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EPM Key Design Decisions - Design Phase

The document outlines key design decisions for a company's EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) system. It discusses areas such as the client's strategy around cloud vs on-premise planning tools, the types of financial planning that will be done including budgeting, forecasting and strategic planning. It also addresses questions around the granularity of planning data, source systems for actuals and drivers, security requirements, and needs around reporting, calculations, workflow and standardization across regions.

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Vishwanath G
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204 views7 pages

EPM Key Design Decisions - Design Phase

The document outlines key design decisions for a company's EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) system. It discusses areas such as the client's strategy around cloud vs on-premise planning tools, the types of financial planning that will be done including budgeting, forecasting and strategic planning. It also addresses questions around the granularity of planning data, source systems for actuals and drivers, security requirements, and needs around reporting, calculations, workflow and standardization across regions.

Uploaded by

Vishwanath G
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Prepared by

Vishwanath Gamanagatti
Chartered Accountant, Solution Architect
www.linkedin.com/in/vishwanathg
www.linkedin.com/in/vishwanathg 1
Internal to Wipro
EPM - Key Design Decisions – Design Phase
What is client's strategy – Cloud first for financial planning?
Cloud based planning tools comes with lot of advantages and flexibility .

What are key areas of financial planning?


Demand Planning, Revenue Planning, Operating expenses planning, Product Margin analysis, G&A Planning, Headcount
planning, Capital Expenditure planning, Balance Sheet Planning, Cash flow planning.

What are different types of financial planning?


Annual operating plan, Budget, Forecast, Flash sales, Rolling forecast, Strategic planning

What are will be planning Horizon of financial planning?


Annual operating plan/ Budget / Forecast – Jan to Dec, Flash sales – 1 month, Rolling forecast – 3 months , Strategic
planning- 5 years, Capex planning – 2 to 5 years

What are will be planning currency of financial planning?


All monetary Revenue planning will be done in either USD or Local currency / Transaction currency

What are will be granularity level for revenue of financial planning?


Planning at product family level / Sub product level etc.
www.linkedin.com/in/vishwanathg 2
Internal to Wipro
EPM - Key Design Decisions – Design Phase
Whether planning will happen at Segment level or BU or profit center level?
Organization level granularity , generally governed by how the Revenue stream responsibilities shared within the
organizations.

How many business drivers will be used in financial planning?


Volume, Price , population density etc.

How many legal entitles will be used?


Generally legal entitles are used for reporting country specific/ regional reporting and currency translations .

How are customer segmented and how many customer segments are there?
Customers are segments enables reporting and analysis defines the financial models granularity level .

Which approaches will be used for planning?


Top down , bottom up, mixed

How many measures/GLs will be used ?


Will it be group COA level ?

www.linkedin.com/in/vishwanathg 3
Internal to Wipro
EPM - Key Design Decisions – Design Phase
How many additional dimensions required for analysis and reporting?
Like Data Source , city , Employee number, cost center, profit center etc.

How dimension /attributes master data will be sourced?


From ERP system or Data warehouse system , Manual uploads etc.

How actuals transaction data will be sourced?


Actuals data is required for budget vs actual comparisons etc. .

How actuals statistical driver data will be sourced?


Drives data is used in planning as well as cost allocations.

Is there need for planning process workflow / master templates?


Planning process workflow helps in planning task assignment ,scheduling and monitoring etc.

What will be the granularity of time dimension?


Generally planning is done at monthly level but if required can be done on daily or weekly level
Whether Actual data is needed at real time or near real time or only once in month?
For month end Budget vs actual reporting once after month end is over is enough , but depends on purpose
www.linkedin.com/in/vishwanathg 4
Internal to Wipro
EPM - Key Design Decisions – Design Phase
How many reporting hierarchies will be needed?
Reporting hierarchies are used for reporting of aggregated data and cost allocation etc.

Security/ authorization requirements over slice of data/report/ model?


.Security over financial data is very critical

How many complex business calculations are used in currency financial planning?
KPI calculations etc. .

How complex is reporting and report distribution?


Complex reports are. Reports having data from multiple sources with complex formatting requirements
Is there any need for exporting planning data to other applications?
Budget values are generally exported to ERP application for budgetary control etc.

Data volumes of dimension members ?


Dimensions with over 1000 members are generally considered big might have impact on performance.

How operational (OD) and customer (CD) data will be sourced ?


ETL needs .

www.linkedin.com/in/vishwanathg 5
Internal to Wipro
EPM - Key Design Decisions – Design Phase
What are key KPI and reports in each business planning?
how often these reports are prepared and distributed

What are integration needs and their dependencies?


.Generally, product volumes and discount rates/ promotional schemes are depended

What will be the reporting / self service BI tool?


This is required for ad hoc reporting analysis .

How many will be concurrent users?


Concurrent uses may impact performance.

Plan data - planner and reviewer needs?


.
How complex is business data validation rules?
.To prevent data input at wrong business combinations of members , or in wrong
Needs of balance carryforward, currency translation etc.?
.Generally required.

www.linkedin.com/in/vishwanathg 6
Internal to Wipro
EPM - Key Design Decisions – Design Phase
Global planning templates
Planning templates to meet different planning's needs – Revenue planning, Operational planning, Capex planning etc.

Global reporting templates


.Report formats

Global planning process


Standardization of planning units of measurement.

Standard planning process and timelines for reginal and global planning
Regional and global calendar for planning.

Standard performance metrics at regional and global level


.Uniform calculation methods
Standard polies for exchange rates and other key drivers
.Currency exchange rated for different planning needs
Global standard for cost allocation methods
Generally required.

www.linkedin.com/in/vishwanathg 7
Internal to Wipro

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