Implementing Supply & Demand Planning for a Professional Services Firm
The Situation
A large professional services consulting firm required a new tool to help them with their supply and demand planning for their professional services resources (consisting of thousands of individuals). The scale of their supply and demand data and the detail they required for what-if planning variables had outgrown their previous systems, and Accordion was engaged to use their technical and functional expertise to develop a new what-if planning system in Anaplan.
Services
Budgeting/Forecasting Solution Implementation
Reporting & Analytics
The Execution
- Worked closely with the organization’s account planning & IT teams to develop a framework that would address the needs of the solution.
- Developed integration processes to input staffing and utilization data, as well as active project & opportunity pipeline staffing demand data, into Anaplan on a daily basis.
- Calculated supply and demand forecasts based on imported data, as well as projected remaining capacity figures based on role, product, geography, and several other factors.
- Built what-if scenario modeling capabilities consisting of over a dozen potential what-if scenarios based on changes to the baseline supply & demand forecasts.
- Enabled several what-if variables and inputs to influence both the supply and demand projections, such as adding/modifying project lengths & resources or moving available resources between products.
- Developed several detailed reporting dashboards for the client team to analyze and present their what-if scenario plans.
The Results
Accordion successfully implemented a robust what-if scenario planning model in Anaplan that enables the client to develop multiple scenario plans for hiring and staffing, based on dozens of variable combinations that can impact staffing supply and demand projections. This model has given the client increased flexibility in their planning ability and is now also leveraged by the client’s internal Finance team.