5 Warning Signs Your Planning Process Needs an Upgrade
Classical planning methods are holding companies back in the fast-paced business world of today. Spreadsheets, tedious data gathering, and siloed processes might have been tolerable in the early days, but they are not able to keep up with the sophistication and speed of today’s decision-making.
If you recognize any of the following signs in your organization, it may be time to rethink your approach and explore Extended Planning & Analysis (xP&A).
1. You spend more time collecting data than analysing it
If your team spends days or even weeks gathering information from different systems before you can start planning, you’re already behind.
- Problem: Too much time wasted on manually consolidating and validating data.
- Risk: Leaders make decisions based on outdated data.
- Solution: With xP&A, data flows through a single connected platform that integrates Finance, HR, Sales, and Operations, reducing reconciliation efforts so teams focus on insights—not spreadsheets.
2. Each department functions independently
There is one agenda for finance. Another one for HR. Sales and Operations crunch their own numbers. When these don’t align, collaboration breaks down.
- Problem: Conflicting forecasts and priorities.
- Risk: Missed opportunities and internal friction.
- Solution: xP&A brings all functions into a single connected process, ensuring one version of the truth.
3. Forecasts are always outdated
When your forecast or budget is finalized, the situation on the market might already have changed.
- Problem: Static annual plans that can’t adapt.
- Risk: Slow response to market shocks (supply chain disruptions, inflation, customer demand shifts).
- Solution: Model your what-ifs with real-time scenario planning and pivot quickly with xP&A.
4. No clear link between strategy and execution
Your high-level strategy may look great on paper, but if it isn’t clearly connected to day-to-day operations, execution suffers.
- Problem: Strategy stays theoretical.
- Risk: Gaps between leadership’s vision and teams’ actions.
- Solution: xP&A connects operational drivers (headcount, sales capacity, production throughput) directly with financial targets, ensuring strategies cascade into concrete, measurable actions.
5. Decisions depend on gut feeling, not data
When leaders lose confidence in their planning data, they resort to intuition.
- Problem: Decisions are based on opinion rather than facts, with meetings spent debating data quality instead of generating insights and value.
- Risk: Higher likelihood of error, bias, and missed opportunities.
- Solution: With xP&A, leaders gain real-time visibility and data-backed insights they can trust—turning discussions into decisions.
The Next Step
If one of these red flags rings a bell for you, your planning process deserves an upgrade.
At Planadigm, we help companies make the transition from siloed, legacy methods to collaborative, operational, and lasting planning with xP&A.
Want to try it out for yourself?
Book a readiness call
