Transform Integrated Business Planning for Agility and Precision

Background

Our client is the leading e-commerce and financial technology company in Latin America, with operations in 18 countries. It offers a complete ecosystem of solutions for individuals and businesses to buy, sell, advertise, obtain credit and insurance, collect, send money, save, and pay for goods and services both online and offline. Our client looks to facilitate access to commerce and financial services in Latin America, a market with great opportunities and high growth potential.

Challenge

The company faced operational challenges in its Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process, one which align sales forecasts with demand, capacity, and financial planning across an 18-month horizon. Traditional planning methods relied heavily on disconnected tools and manual spreadsheets, resulting in siloed workflows and fragmented collaboration between demand, supply, and financial planning teams. This lack of integration led to traceability and transparency issues, making it difficult to track inputs and outputs and eroding confidence in forecasts. The manual nature of the process introduced delays, increased the risk of errors, and reduced the company’s ability to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. Furthermore, the absence of real-time data and analytics forced the organization into reactive decision-making, resulting in missed opportunities and inefficient resource allocation. Recognizing the need for a comprehensive and transformative solution, the company adopted Anaplan to centralize its planning processes and enable data-driven decision-making across functions.

Approach

To address these challenges, our client adopted a phased approach, beginning with connecting demand and finance planning within Anaplan. User engagement was prioritized by involving key stakeholders early in the process, ensuring alignment and buy-in. Rather than addressing isolated issues, the company focused on a holistic strategy aimed at achieving connected planning across the organization. A collaborative tool was developed, providing each team with tailored dashboards for inputting baseline forecasts and supporting building blocks. The process flow was automated to manage approvals and rejections efficiently at every stage of the cycle. Seamless connections between teams and processes were established, linking Commerce plans with a detailed profit-and-loss (P&L) statement. This approach empowered the company to analyze and compare key metrics in real-time, enhancing decision-making and driving agility throughout the planning process. Partnering with the Keyrus team, they employed an agile methodology and successfully delivered each phase on time and within budget.

Key results

Benefits

Collaborative Tool: Developed a centralized platform where each team has tailored dashboard to input baseline forecasts and supporting building blocks, fostering cross-functional collaboration. Enhanced Scenario Analysis: Enabled real-time comparison of multiple scenarios, allowing for proactive and informed decision-making. Accelerated Decision-Making: Provided the ability to quickly compare and analyze key metrics in real time, significantly improving agility and responsiveness. Single Source of Truth: Streamline data connections between teams and processes, linking Commerce plans with detailed P&L statements for a unified and reliable data source. Comprehensive Traceability of All Inputs & Outputs: Ensured full visibility to analyze every iteration in real time and the ability to track the numbers entered by each team, within the same cycle and from previous cycles. Improved Team Collaboration: Fostered synergy between teams by integrating automation and collaboration into the planning process, driving better outcomes and shared success.

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