Winter21 Adds More Flexibility, Speed, and Ease-of-Use

Every day, FP&A is being tasked to do more, do it faster, and do it with the highest levels of accuracy. 

The past year put FP&A under immense pressure to help companies react to the fast-changing environment. Even though we’ve all somewhat adjusted to this new normal, business leaders have come to expect that level of performance from FP&A. But, after a year of chaos and exceptionally long hours, that can be difficult to sustain. The only way FP&A can keep up is with increases in productivity and efficiency, freeing up time to work collaboratively with the business to make better decisions. 

Winter21, which is now available to Planful customers, is here to help. This marks a continuation of our commitment to deliver intuitive solutions that simplify how you work and make it faster and easier to access and manage financial and business data. 

As you explore the new capabilities and features in Winter21, you’ll see shorter cycle times, easier data management, and more flexibility to work how you want to work. Here’s a quick overview of what you can expect.

Easier Workforce Planning

Winter21 adds enhancements to how companies can manage their workforce and extend data and details across multiple employees. Now, when updating or adding multiple employee records, it’s faster and easier to duplicate information such as salaries, insurance, state and federal tax information, and more. 

These new Workforce Planning capabilities bring more speed and efficiency to the planning process. That’s especially helpful as our customers continue to demand workforce planning speed and flexibility, particularly those in the retail and hospitality sectors.

“Because of the Planful UI, it was a great and easy transition,” said Tim Zue, Executive Vice President & CFO at Boston Red Sox, in an interview on their use of Planful. “This has been an absolute game changer in our goal of being more efficient and accurate.”

Additional Reporting Flexibility

Winter21 also brings ease-of-use enhancements to Spotlight for Office. Many of our customers use Spotlight to create cascade reports, which are then distributed to different areas of the business. Winter21 eases how those reports are managed, what data is visible to whom, and how many levels of reporting are visible to individuals. It also brings more flexibility to how data is displayed in Spotlight reports. Best of all, you’ll now be able to build and share Spotlight reports much faster than before. 

Winter21 also makes it easier for administrators to access dashboards and reports, saving time and effort when configuring new users. 

Increased Visibility in Dynamic Planning Data

Easing how FP&A works with every corner of the business is what makes Continuous Planning such a compelling journey for Planful customers. But we all know FP&A has to help raise the financial IQ of everyone they work with. That’s how we all make better, more informed decisions. And, we’ve prided ourselves on helping FP&A build and communicate the story behind the numbers, which makes it easier for the business to understand and trust those numbers. 

Winter21 brings additional visibility to the formulas and details behind those numbers, helping the business quickly dive into calculations to better understand models and the drivers behind the data. And, it puts the business users in control so they can drill down themselves when they require more information. 

Winter21 also simplifies the process of bringing external operational data into Planful. This not only makes it easier to get the data you need into your models, forecasts, and plans, it adds flexibility and speed to the overall Planful user experience, both for FP&A and the business. 

Glide into 2021 with Winter21

Our latest Planful release is all about usability for our customers. We’ve made it faster, more flexible, and more intuitive in many areas. For FP&A, that means less time managing data and building reports and more time working with the business to make better, faster decisions. For the business, it provides easier access to the financial information you need to act, react, and move forward. Winter21 builds on our already intuitive and usable platform, letting you get to work doing what it is you do best.

Every Planful customer received access to Winter21 automatically on February 19. There’s nothing you need to do. 

If you have feedback or a product suggestion, we invite you to reach out to your Planful account manager. In the meantime, we’ll be hard at work on our next product release. See you back here soon.