Defining business propositions and financial viability.
The challenge
Due to the rapid global e-commerce growth during Covid, the client planned to invest in e-commerce initiatives across multiple countries.However, a strategic planning model providing robust financial viability analysis was first required for the investments to be approved.
Their planning model was complex, difficult to use, had security and versioning issues, and consequently had low adoption rate. So, a new way of working was required to support country and proposition set-up, consumer basket and sales modelling, end-to-end fulfilment modelling, top-line and bottom-line cost modelling, and investment planning.
The approach
After considerable research, Anaplan was suggested and approved as the best software to build multidimensional financial planning and analysis models. Following the approval, the strategic model was built in three stages:
- Replication of the functionality of the MS Excel planning model (MVP).
- Integration with the financial model based on the client’s omni-channel accounting and corporate finance standards.
- Development of additional driver-based revenue and cost modelling functionality based on user stories and real-world applications in e-commerce.
The results
Sales and marketing, fulfilment and logistics modellers in each country became able to interact with the cloud-based Anaplan model, providing their estimates to build an omni-channel compliant financial viability analysis for in-store and e-commerce propositions.
The model generates income statements and cash flow reports with a 10-year horizon for each proposition and country. Interactive dashboards simultaneously display modelling progress, key financial metrics and comparisons between investment opportunities.
