In Greek mythology, Cassandra was gifted with the power of prophecy, able to foresee the future with stunning accuracy. At the same time, she was cursed never to be believed, and her warnings of impending disaster went ignored, famously leading to the downfall of Troy. Today’s business leaders might be confronted with different challenges, but the ability to predict the future certainly wouldn’t go amiss – and the feeling of not being believed by others might be a familiar one.
Organizations are navigating uncertainly and rapid change, be it market conditions, economic shifts, supply chain disruptions, or global crises. The better prepared they are, the better they can adapt to changes when they happen. In the absence of prophecy, business planning can help operations leaders balance long-term strategy with day-to-day execution – and if it can be done well, then operations leaders can use their plans to make other parts of the business listen.
There are multiple walls to scale to get there, though. Often, operations struggle to give different levels of the organization the insights they need. Executives need a high-level summary while frontline managers require detailed, actionable insights.
Part of the challenge with getting the right insights to the right people, is data. Reporting on work and capacity is often highly manual and heavily reliant on spreadsheets, with different departments using different measures and methodologies, making it hard to get a clear picture. Workforce and resource planning has become more challenging, particularly when it comes to the tricky balance of over- and understaffing. Leaders are under constant pressure to cut costs while meeting sustainability demands.
In this blog, we’re exploring how AI-enhanced business planning tools can help you meet these challenges head on.
1: Establish an accurate baseline
Working out where your firm is under- or over-resourced often relies on experience and gut instinct. Not everyone has the same experience or gut instincts, which leads to variable quality and accuracy in long-term plans.
Combining AI and business planning removes the need for guesswork. You could instantly create a base plan consisting of the existing supply for a particular department, accurate data on productivity and expected demand, and historical data on metrics such as downtime or annual leave. Adding drivers, captured as ‘outcomes’ or ‘cases’ (a mortgage application with multiple outcomes, for example) allows for far more efficient planning.
By getting a clear picture of your starting position and likely trends across the year, you can start to experiment with different scenarios with more confidence. Speaking of which…
2: Adapt to change with dynamic scenario planning
AI-enhanced Business Planning allows you to model many different scenarios. You can model the impact of changes in demand, such as when a mortgage rate change is expected to impact the number of likely applications, or if a natural disaster were to cause a spike in insurance claims. You can model other changes such as in productivity or shrinkage (illness, annual leave etc.) and study the impact on capacity. Perhaps you know when a new initiative is coming into play – automation, for example – and you could view the predicted changes in metrics like task time or volume. You could even model the impact of headcount attrition, new hires or changes in individual learning curves or routes to competence, or SLA changes.
With the power of AI, these scenarios can be modelled in real-time with the flick of a switch (or a key on a keyboard). But AI needs one big thing to work its magic. And that’s accurate data.
3: Ditch the spreadsheets and automate planning
If plans aren’t based on the very latest data, you can’t make the very best decisions. Feeding your AI-driven business planning tool with accurate date negates the need for messy spreadsheets littered all over the organization. It also means that when things change suddenly, you’re able to react quickly.
When mortgage application volumes fluctuate based on interest rate changes, market trends, or other economic conditions, you’re at risk of under- or over-staffing which could be hugely detrimental to your customers and your business. Business planning with AI and the right data allows you to adjust staffing needs in real-time, while simulating different scenarios to prepare for spikes and dips before they happen.
Or take an insurance call center. Having the right data to hand means you can adjust staffing to respond to natural disasters or regulatory changes faster, improving response times and customer satisfaction without the costs of over-staffing.
Business Planning from ActiveOps
We’re pleased to say that in series 4 of ControliQ from ActiveOps, our Business Planning tool makes creating annual operating plans much easier, scenario planning more precise, and continuity planning more robust. Powered by Decision Intelligence from across your operation, Business Planning enables operations leaders to calculate the impact in changes in work volume, SLA, turnover, automation, process improvements, and improvements in operating efficiency. Businesses can adapt to changes as they happen, and stay in control even during turbulent and unpredictable times.
ActiveOps Business Planning helps you plan at scale, for the longer term, and gives you the ability to demonstrate operational resilience and control. Users can model up to 9 dynamic scenarios and view real-time dashboards – all based on, and connected to, the Decision Intelligence that ActiveOps provides. You can read more about it here. We can’t stop the service operations equivalent of an invading Greek army. But we can ensure that, unlike the Trojans, you’re prepared for what’s coming.
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