To improve your planning, you need more than just spreadsheets

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A trending buzzword in business is now “Strategic planning”. What dominates today’s planning practice is the use of methods that are prone to errors and that don’t take full advantage of modern analytics capabilities. Usage of simple spreadsheets does not allow seamless access to relevant data and proper insights, but often leave decision makers to rely primarily on instinct and experience. To become truly data driven, you must enable quick access to trusted and detailed information. And to achieve that, you must use more capabilities than what the basic spreadsheets are offering.

Overcoming the limitations of spreadsheets

The most common issues with spreadsheets are version control and manual input, making planning time-consuming, inefficient and subject to mistakes – followed by security problems and formulas which can be broken when spreadsheets are passed from one employee to another.

Spreadsheets are one of the most popular business tools used today. They are indeed very useful for individual users but, they offer limited capabilities for large-scale, collaborative planning, budgeting and forecasting. Furthermore the shortcomings of spreadsheets are magnified when they become more complex, consequently diminishing their value as a decision-support tool.

Using a professional planning solution

Companies should adopt more advanced solutions to replace their spreadsheets. This includes modern analytics capabilities for strategic planning that removes the negative aspects of spreadsheets while retaining their benefits. Taking this approach does not exclude the usage of spreadsheets, as most modern planning solutions offer interfaces mirror the look and feel of spreadsheets.

Using a professional planning solution, will enable you to have real-time updates to financial metrics, enabling quick decisions and the ability to reforecast. Moreover, it can provide you with improved access to trusted data, which leads to better and quicker decision making, and increased business results and KPIs (revenue, productivity and operating margins).

Try IBM Planning Analytics

The conclusion is that if you want to take your strategic planning to the next level, you need to try a modern planning analytics solution that offers more than the traditional spreadsheet and that gives you the needed insights from your data. If you’re interested in planning, budgeting and forecasting beyond spreadsheets, read through this whitepaper : “Budgeting: Beyond spreadsheets” and see how your company can benefit from data-driven strategic planning.