Client Story: OVG executes on connected planning roadmap at $20B+ healthcare client
Global healthcare client faces intensifying pain from disconnected planning
Before embarking on their connected planning journey, the client did not have a centralized planning process or technology solution. Sales teams and 30+ product divisions operated largely independently. While the business continued to grow with increasing healthcare demand and a successful business model, there was clearly room for operational and financial improvement.
Both business and finance teams faced common planning challenges. Data was cobbled together with SQL queries, custom scripts, and ETL tools, spreadsheets were traded back and forth between FP&A and hundreds of stakeholders in the field, and disconnects on key planning assumptions was common between four FP&A teams – Corporate, Division, Commercial, and Operations FP&A.
Sales and supply chain management teams ran on their own forecasts, leading to supply disconnects and elevated inventory levels. Agreeing on one plan took massive amounts of energy and time, adding both explicit and hidden inefficiency costs across the organization.
With a newfound focus on financial performance, the client embarked on several planning-related initiatives, including an Oracle EPM implementation for consolidation and total company reporting and an Anaplan pilot for operational planning.
Operations FP&A breaks ground with a 6-week pilot
OVG was engaged to lead the Operations FP&A pilot, which was initially slated for only 6 weeks and focused on planning the client’s distribution center expenses across 40+ locations. The pilot would be the first step in a crawl-walk-run approach.
The pilot was a success, and immediately greenlit to be rolled out to the field in time for planning, less than 12 weeks overall. The new process provided branch leaders in the field with full visibility into their financial targets, YTD progress, and key cost drivers. Planners were provided with forecast templates to update their baseline forecasts, and leadership used multi-level approval workflows to review and approve plans and outlooks in the system. Multiple data sources were centralized to drive modeling and tell the story.
The client and OVG then moved on to build similar capabilities for all Operations-related financials, including outbound freight, inbound freight, and inventory, bringing them together in management reporting. A consistent process and look and feel were applied to all areas, while still allowing for customized data, drivers, and forecast methodologies.
After deploying across Operations, the team engaged more than 200 stakeholders in planning, covered more than 10 individual planning use cases, and developed internal resources to own the technology infrastructure for the long-term.
Pioneering connected planning for an AI-enabled future
The Operation FP&A team’s rapid success did not go unnoticed across the organization. FP&A leadership agreed to start aligning further on both process and technology, following Operations’ example.
The team is now beginning work on cross-functional areas such as revenue planning and cash flow. AI-readiness is also top of mind, and OVG will be working with the client to coordinate with IT/BI teams to integrate with a broader Microsoft Fabric/Power Platform initiative to make planning insights available across the entire organization.
While the teams have made tremendous progress on Operation FP&A, there is much more value to be realized. Soon, operators will be able to engage in planning with simple low-code mobile apps, access information across sales, operations, and finance in one place, and even gather insights from specialized Copilots.