SimpleFi Solutions shares super seamless planning in SAP Finance & HCM Data is the new gold, as any conversation with a tech leader will remind you. Meanwhile businesses are paying more attention not only to how they receive and store data but also what they do with it in their SAP systems. “We have data everywhere and we don’t know what to do with it, right? One thing is to use it in nice graphs to show and do reporting on the data. But that doesn’t really help us. You see a nice graph and say, ‘Oh, that looks good, but what do I do with it?’” Henner Schliebs, Executive Vice President of SimpleFi Solutions, tells SAPinsider. At the same time, popular sci-fi movies have dangled the idea of using the full potential of human brains, feeding us the utopia that if our brains could better use information, we would be superhumans with limitless potential and abilities. Modern data however suggests that companies should and could do exactly this as they own so much information that can help them reach a superfunctional state. But this future is not quite at our doorstep yet as information and resulting insights are not distributed broadly and are dependent on a myriad of moving parts and pieces. Having embarked on this exact mission as part of SimpleFi Solutions, which architects and implements best-of-breed organizational analytics, reporting, consolidation and planning financial SAP solutions, Schliebs is one of the company’s finance experts, or “CPAs gone geek”, as they refer to themselves, who support the evolving role of companies’ CFOs. Leaning on extensive CFO experience in the rapidly-evolving business environment of today, Schliebs notes that CFOs’ positions have elevated in the corporate hierarchy, “going away from number-crunching into really sitting in the strategic seat and helping steer companies, the executive board, or the CEO, and guide decision-making into the right direction, because the CFO is the holder of data”. The data doesn’t present itself as ones and zeros or bits and bytes to these leaders, but as intelligence telling the story behind the numbers, bringing the foresight of what to do to get your company where it wants to be in the future.   Seamless planning into play Introducing the vision of “seamless planning”, which sees organizations move the planning process from the question of “what just happened” through to “why did it happen” to “what could happen” and “what should happen,” is something SimpleFi specializes in for SAP users, specifically in the Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) function. While many companies still rely on outdated planning methods, such as the previous year’s revenues plus a percentage increase, seamless planning grounds the process within existing data and insight. “It really takes advantage of all the SAP technology there is to bring together all data points and create new ones in terms of planning. Because you have raw data, you have your set of LEGO bricks to form, say, a helicopter. You have some form of instructions about what to do, but we bring you more to help customize it.” In this metaphor, seamless planning leverages all data points within the customer’s company, helping pilot them to their end destination with a plan that’s directly checked against real data to be executable. Such enhanced planning allows for data that sits not just within organizations, but also outside them, to be pulled in to allow for the discovery of different scenarios, what that means for the company and then suggest optimum decisions to make. The approach can also offer a holistic/macro-economic view of decisions as more organizations have moved away from FP&A into Extended Planning and Analysis, “and we really want to embrace what is out there and understand what ‘smarter’ data is coming from the World Economic Forum or Oxford Economics, for example [...] and come up with a good foresight of what is happening in the market,” Schliebs explains. From there, teams can grasp the market conditions and learn what is on the horizon from a macroeconomic standpoint. After this they can determine what it means for their business while gathering more strategic perspectives. As a recent example, US alternative medicine company Verano partnered with SimpleFi to implement SAP Analytics Cloud (SAP SAC) preceding their SAP S/4HANA implementation and improve its financial and headcount planning, alongside its cash flow management. Kevin Krefting, Director of FP&A at Verano, explained as part of a company presentation how before implementing SAP SAC, the company would do headcount planning from a very high level, by department, and had only a simple understanding of what the job descriptions were. “Through our HR team and SAP SuccessFactors with the help of SimpleFI, and the understanding that can be integrated into our monthly rolling forecast, we now plan headcount from a job code level that breaks down by all employees,” Krefting said while adding: “We get a manual refresh at the end of every month and an understanding of what the expenses are, and then that automatically rolls through into our monthly rolling forecasts for margin and OpEx planning.” This process contributed to the company’s evolution from a startup to a top-four multi-state operator with nearly $1bn in revenue by YE2023, as it reduced month-end close times from 25-28 days to ten days and enhanced its forecasting accuracy. Foreseeing disaster and changing direction Taking the existing resources organizations have and being able to include them in a solid plan is part of the road ahead businesses can look forward to. According to Schliebs, this goes for big Fortune 100 companies and also more of the SMEs market With SAP taking the initiative of progressively bringing everybody to S/4HANA to run your company, how you manage your company is where seamless planning comes into play, especially as companies are in need of flexibility to serve different businesses within one company group. “But anything analytical comes on top as you also have to use external data to make sense of your organization and steer it in the right direction - which shows you any ad hoc elements coming up that need your attention,” says Schliebs. This oversight can also allow SAP Insiders to build a model of the world, majorly impacted by unprecedented circumstances that disrupt business, such as another pandemic or a war, “then you need to be nimble and pull the different data pieces together in scenarios and come up with an action plan.” While not providing a solve-it-all recipe, being able to foresee the degree of what changes would mean for your organization financially and, for instance, plan for alternate suppliers, is not to be underestimated. In this way, pulling through the technology and the data points from within your organization and adding the intelligence from outside of your organization can support businesses with a contingency plan and a firm starting point in case a disaster strikes. Doesn’t that sound just super?