Integrated Planning

Goodbye, 2021. Hello, 2022. January may already be over, but that doesn’t mean there’s not plenty to look forward to in the year ahead—expected and unexpected. And that’s true in the financial and operational planning spaces as much as it is everywhere else. What’s different this year for finance and operations teams is the legwork they already have behind them. If last year was all about predicting the unpredictable, then 2022 is about continuing to put the past two years’ worth of learning into action—and enhancing the agility and insights already in place. At least that’s what Vena’s team of experts told us when we asked where they predict the financial and operational planning spaces will go in 2022.  Some of their predictions won’t come as a surprise, as trends we’ve already been seeing continue to build momentum. Others have been a long-time coming. But they all speak to a larger movement: the rising role of finance as a strategic partner to business, and embracing the best tools to help them provide the insights they need to thrive.  "The most important role finance teams play is in building and articulating a compelling, data-rich story of how the company is doing and where the company is going,” our CEO, Hunter Madeley says. “Done right, this builds alignment around a strategic vision and operational plan that inspires action and delivers results." This year, Hunter and our other Vena experts—CSO Rishi Grover; CTO Hugh Cumming; Vice President, FP&A Tom Seegmiller; Vice President, Solutions Mark Erdmann; and Vice President, Revenue Operations & Strategy Burzin Contractor—expect that teams will be putting even more of the pieces in place to build out that alignment. As a result, they’ll end up adding even more strategic value—and agility—to the business in 2022. These are their predictions. 1. Finance Teams Will Deepen Their Commitment To Providing Strategic Value to the Business When we surveyed 175 business leaders and finance and operations professionals last year for our 2021 Vena Industry Benchmark Report, 97% of them said their finance team was already adding value as a strategic partner to their business. That wasn’t surprising to us—especially during the ongoing pandemic, where the need for strong leadership and strategic insight has only escalated. And with such a strong base to start from, our experts see momentum only increasing in 2022 as teams build on that strategic role—momentum they expect to continue growing even when the pandemic comes to an end. Increased automation will help, taking more manual operational tasks off the plates of finance and operations professionals so that they can devote more of their time to analysis and driving strategic decision making. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will also likely contribute—something we explore in our next prediction.  2. More Teams Will Embrace Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence  Our benchmark report also showed us something that did surprise us: only 7% of finance teams were using AI in 2021—exactly the same number we saw in 2020. But despite the lack of use, 35% of respondents still understood the benefits of AI in decreasing costs by reducing manual effort. And 30% saw it as a way to provide a competitive advantage by leveraging data insights.  It’s no wonder, then, that our experts think that this will finally be the year that the use of AI and ML starts to gain momentum in the finance space. AI and ML have the power to transform the finance role—empowering finance professionals to solve complex planning challenges while correcting for anomalous events and external factors. And the additional value they offer will help teams drive decision making forward—enabling them to add further strategic value to their business.  3. We’ll See Continued Integration Between Planning and Analysis  Achieving better collaboration business-wide has always been an important goal. It has become even more critical since the pandemic began. Dispersed. largely remote teams suddenly needed better ways to collaborate without a constant barrage of Zoom calls. Since then, we’ve seen increased investment and more thought put into better collaboration as a whole—creating a new normal that our experts see sticking around even post pandemic. But as our ways of collaborating have expanded, so has our need for agility. In fact, most companies have had no choice during the pandemic but to become more agile in their business modeling, planning and forecasting. As a result, we’ve started doing planning and analysis much more frequently and across more users—for example, conducting operational planning at the business level instead of higher up, as we might have before the pandemic hit. This has highlighted the need for better collaboration between planning and analysis—something our experts expect to see improving this year. 4. Finance Will Leverage More Company-Wide Metrics and Insights Most companies, at this point, have fully embraced measurement as a key part of how they drive success—yet many still aren’t getting as much value as they could be from the metrics they follow. Data silos are still getting in the way for many, but just as critical is the fact that company-wide metrics are often owned across different, disconnected teams. This makes it difficult to take a holistic view, looking at company performance in its entirety.  As the owner of many of the key company metrics already—such as revenue growth, revenue per client and gross profit margin—finance teams have long been leaders in these measurement efforts. Other metrics—like customer satisfaction and client retention rate, for example—may not traditionally fall under finance, though, despite playing a strong role in a company’s future success. Having all of these company-wide metrics owned by the finance team can help fuel better analysis and stronger decision making overall. That’s why many organizations are embracing finance-led corporate performance management (CPM). And according to our experts, 2022 will be the year that CPM is further embraced and integrated into the finance function, becoming another pillar in the finance organization’s role. As the finance team begins to leverage these company-wide metrics, they’ll be able to take further advantage of the inherent insights that come from that holistic view—helping to move company performance forward. 5. The Trend Toward More Advanced Data Visualization Will Make Significant Headway Finally, our experts expect the trend toward finance teams leveraging advanced data visualization technology will continue to gain momentum—giving them even more tools to draw from to interpret and translate the data at hand.  Of course, business intelligence and data visualization technologies have been around for decades, with varying degrees of maturity and user acceptance across different types of companies and functional groups. But finance has traditionally lagged behind when compared to departments such as operations, marketing and sales. In 2022, though, we’ve reached a critical tipping point, where data volumes continue to accelerate and the number of different data sources and technologies used by businesses has increased. All of which means it’s become more imperative for finance and accounting professionals to embrace data visualization in order to effectively analyze increasingly large and disparate data. After all, at its heart, data visualization is about building more effective data storytelling—something that finance professionals are already well versed in. Strong visualization plays a compelling role in telling the story already in progress—demonstrating where the organization is going and why, all in a way people can get behind. This year, then, it’s not surprising that our experts predict that progressive finance organizations will lead, not lag, other parts of their organizations in embracing these increasingly critical technologies. Conclusion So what do you think? Do you agree with Vena’s experts? Are these five trends on your team’s radar for 2022? If not, how do you see your business becoming more agile in the face of future change—ready to pivot for whatever comes next?  After all, the pandemic may not be over yet—but that doesn’t mean there’s not something else waiting to surprise us in 2022 as well. Something that’s impossible to predict. Whatever it is, now’s the time to get ready.  agile planning and reporting Plan With Agility Find out how Vena can help you prepare for the future and fuel your financial and operational planning needs.   

When you’re on a rocket ship, you need continuous feedback to stay on the right trajectory. And fast-moving Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies are exactly the same. For SaaS companies at any stage of growth, this means having the latest leading and lagging indicators available to make quick, agile decisions about where to focus resources to accelerate growth without running out of cash. Decision makers need to know the right levers to pull—where, when and how to invest to acquire customers, keep customers, evolve the product and drive recurring revenue. But it’s not easy—which is why 92% of SaaS businesses crash and burn within three years. Move Fast and Break Things (Like Your Spreadsheets) Strategic planning and reporting obviously play a critical role in proactively charting your SaaS company’s path forward and pivoting resources to the right revenue drivers. But planning and reporting get complicated when you need to collect a long list of SaaS-specific metrics from across the company in order to inform critical decision making.  So, how can your strategic finance team bring data and departments together to create full transparency about the health of your Saas business? How do they help your leaders make proactive decisions about how to fuel growth, navigate uncertainty and keep key stakeholders and investors on board? Let’s look at three key challenges your SaaS finance team can solve to align business-wide planning around the right metrics at any stage of growth—whether you’re securing Series A funding, are going public or are somewhere in between. Challenge 1: Finding the Numbers You Need To Assess Business Performance There are certain KPIs and data-driven benchmarks that SaaS CFOs and business leaders should rely on to understand how the business is performing, where to focus investments and how to align finance and operations to results.  For example, the ultimate LTV:CAC ratio is 3:1, which means your customer lifetime value (LTV) should be three times more than your cost of acquisition (CAC) to optimize growth. But calculating this critical metric (and others like it) involves integrating and analyzing a lot of data about different customer segments, marketing channels, product features, customer churn and more. With all of this data flowing in from different systems and teams, this is all easier said than done. It’s difficult for your SaaS finance team to access the data you need to drive informed decision making when it’s scattered across enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, the general ledger (GL), customer relationship management (CRM) systems, contract/booking systems (GL Subledger), marketing clouds and more. To slice and dice data into the metrics and KPIs that guide planning, finance teams often resort to manually cutting and pasting data into their own spreadsheets, which is slow, error prone and far from real time.  Without accurate, complete data, SaaS CFOs and decision makers will drive the company forward based on the wrong benchmarks—and potentially right into the ground.  Solution: Create a Single Source of Truth To Get the Latest Metrics at a Glance Stop manually gathering data and start automatically integrating data from disparate systems into a single source of truth so that all financial, sales, marketing, customer, product, employee and market data lives in one place. With easy-to-access, accurate data, your finance team can spend more time analyzing the numbers for better strategic decision making.   Budgeting, Forecasting & Financial Reporting Case Study - SaaS Customer Story Learn how Thomas International stopped chasing spreadsheets and built a better FP&A foundation. Challenge 2: Planning for Growth No Matter What Lies Ahead Once a startup has taken off, sustaining growth is the next challenge. And many don’t go very far: of the startups that raise their seed round, less than 10% reach the next stage of investment.  Survival means keeping at least a 20% growth rate year over year by continuing to invest where it counts, ensuring speed of impact to the bottom line. However, SaaS subscription models can create a lag between making a sale and collecting the revenue—so run rate and cash don’t necessarily correlate. If margins are too slim, the company won’t survive unexpected bumps in the road. This is why forecasting is critical.   SaaS CFOs and decision makers need to understand how different strategies and market conditions impact the road ahead so that they can ensure there is always a path forward regardless of the future’s uncertainties. With scenario planning, your SaaS finance team can see how strategic decisions impact metrics such as sales, operating costs, cash flow and burn rate. By accounting for best-case and worst-case scenarios, you can help leadership put the pedal to the metal knowing they have the fuel to survive … at least until the next round of funding.  Solution: Use Real-Time Scenario Planning To Anticipate the Impact of Decisions Guide planning with forecasting and simulation activities that integrate real-time data. With accurate data about the latest financials, you can confidently explore growth opportunities and mitigate risks based on different probabilities. Challenge 3: Keeping the Business Aligned With a Common Vision SaaS teams need to have a common vision for the strategic direction of the company in order to increase their chances of survival. To propel the business forward quickly, everyone needs to be moving in the same direction—from executives and the board, to investors, employees, department heads and budget owners.  To create this alignment, teams across the business require ready access to the numbers and insights that guide the way, such as annual recurring revenue (ARR), customer acquisition cost (CAC), retention rates and more. By communicating business performance metrics frequently, SaaS CFOs help build a culture of accountability that keeps everyone engaged in the process and invested in the outcomes.  Intuitive dashboards and interactive data visualizations can deliver real-time access to the metrics that matter most. When teams can visually see the trends that tell the story behind your business performance, they can better understand the next chapter and the role they play in the strategic direction of the company. By over-communicating—and doing it often—your finance team will get departments across your SaaS business to buy into the objectives they need to measure their own performance against. If your teams believe it, they will achieve it.  Solution: Make Data Easy To Understand With Dashboards and Visualizations Design real-time dashboards and interactive data visualizations to communicate key metrics in a way your entire SaaS team will understand. With easy access to accurate, meaningful data, everyone will understand your business’s trajectory and how they contribute to it. Demand Planning Case Study - SaaS & IT Infrastructure Customer Story Find out how Nutanix connected data sources and created a single source of truth for its key financial processes. Plan for Every Stage of Growth With Vena for SaaS  Vena for SaaS gives your finance team complete planning and analysis capabilities within one pre-configured solution built to meet the unique business requirements of SaaS companies. Integrate Data Sources Into a Single Source of Truth Vena automates the integration of disparate data sources into a single source of truth, giving finance teams more time and more accurate numbers for strategic decision making. Create Multiple Plans To Grow With Scenario Planning Vena makes it simple and efficient to adjust key performance indicators in an instant to see how today’s decision making could affect tomorrow’s outcomes. Provide Easy-To-Access Metrics That Matter Vena’s visual dashboards and accurate, easy-to-understand reports help SaaS companies keep all stakeholders informed, aligned and invested in success.  Vena for SaaS Learn how Vena for SaaS integrates all of the templates, reports, data models, source system data and business logic needed to support your planning and analysis.   

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies are under pressure to grow—and fast! But growth needs to happen strategically in order to optimize spending and maintain runway, while avoiding obstacles along the way to unicorn status (and beyond).  To navigate the various stages of SaaS growth, data needs to come together from across the company—from sales and marketing to customer success and operations—to plot in the details of where the company has been and use leading and lagging indicators to determine where it's likely to go. But the more time you spend gathering data, the less time you’ll have to do value-adding analysis on past, present and forecasted data to map out the best route to your next milestone and beyond.  By setting data gathering on autopilot and presenting it in easy-to-understand reports and dashboards, the right FP&A and extended planning solution can make all the difference in staying on course. And a few best practices can help your SaaS company choose the right FP&A and extended planning solution for navigating any stage of growth. Best Practice #1: Connect Disparate Data Sources To See All Leading and Lagging Indicators in One Place The data points you need to steer your SaaS company toward success come from systems across your entire business—not just financial systems (ERP/GL), but also your customer/prospect (CRM), marketing cloud, contract/bookings and human resources (HRIS) solutions.  To stay on track, you need to be able to transform this data into insights by combining it across different systems, such as your ERP and CRM. Unfortunately, disparate data systems don’t usually talk to each other, leaving many SaaS teams aggregating data from multiple spreadsheets. But there is a way around the copy-and-paste shuffle: integrate data from your existing systems into a centralized database so that you can access, combine and analyze all the business-wide data you need from a single source of truth.  Customer Stories Vena for SaaS Learn how Lookout's finance team stopped juggling manual spreadsheets and started focusing more on being a strategic partner in their organization with the help of Vena for SaaS. Best Practice #2: Automate Processes and Use Workflow Management To Streamline Collaboration  The more often you share key data and business KPIs, the more feedback your team has to drive the decision making that will help your business navigate the challenges ahead. But if you are manually gathering and sharing data for planning and reporting, you risk slowing momentum with errors, rework and multiple template versions. Put data integration, data validation and other intensive, time-consuming processes on cruise control so that you can focus your attention on what matters most—your business drivers and collaborating with teams to accelerate growth.  To further govern and automate your planning process and provide transparency around status and bottlenecks, share secure templates that enhance collaboration. When your FP&A and extended planning solution automatically populates templates with scheduled data loading and allows you to customize editing permissions per user, you can more easily manage workflows and get to the next stage of your journey together. Best Practice #3: Plan for Any Scenario To Make Agile and Informed Business Decisions  While your SaaS company needs to be able to pivot quickly, you can’t just be reacting to market changes—you need to be prepared for multiple scenarios and be proactive in your planning.  Leverage the multi-dimensional modeling capabilities of an FP&A and extended planning solution to plan for any eventuality with what-if and scenario analysis. You want to be able to adjust any key performance indicator, such as CAC and ARR, in an instant to compare scenarios and make frequent updates. And to produce an informed plan, you need to integrate actuals and forecasts and reforecast often to ensure accurate revenue projections. When your FP&A and extended planning solution helps you plan for change, you keep control of the wheel. CUSTOMER STORIES Vena for SaaS Find out how Sprout Social uses Vena for SaaS to integrate all of its budgeting, forecasting, reporting and scenario analysis in one tool. Best Practice #4: Use an Industry-Specific Solution Built for SaaS To Supercharge Growth To plan ahead, you need a solution that understands both the traditional budget requirements of planning for your standard financial statements as well as key SaaS metrics.  You’ll get more mileage out of an FP&A and extended planning platform configured specifically for the unique needs of a SaaS company. You’ll be able to plan for subscriptions, services and other sources of revenue, operating expenses, capital expenditures, balance sheets, workforce and indirect cash flow with ease using SaaS-specific KPIs such as efficiency ratios, customer acquisition cost, lifetime value and more. Best Practice #5: Choose a Solution That Inspires Users To Engage and Share Data and Insights  Keep your teams engaged in the planning process and invested in results by sharing plans and feedback—and doing it frequently.  Use an FP&A and extended planning platform with intuitive and easy-to-understand dashboards to show off your Gross, Expansion and Churned ARR as well as your subscriber count, CAC and LTV. With automatic integrations and updates, you can share your plan with your board, employees and investors instantly—or whenever you want regular reporting. But simplicity is key: if onboarding and change management is too complicated, your team won’t trust the tool or use it and will resort to using their own offline, disconnected Excel models. For engagement that drives results, ensure the solution you choose is simple and easy to use. Modernize your FP&A with Vena for SaaS, a Complete Planning platform built for SaaS companies. More FP&A Solution Criteria To Consider In addition to the five best practices for FP&A solutions listed above, there are a few more features and tips to consider that will help you make the right decision for your business: Presentation power: Review dashboards and decision-ready reporting capabilities to ensure you’ll have all of the insights needed to make quick and accurate decisions.  Onboarding process: Make sure you can get the FP&A and extended planning solution up and running quickly—without a lengthy setup process—and that it’s easy for your users to adopt with a familiar interface.  Ability to scale: The right solution should grow with your SaaS company. Can it support complete planning or will you need to invest in multiple point solutions for all the features you need? REQUEST A DEMO Learn more about how Vena delivers these SaaS, FP&A and Extended Planning best practices and more.  

There’s no way of knowing exactly what the future holds. But understanding the possibilities ahead of you is not only achievable, it’s a wise business practice. For finance and operations teams, that’s where scenario modeling comes in. A critical tool for forward-facing teams, daily, monthly or annual scenario modeling puts your data to work by mapping out the possible scenarios ahead. In doing so, it helps keep your organization agile—ready for whatever’s coming, with the tools and insights you need to pivot at the first signs of change. Yet Vena has learned that many organizations didn’t prioritize scenario modeling in 2021. Vena’s 2021 Industry Benchmark Report, The State of Strategic Finance—released in December 2021—showed that fewer than half of respondents were making scenario modeling a priority. In fact, based on a survey of 175 business leaders and finance and operations professionals, the benchmark results actually demonstrated a drop in scenario modeling usage from 2020. Let’s delve deeper into the data to see why scenario modeling is being left behind—and look at why organizations should reprioritize scenario modeling in 2022 to get the most out of the year ahead.  The State of Scenario Modeling Back when Vena released our 2020 Industry Benchmark Report we were surprised that, at the time, only 60% of survey respondents were embracing scenario modeling before making forecasting adjustments.  After all, scenario modeling allows your finance and operations teams to keep their finger on the pulse and opens up opportunities to increase performance, stay agile and better understand new opportunities around the corner. In doing so, it lets you plan for the best while preparing for the worst—something that can mean the difference between success and failure even in normal times. But in 2020, as we faced the beginning of a worldwide pandemic and the market and workplace changes that resulted, it seemed more critical than ever. The fact that 40% of the organizations we talked to weren’t taking advantage of such a critical tool told us that they weren’t as prepared as they could be for whatever came next. And since 2020 led to 2021—a year just as racked with uncertainty and change—that didn’t bode well. In 2021, though, we found that even fewer organizations made scenario modeling a priority.  The 2021 Benchmark In fact, the numbers flipped from 2020 to 2021. Whereas 60% embraced it in 2020, only 40% of the organizations we surveyed were employing scenario modeling before making forecasting adjustments in 2021—meaning 60% weren’t. In addition, 70% still weren’t running scenarios or sensitivity analysis on uncertainties outside of their control.  The reasons for the shift could be sheer complacency. After all, with the pandemic still new in 2020 and the market rapidly changing, teams were scrambling for ways to break through the uncertainty. For at least some, wisely, that meant turning to scenario modeling to see what came next. But what happened when the uncertainty of the pandemic became the new normal in 2021?  For one, organizations experienced better financial health last year. Compared to the beginning of COVID-19, 56% of respondents said they were in a better position in 2021. And even if many of those improvements were out of their control—48% of companies cited market growth as the biggest driving factor for revenue growth—it’s likely some organizations became more complacent as a result, as they rode the wave of the market without a look ahead. Just as possible: the new reality and pressures of a continued crisis meant teams simply lacked the time and resources to keep up with scenario modeling the way they’d like. Either way, scenario modeling got left behind. And without scenario modeling, organizations increase their risk for the future, unable to take full advantage of the data they have available to plan their course forward.  So what does that mean for 2022? 4 Reasons to Prioritize Scenario Modeling in 2022 The good news is that it’s clear that many of our survey respondents understand the importance of scenario modeling. In our benchmark survey, 41% of respondents said they were planning on prioritizing scenario modeling and/or what-if analysis in the year ahead. That’s a positive sign of things to come in 2022.  But if scenario modeling isn’t on your priority list for the new year, there are plenty of reasons it should be. These are just four:   1. It’ll Help You Deal With the Ongoing Uncertainty We’ve had plenty of uncertainty over the past two years—but that doesn’t mean there’s not more possibly waiting around the corner. Scenario modeling helps you prepare for any eventuality and potential risk, so that even when things aren’t going as planned there’s still a plan in place.  2. It Allows You To Future-Proof Your Plans Unless you have a crystal ball hidden in the supply closet, there’s no real way to know whether your current plan is going to be successful or not. But you can certainly test out your odds— running all of the possible scenarios to see whether your plan is as future-proof as it can be.  3. It Gives You More Information To Budget Better  If your company’s New Year’s resolution is to get more done with less (and whose isn’t), scenario modeling can help achieve it. By looking ahead, it lets you plan better, allocating funds more strategically to better accomplish your organization’s ultimate business goals. 4. It Helps You Identify New Opportunities for Growth Risk can pay off when it’s approached wisely—and 2022 may be just the right time to take those risks. By letting you look ahead at possible outcomes, scenario modeling can help you decide which opportunities are the right ones. In other words, scenario modeling can play a huge role in helping your organization thrive in 2022. But first, you have to make it a regular part of how you do business.   To read the full set of results, download your free copy of Vena's 2021 Industry Benchmark Report below.    

  Unexpected change can be a learning experience—in good ways and bad. And while every year comes with some kind of change, 2020 was an anomaly in the amount of change it brought, proving that point more than ever. From rapid market shifts to increases in unemployment and remote work, it forced businesses to react—and many of them stepped up, transforming rapidly. The rate of digital transformation accelerated in many industries, virtual working environments were embraced and many organizations looked at their people, processes and technology with a new eye, searching for even more ways to introduce the type of agility that would prepare them for any more change ahead. That was the new norm, then, within which we welcomed 2021. But what has happened in the year since? And how did finance and operations teams keep up—staying ready for whatever comes next?  We explored the answers in Vena’s 2021 Industry Benchmark Report. Based on a survey of 175 business leaders and finance and operations professionals across 41 different industries, the new report looks at the past, present and future to see what finance and operations teams took away from 2020, what they’ve done in the year since and what’s impeding or supporting their success going into 2022. The State of Strategic Finance: Vena Industry Benchmark Report 2021 is now available for download. Keep reading to explore insights from the survey data: The past The present The future The Past In 2020, when we released our 2020 Vena Industry Benchmark Report, the pandemic was still comparatively new, remote work something organizations were only just getting used to and uncertain market conditions an unpleasant reality without an end in sight. Organizations, as a result, were scrambling to keep up with all of the changes underway—most, we found out, without an early warning system in place to help them or the agile processes that would allow them to navigate that change confidently and with ease. The good news, our most recent survey revealed, was that organizations seemed to be doing better in 2021 than they were then. In fact, more than half of respondents in our 2021 survey said their companies were in better financial health than they’d been in 2020. That’s a plus no matter how you look at it.  Unfortunately, the story gets a little more complicated.  Because the biggest driver of that improved financial health—at least for 48% of respondents—wasn’t anything businesses did themselves. Rather, it was propelled by market growth as conditions stabilized after an uncertain 2020. In fact, only a slightly higher percentage of organizations had agile planning processes in place compared to 2020. Just 7.5% were introducing an early warning system and significantly fewer organizations were using scenario modeling.  The report revealed that only 40% of organizations were employing scenario modeling before making forecasting adjustments. “This may be due to their better financial health and a perceived increase in stability in 2021 compared to 2020—yet simply riding the wave of the market without a look ahead puts organizations at risk,” the report reads. The State of Strategic Finance also explores: The biggest takeaways of 2020 The biggest changes made to people, processes and technology  But the past is just a jumping-off point. To dig deeper, we wanted to see how 2020 informed the priorities for organizations in 2021—and what challenges still remained. For that, we looked at present processes and how organizations were faring.   The Present Even with the learning experience that was 2020 behind them, finance and operations teams still weren’t doing all they could to stay agile for future change in 2021. But a number of them did seem to be focused on the right priorities—it’s just that familiar challenges were getting in the way.  In fact, 97% of the finance teams surveyed said they were adding value as a strategic partner to their business. In other words, they were going beyond the traditional transactional or back-office roles and being embraced as a trusted advisor to their business, providing key strategic analysis to help drive the business forward. And they were focused on developing many of the skills they needed to do so. Almost 60% were investing in reporting skills, 54% in business analysis skills and 51.5% in leadership skills—skills that added to their agility as organizations. Unfortunately, companies were still falling behind on agile processes such as scenario modeling. Not only that, but data was still proving to be a challenge. “Multiple disparate and disconnected data sources” was the biggest data challenge in 2021—just as it was in 2020. The report revealed that a majority of organizations were still missing a unified strategy on how they create, maintain, control and use data—making unlocking deeper insights impossible.  “This will likely continue to be a hot topic over the next five to 10 years, as businesses move toward more unified data management,” the report suggests. The State of Strategic Finance also looks at: The biggest drivers of revenue growth in 2021 The greatest challenges to current business planning processes Without the right processes to stay agile—and accessible, easy-to-use data to back that up—organizations can put themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to meeting future goals. So finally, we looked ahead to see what organizations were doing to make their future vision a reality. The Future With all of that in mind, how ready are organizations for whatever the future has to hold? And what are they doing to stay ready? Not as much as they’d like to be, our benchmark survey found. Today’s finance and operations teams were falling behind on both forecasting and long-range planning. Organizations weren’t forecasting as often as they would have liked and weren’t giving their long-range plans the attention they needed for the best results.  According to the report, a lack of time was getting in the way, but it wasn't the only factor that was making more frequent, continuous forecasting a problem. “Disconnected data (33%) and insufficient technology (25.5%) were also issues. Clearly, the challenges organizations face in their people, processes and technology today affect how they approach tomorrow too,” the report reads. To complete our view ahead, the report also looks at: How often organizations are forecasting and updating their long-range plans How organizations are using future-facing technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) Read the entire report and find out what next steps you can take to future-proof your organization. 2021 Industry Benchmark Report The State of Strategic Finance The results from our 2021 benchmark survey reveal how finance and operations teams learned from the past to navigate the present and stay ready for the future. Download the Insights    

Did you know that according to Encylopedia.com, the concept of business planning dates all the way back to the 1800s when business plans were built with a 10-year horizon and five-year reviews? This was just one of the interesting facts our COO Tina Goulbourne shared at the start of the Vena Nation week keynote she gave with Burzin Contractor, our VP of Revenue Operations and Strategy. That made a lot of sense back then, as Tina explains, given the speed of business. But the reality is, the speed of business has accelerated dramatically and nowadays, as finance and operations professionals, we all need to be more agile in how we plan because disruptions are spinning up faster than ever. However, as Tina went on to explain, “The best planning in the world isn’t going to do you any good unless you execute.” That’s why business planning has to be more agile, iterative, highly collaborative and faster to keep up with change as we plan for today and tomorrow. So how can businesses stay ahead with a new agile method of business planning? Tina and Burzin walked us through how to build the ultimate business planning playbook using Vena’s operationalized business planning methodology. If you missed Tina and Burzin’s keynote at Vena Nation week, here are a few key takeaways from their talk. And you’re in luck! You can now watch this talk on demand at Plan To Grow during your own time. Agile Business Planning Agile business planning, according to Tina, refers to an iterative, highly collaborative process that is grounded by the rhythm of the financial organization as well as the financial guardrails set by the office of finance. It keeps everyone—internal and external stakeholders—on the same page and helps your business focus on its key objectives while ensuring those objectives are communicated, tracked and executed as you continue to drive growth over the long term. Read more about how Vena makes business planning easier with Excel. You can even get started with this free revenue projection template for Excel. Terminology What Is Agile Business Planning? Agile planning is a finance-led business methodology that is operationalized across the business to achieve short-term goals and long-term outcomes. As market conditions don't change based on your fiscal calendar, your business planning process needs to be ongoing and collaborative. Businesses that plan to achieve strategic objectives together and continuously iterate through the process, achieve resilience, executional alignment and sustainable growth. 4 Main Elements of Agile Business Planning Tina broke down the four main elements of agile business planning and used them to describe how we approach business planning at Vena: 1. It's iterative. We operate with rapid quarterly development cycles. 2. It’s organizationally aligned. Rallying the entire organization behind the plan is critical. This involves getting your plan on a page in a standard framework that is cascaded throughout the organization. 3. It’s financially supported. The timing of the process needs to be grounded by the rhythm of the financial organization and the resourcing and goals by the financial guardrails set by the office of finance. 4. There should be company-wide visibility and accountability. The plan and your key performance indicators need to be easily accessible by everyone and communicated on a continuous basis through your corporate communication vehicles for visibility and accountability. The Ultimate Business Planning Playbook Revenue planning is a critical need for businesses and that’s why, as Burzin explains, we put together our own planning playbook that follows this GRID framework: Step 1: Gather Your Data Gathering your data is all about the indicators and results of success. This entails looking at your financial performance, key performance indicators, strategic project milestones and employee survey results. Burzin explains that two to three months prior to the fiscal year end, this step is used to gather and assess data that falls into the following five buckets: Financial data versus expectation/plan (at group and department levels) Key KPIs, including employee and customer health data Operational data / departmental data Achievement / status against key strategic milestones External and competitive data (macro: market size and bigger factors that may influence our plan or the process) and (micro: what are our competitors doing, win/loss stats) Once you amalgamate the data and review the financial performance, KPIs, business plan priority execution and employee feedback survey(s), you can analyze your assumptions about the external environment versus what actually occurred (i.e. economic, competitive, technological, environmental, political) and ask what went well, what didn’t and why? This can help your team and entire organization realign your efforts in the coming period as well as determine what resources are needed, such as people and technology, to achieve your goals. A key part of being agile is, as Burzin explains, is to repeat this process regularly, and almost as importantly, to track performance frequently. This ensures you have the right people, processes and technology in place that can support your mission. Step 2: Reflect and Realign This step is all about the story behind the numbers with a focus on facts over biases as much as possible to validate or clarify that your path is still the right one. This involves rallying your teams—at the executive and departmental levels—to have open and honest conversations and to review what actually played out compared to the assumptions you made about the external environment (economic, competitive, technological, environmental, political, etc.). In this process of evaluation, some questions to ask and factors to consider include: Do your mission, core values and strategic priorities still resonate?  Do they need to be tweaked or completely revamped? What did you do well, what do you need to do better and what do you need to continue working on? (Start, Stop, Continue) As each leader brings forward their department’s POV, this allows the entire organization to realign, have a wide perspective and move to the next step: ideate your plan.   Click here to read the Guide to Data Storytelling and learn best practices.   Step 3: Ideate Your Plan This step is where the power of focus and alignment comes into play for your teams. As they come together with their stories behind the numbers, they know where focus needs to be (top critical company and functional priorities) and have the resources to get there. This is also the stage where you work closely with your CFO and finance teams to ensure that your top company and departmental priorities are funded. For example, you can use your budgeting or forecasting processes to capture these requirements to make sure they fit within your plan.   Learn More About Business Planning Read the Ultimate Guide to Budgeting and Forecasting   Step 4: Deliver Key Results This step involves putting your plan on a page and is all about delivery and execution. Putting that plan into delivery mode involves: Capture, Cascade, Communicate3 (Communicate3 = Communicate, Communicate, Communicate) This is how Burzin breaks down each stage: Capture your plan on a page (less is more) Cascade objectives throughout the organization to encourage collaboration and to hold people accountable Communicate your business plan priorities and report on progress frequently in your corporate communication vehicles for visibility and to inspire accountability And lastly, over-communicating where your focus is ensures everyone is aligned to those goals.   The Ultimate Business Planning Playbook Learn how to leverage the playbook to improve your business planning. Watch Tina and Burzin’s talk on demand.  

Stock market crashes, debt defaults, the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble. Many of the global economic crises in the past 50 years have had financial origins. And while the current economic downturn is an anomaly, brought on by the governmental and societal responses to a global health crisis, the impact on the banking sector has been no less severe. As this McKinsey & Company article said, “the industry has already felt massive effects from the crisis, with more to come.” With the disruption of global supply chains and the closures of physical places of business the impact on individual, small and medium enterprises as well as large corporations continues. As the threat to economic and market stability persists, financial regulators have responded by offering a wide range of temporary support measures, such as easing restrictions on liquidity and capital, to maintain financial stability. And while these measures have helped banks fulfill this role during the crisis as they sustained the supply of credit, they have still faced enormous pressure on their own capital and liquidity position. According to this Global Banking Outlook report, “COVID-19 has generated significant instability and high volatility in global capital markets. The financial sector has been one of the most affected, with bank valuations dropping in all countries around the world.” Increased credit risk of corporate and retail clients of the banks was one of the immediate effects of the pandemic. The report went on to say that, “in order to continue financing the real economy and support its recovery, banks are called to distinguish between purely temporary phenomena, destined to be reabsorbed in a short time, and longer lasting impacts which would require actions of management and reclassification.” More than a year into the health crisis and as commercial banks continue to navigate the financial impacts of COVID-19, how can they turnaround, transform and continue to grow their businesses amidst so much uncertainty and less than favourable economic outlooks? It starts by stress testing and planning for future scenarios and changes with what-if analysis in a complete planning solution for baking and credit unions. Read on to discover how what-if scenario planning can help banks turn their data into informed narratives, enabling them to navigate any crisis and guiding them to make better business decisions organization wide for alternative futures. What Is What-if Scenario Planning? What-if scenario planning, also known as what-if scenario analysis, is a critical foresight tool financial institutions and businesses can use to capture a wide range of possible future outcomes for uncertainties and drivers of change. What-if scenarios can’t predict the future, but they can do is paint a realistic picture of what your future could look like based on certain assumptions. When it’s business as usual with no major changes in the economy, banks might forecast for three scenarios: stable, downturn and accelerated scenarios. But during the current crisis, a bank stress test might include hypothetical scenarios that focus more on the outcomes of the pandemic, such as the duration of it (when restrictions are enforced/lifted), the economic consequences and the short- and long-term financial impacts on the business. Some of these financial impacts might include the effects on operations, liquidity, high unemployment rates and workforce changes and the potential of a global recession. Keep in mind that scenario planning doesn’t necessarily change your business plans or goals. What it does do is show you any weaknesses in the banking system and how to adjust your strategic plans and successfully manage your business with any number of unknowns. Click here to read 4 best practices for preparing for the future with scenario planning. Scenario Analysis vs. Sensitivity Analysis Scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis, two important components of financial modeling, are often used interchangeably, but there is a slight variation between the two. Sensitivity analysis can be seen as an investigation that is informed by data. It refers to changing one key input or driver in a financial model to see how sensitive the model is to the change in that variable. Banks can use sensitivity analysis to evaluate overall risk, identify critical factors of the business that can be impacted and find alternate solutions for problems. Scenario analysis, on the other hand, involves listing a series of inputs and then changing the value of each input for each scenario. For instance, a worst-case scenario can include interest rate changes, a decrease in new customers and exchange rate fluctuations, or all of these things happening simultaneously. How To Use What-If Scenario Analysis Getting clarity on the business health of commercial banks—for today and tomorrow—and determining the best path forward entails bringing all of the data from every function of the business into a secure, centralized database. From there, using complete planning software with source system integrations and unlimited scenario modeling, it’ll be easier to create stress test scenarios using templates for actuals and forecasts and adjust to any changes with minimal incremental effort. So for banks, when changes in key drivers happen, such as prime rates, it’ll be easier to move with agility and see the immediate impact on margin and profitability across the organization, achieving a holistic view of interest income within one secure platform. Take stress scenarios for banks even further with risk sensing and predictive analysis to monitor early indicators. With what-if analysis Power BI capabilities, banks can easily tell a financial story using engaging dashboards, immersive visuals and interactive reports. You can then centralize collaboration—and avoid spreadsheet mayhem—to get departmental alignment with what-if analysis based on real-time actuals and business drivers for any department or any type of plan. That way, teams can be prepared to carry out countless scenarios against changing variables and always be ready for anything that comes their way. Click here to find out what Olympia Federal Savings was able to do with Vena for Banks and Credit Unions.