Part 2: Getting Started with Planning

This guide contains the following sections:

What is planning?
How can SAP Analytics Cloud help?
Find out about planning features

What is planning?
Planning is all about setting strategic goals for a business and then determining how to
meet those goals by creating annual budgets, tracking progress in forecasts, and
simulating scenarios to find new opportunities. These plans are formed by projecting
historical data (known as actuals) into the future, by gathering input from different
departments, and by considering trends, risks, and opportunities in the market.

For example, the executive leadership of a bicycle manufacturer notices the growing
demand for electric bikes, and decides to increase the sale of e-bikes by 20 percent over
the next three years. In the upcoming year's budget, the Finance department determines
the overall cost and income resulting from this plan.

However, planning activities aren't restricted to executives and financial analysts.

Departments across the organization collaborate on the plan:
o Sales managers set new quotas for their account executives, determine which
geographic areas will make up the increased sales, and incentivize e-bike sales
with higher commissions.
o The Marketing department plans promotions and advertising campaigns to drive
higher e-bike sales.
o The Operations department makes sure that the supply chain and manufacturing
capacity are available to increase e-bike inventory.
o HR plans to hire technicians who have experience with electric motors and to
create new training resources for existing staff.

These departmental plans each relate back to the central financial plan, and to the
overall goal set out by leadership. Successful plans often include input from many
employees, not just from finance experts.
Collaborative planning

How can SAP Analytics Cloud help?

Plans are complex and collaborative. Working with standalone spreadsheets or in
disconnected planning systems can slow down the process, introduce errors and
uncertainty, and make it difficult to adjust to new insights and rapidly changing markets.
By bringing a broad range of planning features together with analytics, predictive, and
collaboration features, SAP Analytics Cloud helps you plan simpler and faster.

For example:
o Get up to speed quickly. If you're familiar with Excel, you can use many of the
same functions while booking values. Or you can even work directly in Excel.
o Avoid disconnected and outdated copies of the data. View different versions of
the data side-by-side, including your own private copies. Schedule data imports,
or refresh live data sources directly from the story.
o Collaborate in the cloud. Share stories in discussions, or comment directly on
data points that need attention. Send private versions of the data to members of
your team to get their input, and keep everyone on schedule using the Calendar.
o Understand the patterns in your data. Forecast values using predictive algorithms,
calculate the key influencers for a KPI, and simulate how that KPI shifts with
different driver values.
 o Remove barriers between planning and analytics. Visualize your data immediately
to get new value from your actuals data, compare different scenarios, and tell
compelling stories about your plans.

Find out about planning features

Read this section to get a quick look at some of the key planning features in SAP
Analytics Cloud. You can also take a look at learning resources for planning at the SAP
Analytics Cloud website: https://www.sapanalytics.cloud/guided_playlists/introduction-
to-planning/

Data entry
Data entry needs to be efficient and easy, whether you’re a finance expert booking
values to forecasts, or a line-of-business employee providing input for a bottom-up
planning process. Get a familiar experience for data entry using a table that shares many
functions with Excel spreadsheets.

You can type relative or absolute values into individual cells. And you can copy cell
values, along with all of the data that aggregates up to the copied value.

You can plan at any level of a hierarchy, and the data will automatically be rolled down
to the lowest level. If you need to adjust proportions between members, use the
Spreading, Distribute, and Assign features.

Performing data entry by percentage

Version management
When you're planning for all possibilities, it helps to understand how different plans
relate to each other and to your actuals data. Version management helps your complete
tasks such as the following:
o Carrying out variance analysis, such as making sure that your working forecast is
on budget.
o Quickly exploring, sharing, and publishing different scenarios without losing sight
of the original data or introducing unnecessary complexity.
o Rolling a private version back to a previous state if you need to take a different
direction.

Using the Version Management panel

Data actions
With data actions, you can model sequences of copy-paste operations and advanced
formulas. With advanced formulas, you model complex processes such as cash flow
planning, depreciation, and carry forward operations. You can build these formulas
using a visual editor that doesn't require scripting knowledge, although a scripting
engine is also available for fine-tuning.

Copy operations make it easy to move data from one part of a model to another, or to a
different model. For example, if you have separate models for Headcount and Expense
Planning, you can use a data action to copy data from those models into a central
Finance model.
To make your data actions more flexible and easier to update, you can also add
parameters that can be set while designing or running the data action.

Planning users can then run data actions in a story whenever they need to.

Creating an advanced formula using the visual tool

Calendar
Planning processes can get complicated. You can use the Calendar to keep track of
tasks, stay on schedule, and collaborate with your team. Create, assign, and work on
tasks, and add files, approval workflows, and processes that link tasks together. Create
multiple tasks at once using recurrence, or generate tasks automatically based on model
data. You can also use the calendar to schedule data locking, and to view your input
tasks.
Keeping track of tasks in the Gantt view

Predictive forecasting
With predictive forecasting, you don't have to rely on your intuition alone. Back up your
forecasts by selecting a value and calculating the likely outcomes for future periods
based on historical data. You can then add the predicted values directly to your table.

Previewing your predictive forecast

Data locking
With data locking, you can choose sections of data to lock when you're getting ready to
close your books. Each section can also be delegated to owners who can lock the data
themselves, or set the data to a restricted state where only the owners can edit it. You
can then schedule changes to data locks in the Calendar.

Setting up data locks

Input tasks
When your plan needs input from a group of coworkers, such as regional managers, you
can assign an input task to them.
These managers can be assigned to their areas within the model, so that you just need
to choose the regions and send the input task. Each manager adds their input in a story
that is filtered to their own region, and then sends the task back for review. At the end
of the process, the results are booked to your version of the data and you can continue
your work.
Choosing assignees for an input task

Currency conversion
Currency conversion features make it easy to work with data from multiple currencies,
and to predict the effects of exchange rate shifts. Exchange rate tables can be applied to
more than one model, and swapped out as required. They can also contain multiple
rates for different dates and categories of data, and for specific scenarios. From within a
story, you can view your data in different currencies, apply a different set of exchange
rates, or analyze multiple exchange rate scenarios side-by-side.

Planning with local currencies

Value driver trees
With strategic planning, a visual approach can be helpful. For example, you might be
discussing how vulnerable your business is to raw material prices, or which product line
to grow over the next few years to increase profitability the most. Value driver trees
allow you to book values to drivers and inputs, visualize the flow of value through the
accounts, and see the overall impact on KPIs in the following years.

Value driver trees can be modeled automatically based on the account structure, and
you can also add your own calculations such as year-over-year growth projections.

Building a value driver tree

Structured allocations
You can use structured allocations to establish reusable steps for allocating costs, such
as allocating the cost of IT support across different departments by support hours used,
or the cost of travel across different product groups based on sales revenue.
You build allocation steps using a visual tool that doesn't require scripting expertise, but
that covers a range of different allocation workflows.
Editing an allocation step

Two-way integration with BPC

If you need an on-premise planning system but want to add a cloud-based user
experience, you can connect to your SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC)
data from SAP Analytics Cloud.

For example, you may want to keep central Finance activities in your BPC system, and
import that data to SAP Analytics Cloud as the basis for agile and simple departmental
planning.

Or, you can use SAP Analytics Cloud as a client extension for BPC for NetWeaver and
BPC for BW/4HANA. In SAP Analytics Cloud, you can get the latest data from BPC, do
analysis and make updates, and then write the new data back to BPC, all from within a
story.
Exporting data back to BPC