Practical Implementation Tips For Implementing a Financial Planning - QueBIT Webinar March 8, 2018
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Practical Implementation Tips For Implementing a Financial Planning - QueBIT Webinar March 8, 2018
- 1. Practical Implementation Tips For Implementing a Financial Planning Solution March 8, 2018
- 2. TRUSTED EXPERTS IN ANALYTICS • 900+ successful implementations in finance, sales, marketing, and operations • 350+ analytics customers across all types of industries We’re driven to help organizations improve their agility to make intelligent decisions that create value. This is why we’re committed to excellence in analytics strategy, implementation, and training.
- 3. Presenters Robin Stevens Principal Consultant QueBIT Jim Brinnen Vice President, Solution Delivery & Customer Success QueBIT Ann-Grete (“A.G.”) Tan Senior Vice President, Strategy & Operations QueBIT
- 4. Today’s webinar is part of a monthly advanced webinar series offered by QueBIT. The next webinar is scheduled for Thursday, April 12th. Register by accessing the events page on our website at quebit.com/news-events This webinar is being recorded and attendees will receive the recording link within 24 hours Miss a past webinar? No problem! Visit the Resources page on the QueBIT website - //quebit.com/who-we-are/video-catalog/ Please type all questions in the Questions Pane located on the GTW toolbar. As time permits, the questions will be addressed and answered at the end of the demonstration Follow-up sessions for questions and answers are available, if needed Housekeeping
- 5. Quiz What percent of every $1B in project spend is wasted due to “lacking project performance”? According to a Capterra Inc. white paper updated Sep. 26, 2016 with project statistics sourced from multiple respected project gurus (e.g. PMI.org, Standish Group, others)
- 6. What percent … of every $1B in project spend is wasted “due to lacking project performance”? Options: A. 34% B. 12% C. 56% D. 73% *Answer: B, 12%
- 7. Simple Statistics … 75% …of Business and IT leads “anticipate” software project failure 33% …failure rate attributed to lack of executive engagement 75% …of IT leaders believe projects are “doomed from the beginning” < 33% …of projects completed on time and on budget over a twelve month study period *According to a Capterra Inc. white paper updated Sep. 26, 2016 with project statistics sourced from multiple respected project experts (e.g. PMI.org, Standish Group, others)
- 8. If you build it … Or will they?? …they will come!
- 9. Failures of “Build It and They Will Come” Approach • Line Of Business Centric Miss the Enterprise View Lack Support of CTO, CIO • IT Centric Disconnected from the Business Process Little / No Understanding of the Business Problem • Executive Centric Compliance Exercise Too Little Information About Effort Required / Mismatched Expectations
- 10. And the Result Is … …unfortunately, failure is a very real option!
- 11. Why are you here? On Budget Performant Adopted
- 12. How? Identification Foundations Action Drivers Business Problem Team Data & Process Technology Decision Shared Vision Operation Guideline Mandate Plan Collaboration
- 13. Project Core Concepts Identification Foundations Action Bus. Problem Drivers Symptoms Exec Sponsor Subject Matter Experts Stakeholders Data Process Tech Shared Vision Common “Language” Op. Guide Mandate Collaboration Roles Progress Leadership Plan
- 14. Quiz What percent of of project executives didn’t know how their projects align to enterprise strategy? Cavarec, Y. (2012). Revisiting the definition of project success. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2012—North America, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
- 15. What percent … of project executives didn’t know how their projects align to enterprise strategy? Options: A. 24% B. 14% C. 56% D. 80% *Answer: D, about 80%
- 16. Identification – Know Your Landscape Risk: Mis-Interpret (or Miss) the Business Problem Bus. Problem Drivers Symptoms Key for Financial Analytics projects: UNDERSTAND the BUSINESS PROBLEM Risk: Mis-Identify Drivers Risk: Confuse Symptoms as Cause
- 17. Identification – Recruit Key for Financial Analytics projects: YOU CAN’T DO IT ALONE Exec Sponsor Subject Matter Experts Stakeholders Stakeholders – Committed & Engaged Subject Matter Experts – Properly Aligned Executive Sponsor – Sees Benefit & Shares Vision
- 18. Foundation – Building Blocks Key for Financial Analytics projects: PLOT the PATH THROUGH the FOREST Develop Shared Vision – Doesn’t Just Happen Develop a Common “Language” – Consistency Sells Operating Guidelines - Create the Guard Rails Shared Vision Common “Language” Op. Guide *Be sure your message – Vision, Language, and Guidelines – aligns to the business problem!
- 19. Foundation – Building Blocks Key for Financial Analytics projects: PLACE the KEYSTONES Data – Must Align with AND Support Vision and Solution Objectives Process – In Place AHEAD of Solution Technology – This is NOT a Chicken/Egg Situation Data Process Tech
- 20. Action – Define the “How” Roles Collaboration Mandate Key for Financial Analytics projects: SET the TEAM for SUCCESS Mandate - Aligned to Shared Vision Collaboration – Share and Delegate Wisely! Roles – Structure is Good
- 21. Action – Get it Done Progress Leadership Plan Key for Financial Analytics projects: IT’S ABOUT DELIVERY! Plan – Key to Enablement Leadership – Strong, Experienced Lead MANDATORY Progress – SMART Goals
- 22. Don’t Be a Lemming!
- 23. Additional Considerations Change Management Project Lifecycle Guide Test Plan Data Integration Plan Deployment Plan Knowledge Transfer & Support Plan
- 24. Quiz What percent represents the success rate of application software development since 1994? Cavarec, Y. (2012). Revisiting the definition of project success. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2012—North America, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
- 25. What percent represents the success rate of application software development since 1994? Options: A. 16% B. 22% C. 41% D. 53% *Answer: A, 16%
- 26. R.E.A.D.Y. READY… Defined Applied Rating (1..10) Score R – Requirements (Weight: 2) Have clear project deliverables been defined and agreed? Enter examples of REQUIREMENTS being addressed by client 5 10 E – Engagement (Weight: 2) Have key stakeholders and subject matter experts evaluated project window and agreed to dedicate resource(s)? Enter examples of Client meeting Engagement expectations 7 14 A – Ability (Weight: 2) Are key systems and personnel available to undertake a successful solution project? Examples of information, systems, etc. that need to be in place for success 4 8 D – Data (Weight: 3) Has required source data been identified and verified? Key data preparation/readiness work 8 24 Y – Yield (Weight: 1) Is the intended user community aware of the project, able to participate in user critical segments (e.g. User Acceptance Testing), and prepared to adopt respective components of the solution – the project “yield?” List key solution components that will enable success 5 5 Greater than 80% of “high-performing” organizations successfully complete projects compared to less than 40% of others
- 28. Q&A Submit questions by typing them in the Questions Pane on the GoToWebinar toolbar Visit our website for additional information www.quebit.com Or email us at info@quebit.com Thank you for attending and have a wonderful day!
Editor's Notes
- *AG* Hello everyone! Thank you so much for joining us today, on our third Customer Webinar of the year. Every month we present an educational webinar as a free service to our clients and followers, to help raise awareness of the amazing things that are possible with analytics technology, laced with practical information on how to be successful.
- (AG) QueBIT cares passionately about helping good companies become great, through our analytics and services offerings. For us it is not just about the technology, but about weaving a solution into everyday business processes so that they add value. Whether we are helping with financial planning, data management and governance, predictive analytics or business intelligence dashboards, it's all about integrating the processes with the technology and the people to make it TRULY useful: DOES the solution save you time? DOES the solution get you better information? CAN you now make better/quicker decisions and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace? Our presentation today focuses on the practical aspects of embarking on an analytics implementation. Although we reference financial planning implementations in the title, the tips we will share today are applicable for pretty much ANY business application implementation project you may get involved with. There is no magic formula for success, but going in with your eyes open and taking steps to mitigate known risks can go a long way.
- *AG* My name is A.G. Tan, and I started my consulting career 23 years ago at a company that was acquired by QueBIT in 2009. I have been lucky to have had the opportunity to grow with QueBIT, as we have expanded our portfolio of offerings across the analytics space. Today I oversee several departments including marketing, product development and Solution Delivery. I am also working on operationalizing our vision for delivery across technologies: we can build you a great data warehouse, and amazing financial planning model, and get you a cool predictive demand plan - but the greater value comes from providing a seamless end user experience on top of a single integrated solution. Jim is our head of solution delivery and customer success… long title. Practically speaking, it’s Jim’s job to make sure our projects and our customers are successful, and Jim does this thru developing a collaborative delivery approach combined with practical, hands-on Project Management activities both with our services folks and with our customers to ensure delivery consistency, quality and dependability and follow-through in all of our engagements.
- AG
- *AG* Let's start with a bit of fun! We are going to put up a QUIZ question and give you - the audience - a few seconds to respond. The question is (READ SLIDE) It will come up in a moment .. (HIDE POLL) ---- According to a Capterra Inc. white paper updated Sep. 26, 2016 with project statistics sourced from multiple respected project gurus (e.g. PMI.org, Standish Group, others)
- *AG* The answer is B – just 12%!
- *AG* - Intro: Let’s start by looking at some simple yet telling statistics. (READ SLIDE)
- *AG* There is the idea that if you put a system in place for users to help them, they will inevitably flock to it, and embrace it. It may work in a Hollywood movie and make for a great plot, but … sadly it rarely works in real life. There are 3 common project motivations that almost always lead to failure.
- *AG* There 3 kinds of stories to look out for. They all sound reasonable on the surface, but are all missing important components of the big picture. The first comes from the Line of Business Who might say … “My team needs something better and I have budget. I am going to get a solution that can scale beyond my department and upon seeing our success, the enterprise is sure to pick this up.” If your goal is just to help your own team, this might be fine, but if the Enterprise pick-up is part of your business justification, you may be stretching your assumptions a bit! Here's an alternative approach, that requires more legwork, but is more likely to get you where “My team has come up with some great ideas that we think will benefit both us and other departments, possibly entire other functions around the company. I’m coming to you as the heads of Finance and IT to see if our project proposal aligns with future objectives you may have already identified, and if not, to see if you’ll allow us to describe our vision and seek approval.” The second delusional approach come from IT Who might say: “We are not going to support that solution any longer. We’ve identified something that is way more performant, easy to use, and easy for IT to administer. The business will love this solution.” Here IT is assuming that all critical functionality is easily transferable from one technology to another (the devil is in the details, which wont show up on product sheets), and also underestimating the people aspect, and cost of training people on something different. Here's an alternative approach for this one: “We’ve called this meeting with you the business heads to propose that we undertake a deep-dive analysis into how you are using your current analytics system. Your current platform is flagged for re-assessment and there are available options that appear to have the same types of capabilities, with some added benefits for your team and ours. IT and Finance executives are informed and supportive but before we make any decisions, we would like to understand the daily usage, needs, benefits and challenges of your existing system. We’d like to partner with you to empanel a team of subject matter experts for this evaluation.” The final story typically comes from Executives “After extensive discussions with Finance leaders across our enterprise group – peers and competitors alike – we have decided that we will be adopting a new Finance Analytics solution used by over three quarters of the group. We are on the cusp of a total overhaul that will maximize efficiency and improve our Finance Analytics capabilities.” This common situation is one in which executives fall into the trap of assuming that there is an easy solution to the problems they perceive, and that a top down push is all it takes. The alternative approach is to say something like: “After extensive discussions with Finance leaders across our enterprise group and discussions with our IT business partners, it has become apparent that we may benefit from a change to our Finance Analytics program. We are asking you as the financial systems enterprise architect, and you as the head of FP&A to partner with us in a feasibility study aimed at documenting enterprise processes and systems and to build a recommendation for improvements, either process, or system, or both.”
- *AG* …however, there are ways to structure projects that will take the above risks into account and allow you to plan and execute a successful Analytics project
- *AG* This is the final slide before I hand you off to Jim Brinnen. At the end of the day, most people who are looking to implement a new financial planning - or other - system, WANT it to be successful. SUCCESS is traditionally defined by being ON TIME, ON BUDGET and ON TARGET - which means it delivers the scoped functionality. In addition to these traditional measures, we at QueBIT like to add that there are two more important measures of success: The system MUST perform: no matter how clever it is, you need reasonable response times in order to do real work The system MUST be adopted by its intended audience: if your end users don't use the system - regardless of how good it is by any objective measure - you have failed Jim is now going to talk about QueBIT's components of success: Identification - to help you identify potential failure points so you can avoid them Foundations - he will expose several overlooked project building blocks that form the underpinnings of all successful projects Action - he will share common, predictable, and definable steps that are often missed leading directly to project failure Jim - it's all yours!
- *Jim* We are going to hit multiple points in 3 key areas that should be addressed in any project… Identifying the business problem & team, Setting a strong Foundation for project success Taking the Action required to get the project done
- *Jim* Briefly id/read each triangle noting we’ll hit the points in the following slides
- *Jim* According to a Capterra Inc. white paper updated Sep. 26, 2016 with project statistics sourced from multiple respected project gurus (e.g. PMI.org, Standish Group, others) Specific citing: Cavarec, Y. (2012). Revisiting the definition of project success. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2012—North America, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
- *Jim* Anecdotal client experience of missing the bus. problem boat which caused missed delivery + re-work!! (some tickler details to anchor) It is critical to identify the correct business problem; must discern symptoms from cause and ID the correct drivers. Many, many times project teams miss important pieces of the actual business problem and set out on a path that has risk of missing the mark at delivery… There are many stories of how “the big 5” come in and eat budget and deliver little nuggets – 3 years of budget blown in 1 year, 3 years of work leading to a small set of standardized reports, planting 20-50-100 person teams… IT’s easy to say they are greedy, it’s more difficult to look internally at what might have lead to the blown budget or the delivery limitation. A recent long term project (x-Q’BIT) highlights many of the points on this and the following slide. Let’s dig in… LOTS of people hours building budgets and plans… that includes
- *Jim* Once you’ve fully analyzed the business, it’s time to build your team The team will make/break the project… it requires Collaboration, Cooperation, & Communication Most of all, it requires buy in to the shared vision and commitment to achieve it Do they have enough bandwidth? Do they have broad experience in the organization? Are they leaders? Are they respected? Do they represent all key delivery areas? Do they understand AND share “the vision?” Does their expertise align with project needs? Do they have enough bandwidth AND the support of their lead? Are they team players? Do they understand AND share “the vision?” Correct level? Influential? Is there a benefit for their area of remit? Is there a benefit for organization? Does project ROI match their / the organization’s requirement(s)? Do they understand AND share “the vision?”
- *Jim* Difficult to build understanding, buy-in, commitment when different team members use different terminology/different ways of describing the project – problems, objectives, actions, etc. Doesn’t just happen Develop as a team exercise Periodic re-checks Consistency; say the same thing, the same way, every time Focus: Key pain points AND Solution Practice / Roadshow / Executive Guidance Xx… Consistency Actions supporting descriptions Approach agreements… Subject area working sessions, data discoveries, etc. Use Leads: Functional, Work Stream, Subject Matter, etc. Order of Operations Schedule meetings series
- *jim* *Nothing without data Must align with shared vision AND solution objectives Available Timely Accurate Complete “Owned” Mastered Does the new solution involve process change? Should the new solution involve process change? Is the shared vision dependent on process change? Do you have the mandate and required support to address process change? Order of Operations: => Business Problem -> Shared Vision -> Process Review ->Technology Decision Must support objective(s) Must be data flexible Must have User Interface (“UI”) Options Additional Decision Considerations: Does your project team have skillset to participate in implementation? Does your organization have resources to support and maintain? Typical Ownership: IT v. Business Does it align with enterprise IT vision
- *Jim* *Clear across team Communicated to Stakeholders, SMEs, Executives Executive Support Many hands make light work …But only if they are working in sync Sometimes nine women can make a baby in one month, but not usually Delegate wisely; align with skills, influence, motivations This is a cross-team objective: Stakeholders, SMEs, Executives, Core Project Team Define distinct roles for each team member Communicate to Stakeholders, SMEs, Executives Align to strengths Align to influence Stay in lanes but flexible to assist if needed It’s not enough to construct the building blocks of the team - that is the people A building won’t assemble it’s pieces and wont’ build itself, neither will the team Need to make sure the executive sponsors are engaged and have communicated the mandate to all stakeholders so they know the team has authority backing their actions Need to build a culture of working together effectively: share work / delegate wisely knowing each member’s strengths and expertise; *Facilitate the collaboration by setting defined roles… even the best team players need help help staying on point and working together
- *Jim* Finally, getting it done should be the “easy” part if you’ve laid the groundwork well “Easy” in that you can focus on the real project work and not be distracted by questions of authority, disputes in the objectives, problems with team cohesiveness, etc. Components RACI Master Action / Milestone Plan RAAIDD Project Change Request (“PCR”) Log Tool choice Action and Milestone oriented Update, Communicate, Locate Elect a strong project lead Focused, central view AND big picture Respect: Bring some, earn more Optimally, has done some or all delivery requirements Organized Communicator Facilitator Tie Breaker Relationship builderSet achievable objectives Identify blockers; mitigate quickly Scheduled progress / status reviews Broadcast successes Share challenges early
- *Jim* It’s likely we all know the popular myth of lemmings committing “mass suicide” by jumping off of a cliff. Dubious in fact but not so far off in concept. Many of your peers have come to the cliff and chosen to jump simply by their choice of not jumping! In addition to the information we discussed so far, there are further considerations that many underestimate or simply fail to account for…
- *Jim* A few additional points to consider as you plan your project, the building blocks go beyond analyze, design, build. Additional considerations: Change Management plan Project Lifecycle guide… distinct completion phases (large or small inconsequential as long as they’re well-defined and agreed to) Testing Plan… Unit, System, Quality Assurance (QA), Performance, User Acceptance Data plan… system connections, scheduled processes (+ the scheduler), authorized users, fileshare locations, more… Deployment plan… go-live date, training, post go-live support (“hyper care”), road shows/work groups to motivate adoption and create a supportive user community Knowledge Transfer plan… if you’ve used outside experts or an internal delivery team, you’ll have KT to attend to in order to get your long-term maintenance team ready to go… could include support guides / FAQs / Knowledgebase, Troubleshooting scripts, glossary of terms, new/modify/delete user processes, security protocols (e.g. 90-day user reviews), etc.
- Specific citing: Cavarec, Y. (2012). Revisiting the definition of project success. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2012—North America, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
- *Jim* *the good news… 80%... Because of something like READY Are you READY? *We’ve adopted this methodology and use it successfully at clients; you should develop something similar (or follow this)… anything that gets your project team thinking about how “ready” the organization is for the project is a step in the right direction; addressing (or planning for) deficiencies is a leap Some keys… it’s a spectrum, every project starts on it, either high or low Will change throughout <frequent check-ins!> Might upgrade and might degrade *Key is spotting the degrading components early and addressing them ID’g weaknesses early allows mitigation plans to overcome potential challenges
- *Jim* Proper planning and mobilization Followed by setting the right foundation Facilitates the actions needed… To Succeed!