same version, receiving weekly releases of new capabilities. That increases the business value of ML and AI over time, and ensures that no one is left behind. 

As part of that commitment, we’re making significant investments to make sure we continue to innovate for our customers, including:   

• Machine learning (ML). Workday Adaptive Planning will include ML Forecaster, which automatically generates a comprehensive and accurate forecast by allowing users to incorporate historical or third-party data, such as weather data or labour statistics. ML recommendations surface as you go through your planning process in Workday Adaptive Planning, not in a separate application.
• Continued investments in enabling companywide planning. We are reimagining the user experience for planning personas outside of traditional FP&A to enable more business users to engage in the planning process. Each business unit will have its own planning environment while preserving the ability to bring all the pieces together into a holistic plan.
• A centralised home for modeling and data. We are investing in Planning Center, which is a central repository for both planning models and data across the entire organisation. Planning Center will allow dimensions, formulas, and models to be created once and shared across the organisation, so planners in different business units don’t have to debate on numbers. 

Change can be unsettling. However, with Workday Adaptive Planning you can move forward with confidence knowing you’re perfectly poised to unlock the speed, insight, and efficiency you need to truly transform your organisation and stay one step ahead of the competition.

Contributed article by Workday Adaptive Planning