Enterprise business planning: Disrupt the technology trends

Enterprise business planning refers to a mighty shield against business risks. Enabled by technology, business planning processes would be less challenging.

In a half-century of development, emerging technology in integrated business planning and operational planning is believed as the inspiration of planning process improvement. Accordingly, most company leaders concede that those improvements have a profound impact on stimulating enterprise value. 

By contract with the booming in the evolution of business operation globally, many enterprises are struggling in linking parts of their planning process. Evidently, enterprise business planning needs to thoroughly consider several elements, not limited to finance, supply chain, R&D, product development, and more. In this case, the concept of technology-embed business planning was born to empower the integration across the planning process. A fully integrated plan is expected for the future of enterprise business planning.

Unfortunately, the pandemic outbreak disrupts several business standards, building the new norm in the international market. It profoundly affected enterprise business planning in many ways by adding challenges. You can read the article of tips to manage business uncertainties. In this article, we would discuss the change of enterprise business planning in this period with the emerging of technology.

The role of Enterprise business planning

With proved long-term value for enhancing business performance, enterprise business planning is not only a pre-execution task. It is also a central concentration in business operation. In which, the vital roles of business planning for enterprises are expressed by three indicators:

1. Coordination among department of enterprises:   

Many business leaders express their concern in using enterprise business planning to enhance internal coordination, connecting separated departments into one. From research to practices, enterprise business planning provides a common forum to discuss different views and targets. At this point, information, prediction, goals, research, and more could be put together to unify the views and deter misunderstanding when implementing every task.

2. Standardized target setting   

Enterprise goals might vary due to their positions and divisions. Leaders might struggle to review and approve an enterprise business planning. Accordingly, formatting and standardized the plan to follow a unified goal setting would deter the challenges. While the goal system could not be identical across companies, it still follows some strategic estimations, including revenue growth, cost optimization, market share, profits, etc.

3. Decision-making scheme   

Applying enterprise business planning for decision-making would strengthen the certainty. Evidently, a comprehensive plan provides possibility and define the alternatives in the decision process. Commonly, a plan would consist of research and prediction, which can be seen as fundamental for strategies forming.

Element of enterprise business planning

In many cases, focused areas in the planning process might indicate a distinct definition for each company. However, apart from the private motivation, the process of enterprise business planning showed some identical elements. It is used as a business shield against unprecedented volatility affected by customer expectation, competitor capability, efficiency optimization, and investor benefit.

Integrated business planning

As the pandemic outbreak and business uncertainties disrupted the global supply chain due to the cancelation across several means of transportation, the need for resource planning optimization is taking into account. Hence, it needs to have a proper plan that fitting with the operations-oriented capability to strengthen the company supply chain. Basically, integrated business planning is indicated from two areas:

1. Sale and demand planning covers sale performance, inventory, demand planning. In most cases, sale and demand planning needs to integrate into supply chain planning.
2. Financial and commercial planning in the relationship with sale and operation performance.   

The concept of integrated business planning suggests a combination of the two mentioned areas. Unfortunately, due to the distinct functions, a truly integrated business plan currently challenges many groups since it requires enormous efforts in connecting a dynamic ecosystem. The integrated business planning system could separate into many levels, which are several combinations among functions.

Benefits of Fitting enterprise business planning

For many leaders, persuasive enterprise business planning would shape the business operation, which would lead to revenue growth and increase productivity. Expressly, implementing correctly the business planning process is expected to drive operating margin by having an accurate forecast against market volatility. Obviously, appropriate enterprise business planning generates profound advantages for players. We listed here some core targets of integrated business planning.

On the other hand, enterprise business planning is expected to adopt the digital transformation in many industries for creating a clear end-to-end view across many parts of corporation operation. Based on historical data, emerging machine learning and Artificial Intelligent would instantly create several options for enterprise strategy in the business plan.

Leveraging technology trends in Entrepreneurship business plan

Whenever tools or software development solutions supporting enterprise business planning are used, it needs to follow a paradigm:

• Systematic learning and adjustment: In fact, building an integrated business planning cannot finish in a single phase. The business planning process would generate several revisions based on feedback. Followingly, the feedback loops give details regarding the gaps of planning and authentic performance, which should be considered for the next planning cycle.
• Integrated planning and execution: technology assistant for building entrepreneurship business plan, in expectation, break the gap between ideas and practical performance, by leveraging data value. Recently, raw data collected through the operation process would be processed and analyze to detect value insight and trends. That information gives businesses more certainty in response to market fluctuation.
• Concurrent planning: Obviously, planning is not an event that should be constantly adjusted and change with aligned performance routines. Any change and disruption in the market or inside the enterprise would lead to seal-regulating in business planning.

Enterprise resource planning software

In the digital world, lagging behind means dead that traditional enterprise business planning was no longer advantageous. In this case, the software development solution builds several options for the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Of which the initial purpose focuses on adding digital transformation into the business planning process. Accordingly, a typical ERP system would transfer several functions within the plan into a single solution.

Indeed, the fundamental ERP is based on the transfer and share of data for redistribution across the system. ERP system separates many user access levels to work in the same system simultaneously, by decentralization principle. Using an ERP system for enterprise business planning is obviously convenient and inevitable in handling massive data input. In addition, you can see how ERP application outweighs business challenges.

Accelerate Enterprise Business Planning by AI adoption

Despite the notice of artificial Intelligence could destroy human civilization, AI innovation replaces human tasks even in entrepreneurship business planning. AI-based enterprise resource planning system will be the future in the business sectors.

Until now, it remains debate regarding let’s machine intelligence profoundly contributes to the planning process. Objectors believed that AI has less flexibility than humans. Then, it only delivers a standard business plan without any breakthrough. By contrast, supporters admired the speed benefit and mistake reduction when working with AI.

Indeed, no matter you want it or not, you should prepare for AI-enabled ERP to not lagging behind. Without a doubt, software engineering and computer science would replace parts of the process in enterprise business planning. In expectation, AI ERP would be offered in late 2021 with an innovative AI system despite the technology incomplete at the moment.