Connected Enterprise Planning: What is it, and why do you need it?

Ever since the pandemic thrashed the world economy and left enterprises helpless, planning and forecasting have become more important than ever. Today, businesses are on the verge to make great strides, supported by state-of-the-art technologies. What if you could combine multiple business planning processes and build an integrated plan with real-time data? Well, that’s what connected enterprise planning is all about. 

Connected Enterprise Planning: A World Full of Possibilities 

Connected enterprise planning is an ecosystem where every line of business is digitalized, whether it’s manufacturing, customer care, sales, human resources, or marketing. By connecting your financial, operational, and line-of-business planning, you can bring together different processes, dive into more insights, and figure out how well everything is performing. Furthermore, this approach will help you make adjustments accordingly.

This type of planning uses advanced technologies that are artificial intelligence, IoT, machine learning, and data science. The end result is connected enterprises that are able to improve the way they maneuver and operate within their niches. Such enterprises end up being more efficient, agile, and productive. Some additional benefits of connected enterprise planning include:

• Easy access to crucial real-time data
• Cohesion around commonly shared goals 
• A comprehensive view of the potential customer 
• Improved communication and sharing capabilities
• Company-wide adoption of technologies and tools
• Informed decision-making and problem-solving   
• Transparency among geographically dispersed departments
  

Why do You Need Connected Enterprise Planning? 

Whether it’s speeding up productivity, pivoting more customers, manipulating data, or handling high-value work, there is an array of reasons why you need connected planning. Let’s take a look at them one-by-one. 

1. To Empower Enterprises with Emerging Technologies

Connected planning helps businesses make better decisions by leveraging emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence. These technologies are quickly changing business practices. Through the use of such technologies, you can materially improve the accuracy of business planning and significantly minimize time spent in planning processes.

2. To Get Access to Smart Data

There is one significant thing about internal enterprise networks: They have been constantly gathering smart and connected data points. What is more interesting is that the sheer amount of available data is growing sharply with the increasing number of IoT devices. This makes connected planning more important than ever, as it caters to the ever-changing nature of global business. It helps businesses shift the focus from data consolidation to smart data and help them determine the best future performance.

3. To Make Robust Reporting 

Reporting is a catchphrase for handling an array of tasks, such as doing ad-hoc analysis and slicing your data. As you need some picture-perfect reports that can be easily printed, you can streamline your management reporting with the help of connected planning. This approach will help you add collaborative narrative elements to your reporting packages and manage complex reporting tasks like making budget books, finance spreadsheets, etc.

4. To Speed Up Processes  

As mentioned above, with connected enterprise planning, you get a strong hold on an array of key processes. These processes include scenario modeling, workforce planning, and integrated business planning and execution (IBPX). On top of that, a connected enterprise makes critical decisions faster and gains the agility to outperform. 

5. To Manage Uncertainties with Scenario Modelling 

With a connected planning solution, you can leverage scenario modeling for long-term planning and cash forecasting. Not just that, you can manage different uncertainties related to finance, line of business, and operations. All thanks to connected enterprise planning. 

Important Elements to Build a Connected Enterprise 

If you are ready to build a connected enterprise and take planning and forecasting to the next-level, here are a few key elements your organization should take into account:

• A Comprehensive Understanding of Customer Satisfaction 

With the rising competition, customer satisfaction is also touching the sky, which has become the driving force in most business models. When you call a helpdesk, wait and resolution time impacts customer satisfaction. The way your issues are captured and conveyed to the company determines the level of customer satisfaction. 

Well-connected enterprises know this and provide rapid visibility of customer feedback in the form of actionable information. They know how important customer engagement is and strive to understand their potential customers individually and consistently. 

• IoT and Machine Learning Optimization 

Emerging technologies like machine learning and internet of things (IoT) are two ground-breaking innovations that play a key role in connected planning. If your planning and forecasting strategies are optimized for these two technologies, you can analyze data at the speed of light, make laser-focused predictions, and develop better human teams. By combining machine learning, IoT, and insights from other applications, your business gets a 360-degree customer view that makes it easier to tailor better experiences.

• Supply and Demand Data

Having a unified supply and demand overview helps you understand, analyze, and manage variability within your supply chain in a better way. To achieve this goal, you should have real-time supply chain planning solutions in place. You should take advantage of analytics, simulation, and alerts.In addition, these insights will help you better respond to ever-changing market expectations. 

Over to You 

That’s it, everything about connected enterprise planning. Now, it’s over to you, how you implement connected planning in your current business model. Being connected means yielding an earth-shattering return on investment, when it’s done carefully. So, take your best step forward and bring planning and forecasting into a whole new dimension.