Every organisation has an annual planning cycle which aims to have a plan and budget ready for the new year. We seem to regularly be updating plans, at least two to three times a year.

How long does a plan really last until adjustments take place? It’s usually three months into the year that it’s time to look at the short-term performance usually over or under performance. The first question is usually how is there such a deviation to plan? Some forget that the plan is submitted in September based on data from the first half of the year. Nine months will have past until the first revision! The key observation has to be the year end landing, overachieving in the current year will often negatively impact the following year and vice versa.

The role of business intelligence is a year-round activity to understand the situation. A strong situation analysis allows the business to have confidence in its market understanding, both from a performance versus budget (internal) and competitive market environment (external), also having rigour in vacating the internal view to take the customer perspective with channel perceptions and customer trends. On occasions this is where the involvement of business intelligence may stop. 

Success is often observed when business intelligence are included in the complete planning cycle. Portfolio and brand ambitions are often set from a global perspective, do these objectives align with the market context? By creating insights from a blend of primary and secondary research there may be the opportunity to adapt the local strategy to find the sweet spot which bridges the global objective and the local reality. Getting to this strategy is no mean feat and will involve hours of segment analysis and customer journey planning. The outcome will result in a clear strategy of who to target with which tactics.

The role of omnichannel should now be fully incorporated into the planning cycle but there are instances where this still gets overlooked and digital interactions are bolted on at the end of the process. In an ideal world, all tactics deployed will contribute to the success of the brand but identifying which make the most difference still cause much discussion in the absence of return-on-investment analysis. These plans don’t come to fruition without manpower to deliver and create tactics or financial resource to ensure the best opportunity for success. Much discussion ensues around scheduling and phasing, do you invest early to maximise the in-year potential and safeguard the budget spend. Timelines should be based on what will work for the target audience and not necessarily driven by the financial phasing and the what-if scenarios.

Having navigated the planning process we shift to the forecast finalisation for the next 12 months, often with a 3 year outlook. Having participated in all stages of the process the assumptions have been documented and this creates a baseline. I don’t think the baseline scenario ever is viewed as acceptable as this is based on a continuation of market trends and what has gone before. The words of ‘where is the ambition’ ring out and we go back round the cycle again to get to a point of suitable ambition often referred to as a stretch target and built on several market opportunities offset against another set of risks to achieve to an optimistic outlook.

The business review is forthcoming, it is an opportunity to tell the story and gain approval for our level of ambition. The story is told through PowerPoint slides that are often painstakingly created and cover any question that could possibly be asked. Despite the ask of not creating additional work it’s better to be overprepared, don’t you agree!

The key stakeholders are engaged in the review, there is an understanding of the situation, the objectives, the strategy, the tactics, the opportunities and the risks. What’s not resonating is the forecast, it’s not ambitious enough. Back round the cycle we go, aiming to go beyond our stretch target with accompanying story of how we will achieve this.

Weeks of insight overridden by a business review, resulting in business intelligence measuring ongoing performance and being asked why are we not achieving the forecast and where are you going to land? The answer often refers back to the baseline and resisting the urge to say I told you so!