1. Administering Planning
  2. Planning Best Practices
  3. Best Practices for Designing Your Application
  4. Best Practices for Planning Your Application

Best Practices for Planning Your Application

An important best practice is to establish the goals, key objectives, and scope of your application. Implementation is often broken into phases to keep objectives in focus. After you know the requirements, you can move forward with designing your application.

The information you gathered earlier can be included in your application as follows:

  • Dimensions

  • Forms

  • Reports

  • Calculations

  • Users

  • Design dimensions. Identify the dimensions required to support your process. Your application comes with these dimensions: Account, Entity, Version, Scenario, Years, Period, and Currency, where applicable.

    • Identify the members to be included in the application and the source of those dimensions. Understand the size of each dimension.

    • It's a best practice to document calculations. For each piece of the calculation, document how the result is determined and the source of the number. Confirm if the source is data entry or data fed from another system.

  • Design calculations. Review your company’s profit and loss statement line by line, and confirm how to plan or forecast the account. For accounts that require calculations, you can leverage Calculation Manager to build the logic.

    Understand calculations, and ask any necessary questions. For base accounts, confirm how each account is planned. Sample questions:

    • Does this calculation apply for all entities?

    • Are there any other dimensional aspects to this calculation?

    • Is the calculation by product or customer?

    • Is the calculation the same for Plan and Forecast?

  • Determine revenue calculations. It's a best practice to establish the requirements for revenue and its drivers.

    • Know the business drivers you use, and understand if revenue is driven by product or services. Decide if you want to derive revenue in your model. Identify any other information to capture.

    • Establish the revenue drivers. Determine if other dimensions are required.

    • Decide on the logic for revenue planning. Identify the calculations you want to build to support your process, for example, Units x Price. Plan the logic behind your revenue calculations.

    • Determine the forms and the layout to collect information and input from end users.

  • Determine expense requirements. Review your expense accounts to identify the key areas of your business.

    Focus on the areas that make up the majority of your expense to identify the major drivers. You can plan the remaining minor expenses in a very simple and straightforward way, such as by using trends or by simply entering a value.

  • Determine expense drivers. Focus on this group of accounts, and determine the business drivers of the accounts and the required dimensions.

    Review your expense accounts to identify the key areas of your business. Focus on the areas that make up the majority of your expense to identify the major drivers. You can plan the remaining minor expenses in a very simple and straightforward way, such as by using trends or by simply entering a value.

    • Review employee compensation. Confirm how employee compensation will be planned, such as by employee, job, or grade.

    • Know which accounts are included in planning, and understand the sources of data to support compensation. Identify the type of reporting you do on compensation.

    • Assess other expense account requirements. Plan the calculations you need to build to support your process. Know the logic behind your expense calculations.

    • Document calculations. For each piece of the calculation, document how the result is determined and the source of the number. Confirm if the source is data entry or data fed from another system.

    • Determine the forms and the layout to collect information and inputs from the end users.

    Determine the approval process. Determine the dimensions that drive the approval process for Plan and Forecast. The base dimension of approval process is Entity, Scenario, and Version. Decide if you want to include another dimension, such as Product, Project, or Market.

    Document the approval process the application should support.