In the two decades since QueBIT was founded, we have often been puzzled by the slow pace of change in enterprise planning and performance management. As recently as 2019 we attended a CFO symposium, only to be surprised at how the case study presentations around revenue and expense planning, headcount and capital planning, and variance and profitability analysis were little different from spreadsheet-centric presentations we had seen ten years before, and how few finance organizations had embraced technology to support data extraction, data governance and modeling their businesses.

Oracle and SAP have long dominated the market for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, the software companies use to run their businesses. Simply put, ERP software can manage all day-to-day business activities including accounting, procurement, invoicing, supply chain operations, workforce management and more. These days, having an ERP system to keep track of all these everyday business transactions represents a “bare minimum” technology investment for any company.

The busiest time of the year is right around the corner for many FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis) professionals. Even though some organizations have moved towards continuous planning - typically rolling 12 – 18-month forecasts refreshed quarterly or even monthly – there is still a benefit to stopping and taking stock once a year.

Buoyed by the reopening of markets, many industries have witnessed an increase in their capital spending. Morgan Stanley, a leading banking firm, has predicted that investments will soar to a high of 121% of the pre-pandemic levels by the end of next year. According to Morgan Stanley, we're entering a red-hot CapEx (Capital Expenditures) cycle with firms pumping money into machines, factories, and new software.

xP&A – eXtended Planning & Analysis - a term coined in 2019 by Gartner, represents an evolution of traditional Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) towards integrated, continuous enterprise planning breaking down barriers between finance and operational functions including HR (Human Resources), Supply Chain and Sales. Companies are embracing xP&A in order to achieve strategically valuable benefits like better coordination, improved forecast accuracy, reduced cycle times and more agility. 

Until as recently as 2018, the term xP&A (eXtended Planning & Analysis) didn't exist. It was coined in 2019 by Gartner to visualize the evolution of Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A). It was typical of the finance team, before 2019, to work in a silo - they alone were responsible for all the data, intelligence, and financial planning requirements of the company. But xP&A aims to extend these planning and analysis capabilities beyond the boundaries of the finance domain and into other operational areas of the enterprise such as sales, supply chain, and HR. In a way, xP&A represents the convergence of traditional FP&A with integrated business planning (IBP).

IBM Think 2021 was 100% virtual and offered for free, though certain Labs and Roundtable sessions were by-invitation only. QueBIT mostly attended free and on-demand sessions during the North American event on Tuesday May 11, 2021. There were parallel events for other regions (APAC & Japan, EMEA & India) which we did not attend.  

Coined by Gartner in 2019, the term xP&A stands for Extended Planning and Analysis. Often touted as a rebranded and overhyped version of Integrated Business Planning by many pundits, Gartner claims xP&A is much more than just that. In this article we will offer arguments to support this contention.

When To Use The IBM Planning Analytics REST API (And When Not To)