Integrating Financial and Operational Planning: The Key to Enhanced Decision-Making

Using SAP Analytics Cloud to empower cross-functional collaboration and agile planning

Integrated financial planning connects financial and operational data to create a cohesive, real-time view of business performance. It allows organizations to align strategic goals with day-to-day operations, ensuring better decision-making and resource allocation. In today’s dynamic business environment, this integration is crucial for agility and resilience. By harmonizing financial and operational plans, businesses can drive growth, mitigate risks, and adapt to market changes more effectively.

In the realm of integrated financial planning, a state-of-the-art application that stands out is SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) plays a pivotal role in integrated financial planning by offering advanced planning, predictive analytics, and visualization capabilities. Through its seamless integration with operational planning tools like SAP IBP, SAC provides a unified platform where financial and operational data converge.

This integration is particularly powerful due to its comprehensive features that transform planning processes. SAC offers robust versioning capabilities, allowing teams to create and compare multiple planning scenarios without losing previous iterations. Its collaborative workspace enables cross-functional teams to simultaneously work on plans, share insights, and make data-driven decisions in real-time. The platform’s advanced scenario simulation (what-if analysis) allows organizations to model complex business scenarios, understanding potential impacts before making critical decisions. Additionally, SAC’s integrated planning calendar helps teams organize and track planning progress, ensuring systematic and timely plan development. For example, changes in supply chain forecasts from IBP can be instantly reflected in SAC’s financial plans, ensuring alignment across departments. This real-time synchronization improves agility, enabling faster responses to market fluctuations or internal shifts. Ultimately, SAC’s integration with operational planning ensures that businesses maintain both financial health and operational efficiency.

Deloitte brings extensive experience from leading multiple global FP&A transformations across various industries, including vast experience in IBP implementations. We combine deep expertise in business processes with advanced technical knowledge of SAP Analytics Cloud solutions, ensuring seamless integration and optimal performance. This dual capability allows us to guide clients through both the strategic and technical aspects of their planning initiatives. Our team is committed to delivering financial and operational solutions that are tailored to meet the unique needs of each organization, by leveraging best practices and industry insights.

Building upon the earlier discussion of SAP Analytics Cloud’s transformative capabilities, one compelling example of its integration potential emerges from Deloitte Netherlands’ innovative approach. Within Deloitte Netherlands, the SAP Analytics team has developed a powerful asset focused on Sales & Profitability Planning, leveraging the advanced capabilities of SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) to enable flexible, driver-based planning. By integrating key drivers such as pricing, volumes (from SAP IBP), and costs, the asset helps businesses dynamically adjust their plans and analyse their impact on the Profit & Loss statement.

This asset commences by pulling demand planning data from IBP into SAC via a pre-configured connection between IBP and SAC. By then modelling the IBP data to the existing SAC model, we are able to integrate operational data into our financial models. This gives us the ability to see impact of supply chain decisions on the financial metrics. Additionally, driver-based planning lets us identify value drivers that impact business performance and connect them to the financial results of the organization. Overall, this allows the C-suite and (Financial) planning departments to have a comprehensive view of the business performance and proper alignment of operational and financial goals.

In case of questions regarding integrated financial planning, SAC and/or our asset, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Julio Cesar Molina jcmolina@deloitte.nl