Ask Us Anything: FP&A with the Experts | Ron Wicklander, Margaret Powell, Linda Lifchez & Joe Ursitti

Speaker 1: So by the way, we'll do some introductions up here. On the far left is Margaret Powell. She's one of our solution architects. She is based out of the London, Ontario area. Next to her is Linda Lifchez, who is one of our solution architects based of the Atlanta, Georgia area. And standing behind me, sitting behind me is Ron Wicklander, who is one of our solution architects based out of the Seattle area. The entire basis of this session is you. So we brought up our panel of experts. Last time we did this, we called it" Stump the Geeks." This time, it's" Ask the Experts."

Speaker 2: Stop the chumps...

Speaker 1: Works as well. So, with that, what questions did you guys bring? I'm coming off stage to come to you.

Speaker 2: Margaret had written down some as well that she had heard earlier.

Speaker 1: No questions, and we have to turn it back on over to the experts.

Speaker 2: Okay. Bring on.

Speaker 1: All right, Chris, I'm coming over your way, sir. I think the last feed on the end.

Chris Ortega: Hi, this is Chris Ortega. I have a question. So the pandemic, some people are post, pre, we're all different stages of it now, the value proposition of FP& A has changed. What is the new value proposition of FP& A, and why is it important for everybody in this room to know it?

Speaker 2: Where's our marketing guy? Next question.

Ron Wicklander: Who would like that one?

Speaker 2: I think it's being able to make value, well, informed decisions quickly, with a lot of flexibility, right? So during the pandemic we had, people were going from maybe forecasting quarterly to now," Crud, I need to do it monthly." We're seeing more and more requests for monthly forecasting. So yeah, I think it's informed decisions at a rapid pace, I guess. Do you guys have...?

Ron Wicklander: When the pandemic first hit, there was just a big push. We got the questions, well, cash forecasting, cash modeling, cash, cash, cash, cash, cash. And so all the projects, well that I was personally working on-- I just hit myself-- all the projects I was working on, all of a sudden, kind of took a backseat of doing the initial implementation, to," Can we get a dynamic planning, cash forecasting model going ASAP?" My focus actually turned to that and trying to get something that was essentially pre- built that we could just get out there for our partners to use and for our internal use as well. We were scrambling keep up with the times.

Speaker 2: And I think I'd say along with that, another P word that I don't really like very much right now is pivot, but that's exactly what it is. It's like, I want to build my plan. This is how I've done it, but I need to change it fast. And that's one of the things Planful gives you, the ability to, well, let's not use that, let's use a different driver, right? Let's bring in the right detail that matters. And I think a lot of the times you used to do it on history, right? So you want to look back, what did it look like last year? The last two years? Who knows. Those are like scrambler years. So, being able to use the right data to build projections that make sense. So I think that's kind of what I've seen in the world. Good question. Scared us at first. crosstalk.

Speaker 5: I know!

Speaker 1: Thanks Chris. All right, next up.

Speaker 6: In continuation of your last thought, what is the right data to look at over the last two years? I imagine it's going to vary by industry, but how can we use that information to help us project better, I guess?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I've been just saying it might not be the full year. It might just be three months, right? And maybe you blend the last couple of years to come up with some averages. Trailing twelve's the normal way people want to go. But I've just said maybe it's just trailing three. I think we're getting back on track. So you can probably use that history and get what you need.

Speaker 5: Yeah. I agree.

Speaker 2: I don't know what you think.

Speaker 5: Three to six, three to six months.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think shorter term.

Speaker 5: Yeah. It's funny. I had a customer I was implementing last summer who deals with garbage collection, and who knew that garbage collection could be so fascinating? And one of the questions I always like to ask my customers is," How did the pandemic affect your business?" And she goes," Not a bit. Garbage continues to be made." I was like," Oh, so there is an industry that was not affected, but now they're getting hit hard with fuel prices." So that's where their flexibility comes in. They have a pretty cool dynamic planning model where they can change fuel rates and forecast their revenue and their expenses.

Ron Wicklander: And that's where you can. And that's where you also, you can take your scenario that you're using and then be able to put in or remove the months that were off, that were just so different. When things spiked and things slowed down and shut down, you can remove those months and actually put in other forecast months or, if you think that your trends would look better, you could just interject all those different time periods into what you're now budgeting moving forward. So if you're looking back two years, three years, and you're wanting to look at trends, you're able to do the trends based on the information you want to see and take out the months that really are not relevant because that was a one time deal and you can remove them. So the flexibility of being able to do that.

Speaker 2: Did that answer your question, sort of?

Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good job, Ron.

Speaker 7: I was just wondering, what does, like this morning we inaudible, was it actually able to land something less than a monthly cadence? So how do we incorporate daily data? How do we bring that into Planful? Does it look differently like the time dimension specifically, or how does it work?

Ron Wicklander: Dynamic planning. Vale was my project. I don't know if Jason's in here. Vale was my project and it was an interesting use case, but right from the start, as soon as they said, well, we need a day dimension, not even getting into the detail of the day that they were looking at and how every year would vary. They weren't looking at the first of the year is the first of the year, every year. The first of the year could be January one this year, January two, the next, and so on and so forth. What day of the week it is-- all that needed to be adjusted. So automatically dynamic planning.

Speaker 2: What were your dimensions? I mean, do you have days rolling up to weeks, rolling up to months in that model? Do you remember?

Ron Wicklander: In some of them?

Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah. Okay.

Ron Wicklander: So it was, they wanted to be able to see the date, what date it was, but also what day of the week it was.

Speaker 2: Got it.

Ron Wicklander: And so on. You did have the rolling to weeks, and then that's where we started bringing in attributes. So it was very complex,

Speaker 7: But that's a custom. That's like one of the two custom dimensions that inaudible you started, you actually used the time dimension.

Ron Wicklander: No, we actually had to create a different time dimension inside dynamic planning.

Speaker 2: In dynamic planning.

Ron Wicklander: That's a great thing with dynamic planning is that it's an open slate.

Speaker 7: Inaudible

Speaker 5: Yeah. We use our internal Planful system. We have a model that it uses dynamic planning to forecast our hours. And it actually has a week component to it because this one likes to look at every week running a forecast model.

Ron Wicklander: There's different ways of doing that too, because you could have the days roll into a week or you could have a week be an attribute.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Ron Wicklander: Yeah. It depends on the report that you're reporting needs, correct?

Speaker 5: Yeah. When we start designing a dynamic planning model, and I guess you guys are the same way, I always start by thinking about what is the end result? How do you want to report on this? Because that's going to help me design what it looks like on the way in.

Speaker 7: Great.

Speaker 1: Next up. Kristen.

Speaker 5: Kristen.

Kristen: Hello.

Speaker 5: Hello.

Kristen: This is a bit more in the weeds.

Speaker 5: Okay. We like that.

Kristen: Okay. So rosters and head count--

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Kristen: --Is like really easy in Planful, but the reporting is the bane of my existence. If I have two open spots, say both for 50K and one starts in January, and I pull that report in, the 50K shows up perfectly. But then if somebody starts in July, I only see 25K. Is there a way to kind of manipulate the system? Right? Because that's the P and L impact for the whole year, but is there a way to pull in full year salary, start date, things like that. Because right now I kind of have this horrible Excel thing. If January is blank, then move to the next one. You know? Is there an easier way have you guys had--

Speaker 5: So I had a customer who used full year salary to calculate, say their 401k or maybe their bonus. And we created a separate attribute cause there's a salary attribute. That's out of the box. We created a separate attribute called full year salary and they just load that data in there. And so it's not used in-- it's used in calculating 401k or bonus, whatever it was, but it's not used to actually do this salary. Maybe something like that would work.

Ron Wicklander: Yeah. Cause then you can pull in the reporting as well.

Kristen: So just another line?

Speaker 5: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, otherwise you'd have to--

Kristen: Have you guys heard this before though?

Speaker 5: No. You know, what's funny is I'm sitting here scratching my head because I kind of did this when we--

Speaker 2: Maybe it's your hat.

Speaker 5: It's the hat that inaudible scratch? No. Our internal plan, for instance, was sitting on an old tenant and actually this year we'd moved it to a brand new tenant and kind of rebuilt it. And one of the things I had to do was redo our workforce planning that Mel was just talking about when she was up here, and it was tough to try and tie out the budget they did a few months ago into the new system. And I kind of had to do a little manipulating just what you were describing, right? Yeah. And,

Kristen: And when I send it to, you know, the head of marketing or whatever, right. She's like," No, this person is going to be making 50 not 25." So it's more manual.

Speaker 5: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think another, yeah. I think another attribute might be the way to go.

Ron Wicklander: Yeah. A reporting attribute and we can, we can take a look at it when we--

Kristen: Okay.

Ron Wicklander: --getdone.

Speaker 2: Very nice. Plus there's a couple of guys here from product. I don't know if they're here here, but they're working on new ways to pull out workforce planning data, which is great. Because we agree that it's a little challenging sometimes.

Kristen: Yeah. Again the input like.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's super easy.

Kristen: Close into the inaudible now's wonderful. It's just the output. Yep.

Speaker 1: All right. Next up.

Speaker 9: Hi.

Speaker 5: Hi.

Speaker 9: So this is more accounting question. I'm not too sure how many accountants are in here.

Speaker 5: Okay.

Speaker 9: When creating a row set, and you're doing an advanced rule writer, is there like a trick to see all the syntax, like breakouts that kind of help you write it out better instead of trying to have to decipher it myself? Like some sort of dictionary or a way for me to basically create an advanced role, not by using all the GL accounts, but kind of more-- I don't even know what I'm saying right now.

Speaker 5: More English, right?

Speaker 9: Yes, basically.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. No, but you've got-- when you're writing that advanced--sorry, I'm just yapping away. When you're writing that advanced rule, there's the box underneath for description. And sometimes I'd use that to describe in plain words what it's doing and I've dumbed it down a lot. If, back to your example, if January is zero, then dot dot dot you know, but no, we, that MDX requires that special kind of, I don't know, coding or

Ron Wicklander: Yeah. And there's--

Speaker 2: I think that was a question that was like, what's the best resource for MDX and building it out. And I said, that's the only way to do it is start small, build it out, test it as you go. So you eventually get the full syntax you want, but in terms of best reference, I was like, I don't know. Because you can find it.

Speaker 5: You can.

Speaker 2: You can find examples online or throw it in our customer forum just to--

Speaker 5: Engage.

Speaker 2: People should be able to engage.

Ron Wicklander: Engage.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

Speaker 10: Thinking of engage. Somebody mentioned earlier, there's like a Slack, like a Planful Slack. Is that open to the public? Is that an internal meeting you guys have.

Speaker 2: We internally use slack.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 2: I don't know that we're opened up to customer.

Ron Wicklander: Yeah. I don't know if we have it.

Speaker 2: I've used it directly with customers while I'm in a project. And just as another way of communicating, but not as much as sort of open,

Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with it being a way to communicate with support at this point. But if it's an active project, we have opened up Slack channels to communicate with customers in that way.

Speaker 5: Yeah. And we use like in our professional services group, we have a few Slack channels and there's one or two partners that are on there as well. And if one of us is stumped, we just put it out on. Maybe that's what it was. I put it out on Slack and Will or Diane or somebody will jump on and help answer. Yeah.

Speaker 1: All right. Another question over here.

Chris Ortega: This one will stump you guys.

Speaker 5: Uh- oh.

Chris Ortega: Grant talked about it this morning with AI and machine learning, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Right. What is the value proposition of AI and machine learning for FP& A teams and how does Planful incorporate that into your solutions?

Speaker 2: So that's the projections and inaudible

Speaker 1: Signals and projections.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it can help you find, in my opinion, it can help you find where things are totally up.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Right. So it kind of tracks that huge variance that you probably would see, but just helps guide your eye. Like I was just doing a report recently where we upped some numbers and hit predict and it showed me where that number was that I put a junk, a bunch of junk in, right. So if someone's building their budget and the values are off trend, that's what it helps to direct your eye. I think. But no matter how much we automate, people want to adjust. We can build a completely customized thing. That's great. But at the end I just want to be able to adjust that number. So I think that's the same with machine learning. They can only be so smart.

Speaker 5: Well, I was going to say, yeah, go ahead.

Ron Wicklander: Well just, I mean is any tool you can get, that's going to help, you know, get, get the FP& A team out of creating something, digging through the weeds, but actually able to take a step back and look at the data and do true analysis. It's a huge value to a team, to the FP& A group. Many years that I was in FP& A, before I joined Planful, that's all I would do. Create reports, find a problem, and then have to search for it. As opposed to just being able to look at the data holistically, be able to present findings from that data and then make them actionable items. So now you're getting to the point where you got actionable items that you can move forward.

Speaker 2: Well, I'll confess back when I was early in my finance career, like pure finance, pre- Planful, I screwed up my company's five year plan by a million dollars because-- yeah. Woo! Go big or go home!

Ron Wicklander: That's called rounding.

Speaker 2: It was a big company though. So it was rounding. Truly, it was. But so back to predict, that's the kind of thing that would've shown up right away. Hey, dingus, you missed a link. I think it was just a broken link in Excel and I didn't get fired, so....

Speaker 1: If you had it it would save you faster, and again, the anomalies that show up, Chris are such a big thing for that tool.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And as we continue, there's such a huge rush to get that implemented and rolled out. We are doing those on a weekly basis at this point. Having that, and projections was released general today earlier today. So signals has been out there for about a good year. Now, projections just coming out today. Having those anomalies light up and to give you that direction to go look here now, to Linda's point, you have a manual override to go," No, that's right. I manually altered it." But it gives you that pinpoint to go look at this intersection. That's what its values for.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Great question.

Speaker 2: We did have a question. Oh, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: Hold on. I'm coming.

Speaker 5: Jenny, bring it on.

Speaker 1: All right Jenny.

Speaker 2: Here we go.

Speaker 5: I know. Competitive. Making him get his steps in.

Speaker 2: That's the question.

Jenny: Is there any capability right now where you could take an employee in the HR template and copy it into a different scenario?

Speaker 5: Not yet, but we have asked for that as an enhancement. Yes. Because that's one that we've heard a lot.

Jenny: And then while I have you, while I have

Speaker 5: You have a list. Sure.

Speaker 2: You should hold on.

Jenny: When in a dynamic report and you're choosing your parameters such as cost center. If there's already a list of them in there, is there a way just to clear out all the data or is that coming?

Speaker 2: Oh, so if there's like a list of 15 that you've chosen.

Jenny: Yeah. So you have to unselect each one.

Speaker 2: Yeah. We can't do all.

Jenny: Yes. Clear all

Speaker 10: All yeah. Clear all

Speaker 2: Inaudible Button. It is.

Ron Wicklander: Did I hear that right? It was a dynamic dynamic report.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Ron Wicklander: Oh, I just take that dimension and I just move it over and then move it back. Cleared. Done. And you, I start over.

Speaker 2: Way to go, Ron.

Ron Wicklander: So it's, it's just a real quick one.

Speaker 2: Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's I didn't even think about that.

Ron Wicklander: Swipe left.

Speaker 1: You didn't stump them. That feedback where you're asking for that, Engage is a great area to do that, which I know both of you guys are heavy Engage users, but the more that you're able to get that out there and get those suggestions, that's where product goes to gather those details and get them moving the product set.

Jenny: Is that what the voting is.

Speaker 1: That's what the voting is for.

Speaker 12: So is somebody like from product always on plant, on Engage, checking those things too.

Speaker 1: Yes ma'am. Yes, ma'am. All right. I saw some hands go up somewhere. Hang up. Somewhere here,. Inaudible

Speaker 2: Over to the right as well. Oh, hello, this

Speaker 13: Actually. Hello? Hello. This might be just a yes, no answer.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 13: What's happening with workforce actuals because it's something I wanted to implement a little while ago and then I was told it's on hold. Yeah. There are some buggy things going on.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 13: Is it there for us to--

Speaker 5: It is there.

Speaker 2: It's just further.

Speaker 5: Yeah. They're making some improvements to it all the time, because there were some things. Like one thing it, candidly, did not do well was handle mid- month transfers. So if you move from department A to do department B in the middle of the month, it was just not handling that well, so that's something they're working on like actively, actively. So it is yes or no question. Yes, it is available. Is it at its ideal state? Not quite yet.

Speaker 13: So would you recommend it to people to wait?

Speaker 5: I would wait a little bit personally.

Speaker 13: Do you know what that inaudible

Speaker 1: Not yet quite in terms of timeframe on that. Cause it's an active at this point. and that goes, it's a great question. I know we worked on that project together and I know there's some other workforce planning questions that are out there as well. That's where Grant talks to that continuous improvement. That's how we're looking to get better. So as we are hands on the keyboard out with you guys implementing it, our team goes back, you're going back, and that feedback's going to product and that's where they help to end the product.

Speaker 9: Inaudible Don't tell your people about it?

Speaker 2: Until, until you're. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 9: Cause I was excited.

Speaker 2: I know.

Speaker 9: Inaudible

Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah. Okay. I know. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Was there another question behind me? Yes.

Speaker 15: Okay. This is a user type of question. So I'm just wondering, okay. This is our scenario. We have a bunch of managers and they have some assistant. They want the assistant to help with the workforce planning. So I'm just wondering if there's a way for the assistant to do the planning, but without seeing the salary. Right now, if you have the ability to plan for the people, you have to see the salary. I'm just wondering if there's a scenario that you can put in some attributes, for example, level one, level two, and then you have like a medium or average salary prefilled in. So then the manager can later, you know, come in to adjust the number, what they want. So is there a possible way to achieve that or like?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's, I mean, unless you guys,

Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a couple of different ways to do it. I'll start with the second one. I actually did that with a customer who is here somewhere, where when they hire new hires, they knew I'm going to spend X amount on computers and sorted equipment. And then we had just kind of a generic starting salary. So you know that they could go in and do that. Now also, if you are-- are you utilizing the newest workforce planning user interface,? Like where you can click on an employee number and it brings up their details?

Speaker 15: Yes. Yes.

Speaker 5: So, okay. So there is a feature that was launched a few months ago where you can limit compensation item visibility to people.

Speaker 15: Fancy.

Speaker 5: Yeah. It's very cool. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. And I did a lot of testing on this one, so I know this went very well, but from the user access page and I believe it's the approval role screen. There's a checkbox in there that says allow access to set user level, workforce planning compensation. It's not that long, but it's something like that. So then you would check, for example, your name, then you can go into workforce planning and pick users and say, if they can edit compensation items, if you want them to just be read only or completely hidden.

Speaker 15: Ah.

Speaker 5: So your salary can be completely hidden. Now there's one small caveat. When you create a new employee, you have to have a salary. So they don't have the button to add an employee, but they can copy an existing one and someone can change the salary later.

Speaker 15: That's awesome.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. If you want to grab one of us around, we'll be happy to show you. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Getting your money's worth.

Speaker 5: That's right.

Speaker 7: So you said something that triggered a question. So how we plan for onboarding expenses. Okay. You know, there's just like five different categories. The salesperson gets this computer and this software and et cetera. And Ron, I think I asked you this, so I'll give you another chance to like, maybe..

Speaker 2: Maybe he'll get it right.

Speaker 7: I don't know. You said, you would think about it and it wasn't super important. So just figured, I'd ask. Basically I wanted something, when someone gets hired, you know,$ 500 for a laptop or however much it is in this software and this software, like you select a category and then it never pops up again. Ever. Just one time, the month that they're hired. Is there a way to do that?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 7: Okay.

Speaker 5: There is. And I can't remember what it's fixed amount.

Ron Wicklander: Yeah. Fixed amount. Direct input.

Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it's not even direct input. You can fix amount and then have it post on the higher month.

Speaker 7: Right.

Speaker 2: Or the position start month or like even the last month as well. Cause I was doing one of my customers recently. I had it populate a one in their last month and then use that to do attrition or backfill kind of calculations.

Ron Wicklander: Yeah. Just a combine.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a combine. Yeah. I can't remember. When I get in front of the laptop, I can get you the exact settings I'll cause I always have to fish around. But yes.

Speaker 1: All right, Russ, I'm running your way. Here we go.

Speaker 2: Yeah. There you go.

Russ: Go back to the previous answer you gave about maybe limit access to certain conversations. Would that be applicable to if you were an admin employee or if you were labeled as admin?

Speaker 2: No. So admins really we were kind of talking about this after the last session. Admins really are going to have access to everything. I'm trying to think if I've done this to limit an admin at all.

Russ: I don't think I have.

Ron Wicklander: Well, I mean, did you try so on your, on your navigation role?

Speaker 2: You can, yeah. You can turn off. Yeah.

Ron Wicklander: So you can turn off the ability to update a user, which would then if you give that to an admin, they're not able to get in there and change their user access. But still, they have the ability to have access to templates, a workforce planning template, then they're going to be able to see data. So again, you have to go through, you have to set up a different approval role that would not have workforce planning access. And then once you have that, then you're pretty solid with not being able, that individual not being able to see any workforce planning data at all.

Speaker 5: I'm thinking this through. I'm wondering, yeah.

Russ: You can't do that with an admin,

Speaker 5: With an admin, right.

Russ: In person has access.

Speaker 5: Right. Right.

Speaker 2: Well, can't you do like the power admin with workforce planning, power admin. Yeah.

Speaker 5: But he's talking from a maintenance perspective. So when you give someone access to the workforce planning setup, it automatically comes with the exports.

Ron Wicklander: Yeah. You're going to have everything

Speaker 2: You could turn off

Speaker 9: Inaudible You not have an admin. Can you not make somebody a user with every right. Almost as an admin, other than adding new users and conversation.

Speaker 5: We do have some folks who do, who create, who are only responsible for creating users. There's some companies that have an IT department, they just create users. And their navigation role is just that, where it just creates users. But if you have an admin who needs access to the workforce planning setup screen, and I'm pausing, because I think I tested this, but I'm drawing a blank on what actually happened. If you could limit using the user, that user screen that we were just talking about, limiting the comp items. I'll test it during a session to see if I can not be able to export it.

Speaker 2: That's a stump question.

Speaker 5: That is, yeah. That's a good stump one.

Speaker 1: Russ you win.

Speaker 5: We were, joking. Margaret and I were joking last week. We were like, we should go get some chips from the casino and someone stumps us. We can just throw a chip, but it's all digital now I think so. No. Yeah, yeah. At least do on that.

Speaker 1: Sorry. We'll connect you guys afterwards. So a couple things as we wrap this on up. We've reached the end of the session here. There's two other ways that you can get to us. One is through our Engage community. We have our Planful folks that are out there actively on that board. We have other folks in this room that are actively on that board. It's a great way to get your questions asked and answered. The second thing for the next day or so, these experts will actually be across the hall having office hours. If you want to sign up for those, you can do that through the Hop In app. Or if you catch any of the folks in a purple shirt, we can get you some time with the experts one- on- one for blocks of time. We still have that available.

Speaker 2: Or just let us know.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Or just bum rush the stage afterwards.

Speaker 5: Bum rushes. Yeah.

Speaker 1: So with that, we're actually going to wrap. If you have questions, come on up and see, but we're at that time you get about a 15, 20 minute break before your next session, team. Thanks for coming on out. Y'all appreciate it. Thank you. Take care.