Fall20 Gives You More of What You Need Most

Over the past year, Planful has released an incredible number of enhancements to our existing products and new features and capabilities across our entire suite of solutions. But 2020 is not yet over, and we’re excited to announce our Fall20 product updates. But first, a little recap. 

Winter20 launched our elegant new user interface and continued our innovations in Continuous Planning. We also pioneered Dynamic Collaboration in that release, being the first to empower FP&A with interactive commentary across plans, reports, and more to provide more insight and context into how and why business decisions are made. Spring20 expanded Dynamic Collaboration with threaded conversations and comments manager. Summer20 included improvements to Workforce Planning — especially critical as the pandemic made this function critical for so many companies — and added more power to Dynamic Collaboration and Dynamic Planning.

Fall20 continues these themes as they reach across FP&A and out into all corners of the business. In this update, we’ve added new and advanced Workforce Planning features, enhanced Dynamic Planning, and made even more collaboration and usability improvements, especially to our best-in-class reporting capabilities. Let’s dive into each of these areas for more detail. 

Workforce Planning When You Need It Most

This past year has been full of surprises for both your people and your HR team. Compounding the challenges of remote work are talent shortages, continued uncertainty, and a reliance on siloed technologies and manual processes. But progressive HR teams are taking a collaborative, people-first approach that uses data and insights to their advantage. They’re also partnering with FP&A and the business to turn what’s typically an organization’s biggest expense — the workforce — into a resilient and nimble strength.

Fall20 builds upon the Workforce Planning advancements made over our past several quarterly updates. It empowers HR to proactively and quickly adapt as the business or market changes, it brings more collaboration features so HR can work with every corner of the business to make smarter workforce plans and decisions, and it enables a tighter focus on delivering business results while strategically preparing for the future. 

Dynamic Planning for Every Corner of the Business

Another trend in 2020 was the obvious need for every organization to move faster. FP&A team’s need for agility, responsiveness, and real-time access to data were critical to business survival. But that spread across the business, since each team needed to plan, model, and forecast again and again as things changed. Our Dynamic Planning investments and innovations throughout the year helped our customers quickly recover from the initial impact of the pandemic. 

Fall20 advances Dynamic Planning to let business users across the organization plan the way they work by more easily integrating any of their business data into their Dynamic Planning operational models. Sales doesn’t plan the same way Marketing does, which doesn’t plan the same way Operations does. Everyone uses different datasets from unique tech stacks in their planning activities. Fall20 ensures both FP&A and business users can get the data they need into their planning models and forecasts quickly, reliably, and consistently.

You’ll see more from us as Dynamic Planning is used in different areas of the business, so stay tuned.

More and Better Reporting for Everyone 

We’ve always believed that usability is critical to our customers’ success. If they love using our solutions, they’ll use them more often, take advantage of more of the power, and move faster on their Continuous Planning journey. 

Fall20 doubles down on usability, especially in Dynamic Collaboration. We’ve expanded the areas where users can engage in threaded conversations, tag people in comments to alert them to changes or assign tasks, and much more. It really opens up a new frontier for FP&A and the business to collaborate, provide more clarity into the stories behind the numbers, and use those discussions to make better, more informed decisions. 

Another area where Fall20 makes big advancements is in reporting. Fall20 makes it all easier, and adds more reporting and dashboard options so everyone gets the experience they want. For Dashboards specifically, Fall20 also adds more flexibility in how you access your data with a smoother, higher resolution mobile experience so you can get the insights you need no matter where you are. 

Everything Helps, Especially Now

Fall20 shows our commitment to continuous improvement, continuous innovation, and, of course, Continuous Planning. It also helps FP&A elevate the financial IQ of every corner of the business. 

Every Planful customer received access to Fall20 automatically on November 27. There’s nothing you need to do. 

We know most of you are smack dab in the middle of 2021 planning season. That’s always a busy time, but this year is unlike any other. Fall20 lets you trim cycle times, ease data capture, work faster and more collaboratively across the business, and even generate better reports for more teams in exactly the formats they desire. And, during a pandemic planning season, we know that every little bit helps. 

We’re grateful for your continued support and suggestions, and we can’t wait for you to see what we have coming in the weeks and months ahead. There’s more for FP&A, more for the business, and more for everyone. But for now, enjoy Fall20!