A Pigment North American Impact Partner of the Year.

Is Your Team Ready for a Planning Solution Project?

Most FP&A platform projects don't slip because of the software. They slip because data, stakeholders and decisions weren't lined up before the clock started.

Run through the checklist below before kickoff and you'll skip the fire drills that usually show up in week one.

  • Description Executive sponsor identified, someone who can make scope and budget calls without a committee

    • Day-to-day project owner named on your side

    • Use cases in scope are written down and agreed on internally, not just implied

    • Go-live milestones checked against your close calendar, budget cycle, and other competing initiativestext goes here

    • Every source system that will feed the platform is identified (ERP, CRM, HRIS, data warehouse, etc.)

    • One internal owner named per source system, the person who can say what a field means and why a number looks the way it does

    • A sample flat-file extract pulled from each core dataset

    • Known data quality issues flagged up front (non-standard chart of accounts, in-flight ERP migration, recent M&A, etc.)

    • FX and currency handling decided: converted at the source, or handled in the platform

    • Current reporting hierarchies and groupings documented, even informally

    • Metric definitions aligned internally, and anything ambiguous or disputed flagged before build starts

    • Existing process flows or Excel models on hand to reference

    • Sensitive datasets identified (compensation, benefits, etc.) and who should or shouldn't see them

    • Dimensions requiring restricted access called out (cost center, region, business unit)

    • SSO setup started if you're using it

    • For each use case, the boards or reports needed to support it are listed

    • Existing report examples or mock-ups on hand

    • Change champions identified to drive adoption once you're live

“The pattern we see most often: projects stall not because the technology is hard, but because nobody was named as the owner of what fields matter on the data extract. That’s a business decision, the same one you’d face building the report in Excel, and it belongs with whoever owns the source system.”
— Bill Rausch