Implementing Connected Planning

Successfully implementing a Connected Planning approach encompasses a lot more than just replacing legacy systems and spreadsheets with a Connected Planning technology platform. In this short lesson, we’ll introduce you to the course and to some of the other critical factors that determine success as an organization begins, and continues, its Connected Planning journey.

Implementing Connected Planning is a significant, transformative change for an organization. But organizations rarely get to successful Connected Planning without encountering some challenges along the way. In this week’s lessons, we’ll explore some common issues related to each of the three pillars of Connected Planning – People, Data, and Plans – that arise when moving from traditional planning to Connected Planning.

A successful implementation of Connected Planning requires many things from many people, and not just from individual players in the implementation project team. In this week’s lessons, we will explore different ways in which organizational culture, sponsorship, and advocacy can enable Connected Planning.

Data issues pose significant challenges for a Connected Planning implementation. In this week’s lesson, we explore approaches that can be used to facilitate the clean-up, governance, storage, and transfer of data for Connected Planning purposes. We’ll also touch on the necessary components of the broader digital ecosystem necessary for successful Connected Planning.

The third pillar of Connected Planning is the plans themselves. Plans are not once-a-year exercises; they are dynamic decision-making tools that help an organization to adapt and adjust course when priorities or conditions change. In this week’s lessons, we explore the opportunity to re-engineer planning processes so that they work in a way that leverages the power of Connected Planning – revamping data hand-offs, shifting decision points, or expanding data and drivers, including the use of predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to increase the impact of the plans.

In this week’s lessons, we circle back to people issues and consider how change management and deployment planning, including communication and training, must be competently addressed in order to have a successful Connected Planning implementation.

Implementing a Connected Planning approach within an organization is about much more than just adopting a Connected Planning technology platform. The final requirements for this course are to complete and submit a project and to complete a peer review for two other learners’ projects. In this project, you will assess your organization’s readiness to address and overcome challenges that often impede Connected Planning implementation. If you do not have experience working in an organization, you will need to interview someone about their organization to complete the project.