With this approach, companies can move from capturing core value such as working capital improvement, operational cost reduction, and service level enhancement to expanding value capture through ESG strategy alignment, opex and capex transparency, margin improvement, talent mix optimization, and stronger employee retention.

Underpinning our approach is a powerful combination of digital enablers—including a dynamic planning architecture, common data platform, intelligence and automation, and self-service analytics—that help companies use the full range of data available to them to make optimal, real-time decisions.

Digital connected planning in action: real-world examples

With a digitally connected enterprise as the north star, we work with our clients to identify and navigate a path that unlocks immediate and incremental value based on their unique business goals, challenges, and planning aspirations.

Here are a few examples of how we’ve helped:

Inventory right-sizing to drive strategic growth in cloud services. A global organization lacked insights and visibility to generate a consensus demand plan, convert demand to practical supply plans, and plan for network upgrades and maintenance. Further, its capex spend priorities were not aligned with its demand and growth strategy. We designed and delivered a connected planning program across demand, supply, and capex planning in support of key program objectives to reduce annual inventory costs by $50 million, improve resource utilization by 5 to 10 percent, and reduce planning effort by up to 75 percent.

Energy company connects operational, environmental, and financial plans. Disparate operational planning systems had limited planners’ ability to produce an accurate consolidated short- and long-term production forecast and react to unforeseen challenges and new portfolio opportunities. We worked with our client to design and implement an award-winning integrated planning platform and internalize new capabilities that streamlined financial, operational, and environmental forecasting—generating $60 million in annual free cash flow and saving an estimated 2,000 hours and $6 million a year.

Patient services company implements treatment-driven planning. The company’s financial planning was disconnected and spreadsheet-centric, with manual ways of working that led to longer planning cycles and little time for data analysis and insights. Slow response times caused by a lack of end-to-end visibility and inefficiencies made it difficult for the company to respond to changing market conditions. We helped our client develop a cross-functional connected planning program that links treatments as a driver for major revenue and cost categories across the financial statements, improves opportunity decision quality by connecting data across business functions, and provides viable insights that drive faster and better decisions.

By working with Kearney to develop new digital connected planning capabilities, these enterprises can accelerate and improve the accuracy of their planning decisions—positioning them to adapt and respond to internal and external disruptions more effectively.

Five solutions to take planning to the next level

As part of our CxP approach, we have developed five robust digital connected planning solutions to support planning in sales and operations, finance, sales performance, workforce, and ESG. While each of these solutions provides a substantial impact on its own, the results are most powerful when combined—as illustrated in figure 2.

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