Griffon | Continuous Business Planning

	Business Information has Strategic Value Two quotes have defined our information age: The first, which comes from Francis Bacon, the scientist, statesman and philosopher who died in 1626 is that ‘Knowledge is Power’ and the second, which is the anthem of our time, is that ‘information is liberating’. Selecting the right information architecture for you is not only a key strategic driver of your business performance, it’s the first step in your digital transformation. Here’s why we believe that the winners of the future will be characterised by a culture of Continuous Planning.

	What is Continuous Planning ? In large organisations, planning never stops. A platform that can deliver relevant and accurate information to managers in a timely and efficient way gives you greater planning power. It also means that fewer resources are spent churning-out information and more management time is available for making the right business decisions. Agile information systems can also shorten the planning cycle, making your business more responsive to changing market dynamics, thanks to the rapid feedback of pertinent information. The ultimate goal is ‘continuous planning’ where finely-tuned sales and operational decisions lead to frequent and small micro-changes rather than periodic and dramatic over-corrections. What’s the barrier to Continuous Planning ? Many businesses use ‘point solutions’ to solve the information challenges of each department. However, point solutions tend to be weak at communicating seamlessly with one another, which means that critical business information remains trapped within pockets and silos, so the left hand simply doesn't know what the right hand is doing. What’s the solution ? In this year's Gartner Magic Quadrant analysis, Anaplan was included as a Visionary solution for both Corporate Performance Management and Sales Performance Management. That’s because all Anaplan solutions are built on a single technology platform, so that all divisions of the company share one version of the truth. What makes Anaplan unique is that it captures the multi-dimensionality of a business in that single model, yet each department views its performance goals in their own language. So Production can see how much of each SKU they are expected to produce, Sales can see their quotas for each territory, Marketing can plan their activity by channel, HR can visualise the resource requirements. And the Board can review the real time performance of each department. Thanks to its elegant design and intuitive logic, any department of your business can build and deploy Anaplan models, which means that you can fundamentally change the way your company aligns people and plans to market opportunities.

	See this for yourself Contact us for a free demonstration of how Anaplan can advance your business ambitions, or to scope-out a ‘proof of concept’ exercise: James Cullinan Managing Director james@griffonsa.com