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.
Topics: Think2021
Today's digital economy has not only increased competition across geopolitical boundaries but has also disrupted traditional business models. To succeed in a world fraught with economic uncertainties that have only been accelerated due to the pandemic, businesses need to realign their operating models to become more agile, adaptable, and innovative.
Topics: supply chain planning
Today's customer has high expectations - they know exactly what they want and how they want it. Moreover, they're not scared to take it from whichever company offers the best deal. They're no longer attached loyally to a single brand. After all, the competition out there is so stiff, there'll always be a better product or a more generous deal available. This has put businesses under tremendous pressure to maintain their customer bases while keeping customer acquisition and retention costs as low as possible. One of the best ways to analyze this phenomenon is through the customer profitability metric.
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.
Topics: xP&A
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) boils down to simply automating repetitive tasks, especially the ones where we as professionals add little value in the outcome. The benefits of automation over manual work are obvious and plentiful: time saved, the ability to scale a process or delegate ownership, and reduced risk of human error are just a few justifications for investing time in automation. Often we see our customers implement automation through code like VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) macros, BAT (DOS/Windows command batch) files and PowerShell scripts. However, this route often creates new challenges such as heavy reliance on fragile scripts and technical know-how that is often hard to pass along: software developers call this Technical Debt. QueBIT offers a line of products to provide you with supported tools that help you automate everything from loading data and ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) to report distribution and workflows for data collection, without the Technical Debt. QueBIT Euclid Studio allows us to automate data flows, ETL and layer-in predictive analytics while QueBIT ReportWORQ (which is the main subject of this article) now automates data contribution (input forms) and PowerPoint presentation generation in addition to its popular Excel, PDF and HTML report distribution features for data sources such as: Workday Adaptive Planning, IBM Planning Analytics, Excel and Microsoft SQL Server.
