Strategies for Successful Financial Planning Software Implementation

Effectively implementing financial planning software is essential. As your organization grows, your financial systems must evolve to keep pace. A robust financial reporting and forecasting tool is not just beneficial; it’s a critical piece of the puzzle for maintaining the health and agility of your organization. 

Our transformative and consultative approach is designed to help you understand the data you’re capturing, determine whether it delivers the necessary granularity and accuracy for confident forecasting, and place you on the right path moving forward. 

Why a Strategic Approach to Financial Planning Software Implementation Matters 

Having a strategic approach and knowing how to implement financial planning software successfully is important for the efficiency, scalability, and longevity of the solution. Your solution should be built to work for your organization today and far into the future, so you can scale it as your organization grows and changes. 

Common Challenges in Adopting New Financial Planning Tools 

One of the most common challenges in adopting new financial planning tools includes understanding what different systems the information is coming from. We take the time to understand what’s important to you to get a deep understanding of the various systems you use to collect data. We then want to understand if the different systems are collecting information correctly and accurately. Another challenge in adopting new tools is starting with incomplete or incorrect data. We verify that the data pulled from your sources is correct, and we help you understand how your systems should collect the data. From there, we guide you toward a tailored solution that aligns with your unique goals and sets you up for long-term success. 

The Importance of Aligning Software with Business Goals 

When implementing your financial planning solution, it is important to align software with your organization’s business goals. These goals may include expanding into new markets, increasing headcount, or boosting revenue, all of which require strategic planning and scalable tools. 

The initial setup of your Workday Adaptive Planning solution lays a foundation for future success. It’s important to spend time in this phase evaluating your organizational goals, processes, and key objectives for this investment. Integrating any new software is not just about finding short-term success; it’s about balancing current needs and preparing to scale as those needs evolve. 

First, we will provide a data preparation and readiness document outlining all the information we need from your organization, including key reporting metrics and the key drivers you are looking for. In a design session conversation, we put all this information together. We sit down with you to fully understand how your organization is collecting your actual data and how it needs to translate to where your final state reporting needs to be. We tailor driver-based models in this forecasting process around the statistical data the models collect to optimize and centralize the planning process. 

As we integrate your real-time statistical or financial data from your source system, we help automate the process by pushing the data into these models, which then recalculate, forecast, and predict. This allows you to get the most detailed analysis possible, as efficiently as possible. Once we have this insight, we discuss the planning side to confirm that what we have in mind aligns with your vision. Once approved, we begin the implementation. 

Key Steps to a Smooth Workday Adaptive Planning Implementation 

A smooth implementation is characterized by a successful day one for the client, where all foundational elements are in place and fully functional when the client goes live. With these steps to success, you get a customized, tailored solution for your projection forecast. 

Phase 1 – Design 

The process begins with a foundation design to understand your organization's core building blocks and the end state. Your implementation partner will develop a precise grasp of your data and reporting needs, how you think about your organization operationally, and how similar organizations in your industry leverage data. 

The design phase includes identifying all relevant data points you may want to capture, from the chart of accounts to subsidiaries, departments, vendors, and customer classes. It also covers any reporting needs from other areas of your organization (IT, developers, outside consultants, etc.). 

With a full picture of the organization’s needs, the next step is to design a tailored deployment plan that fulfills your organization’s unique vision while incorporating industry best practices for Workday Adaptive Planning implementation. The design document lays out the desired data structure and considers from which system(s) you are integrating. 

Phase 2 – Configuration 

To make the process as smooth and hassle-free as possible, it’s important to configure a Workday Adaptive Planning instance that aligns with the design document from Phase 1. Configuration includes setting up the levels, dimensions, and accounts that will help you plan and report actuals based on your organization's relevant requirements. Sources are integrated to create a fully tailored solution, and the validation process flags any potential errors and outliers along the way. 

Once the configuration is complete, the implementation team will collaborate with you to understand the different driver-based models relevant to your entity’s build. This could include data related to: 

• Personnel planning 
• Revenue planning 
• Balance sheet planning 
• Cashflow forecasting 
• Other expense planning 

These are built with a combination of your current processes and industry best practices to create a best-in-breed planning system that can be integrated into all your relevant source systems. 

Phase 3 – Walkthrough 

The walkthrough is an opportunity for you to understand and learn your tailored Workday Adaptive Planning instance and gain confidence in your ability to manage it. You’ll walk away understanding how the system collects data and where it goes so that you can perform your own validations. The goal is to make sure that the system is set up according to your expectations, but also to teach you how to update and maintain the system moving forward. 

Workday Adaptive Planning has on-demand learning resources available for you to access, but your Workday Channel Partner can provide customized training tailored to your instance. This helps you truly leverage all three reporting tools (Web, OfficeConnect, and Dashboards), maintain the structure of your instance, and expand how you use it as your organization grows. 

Phase 4 – Refinement and Acceptance 

After the walkthrough, your team will spend the next few business days loading relevant data and validating all the calculations against the financial statements. This hands-on phase allows you to get comfortable using the model and ultimately gives you a better idea of how Workday Adaptive Planning works. Take some time to consider expanding the use case for areas you may not have thought of before — creating one fully centralized, best-in-class enterprise resource planning system. 

Ongoing Optimization 

As your organization grows, your financial planning and analysis solution will need to scale with you. Any system that needs to be reworked or completely changed every few years could cause the finance and planning function to fall behind on current trends and capabilities and waste time with outdated processes and manual work. 

Fortunately, building a custom Workday Adaptive Planning solution will position your team to keep up with changing needs and stakeholder expectations. Evaluate your setup regularly to make sure your team is properly leveraging software updates and additional capabilities that you may not have needed in the past. 

How Leaders Can Drive Adoption 

Workday Adaptive Planning is a true organizational reporting and metric tracking tool, not just a finance tool. CFOs and finance leaders can drive Workday Adaptive Planning adoption to other departments like Marketing and Human Resources. Your Workday Adaptive Planning partner can also implement a solution to meet your specific non-finance and accounting needs, so you have the exact information you need to make more proactive decisions, visually get the information as easily as possible, and self-service the information you need. 

Measuring Success & Maximizing ROI 

An experienced Workday Adaptive Planning partner like EisnerAmper can make a significant difference in how smoothly and effectively your organization transitions to this powerful planning tool. You get the experience of working with the same people who completed your implementation and will continue to receive this support throughout the life and use of the tool. 

We want to position you for long-term success with future optimizations and help you continue to use the tool as you scale your organization. We also want you to leverage new software capabilities, so we provide the latest release notes with new features that we think are useful and relevant to your organization. 

How EisnerAmper Can Help 

Workday Adaptive Planning gives you the technology you need for continuous financial planning, forecasting, reporting, and analysis. With EisnerAmper, you get an experienced team that can help you get the most out of your financial planning software. Our professionals have more than 25 years' experience helping organizations take the next steps to plan smarter, report faster, and analyze better as they grow. 

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Experience long-term support of your financial planning software with EisnerAmper as your Workday Adaptive Planning partner. Contact us today to discuss how we can support you, or check out our Future-Proof Your Growing Organization with Workday Adaptive Planning e-book for more information.