Winter is coming…and this one is shaping up to be an epic one.
As the end of the year approaches, many organizations are worried about the possibility of a recession. It’s difficult not to be concerned when all we hear about is the doom and gloom of an economic downturn.
This is understandably alarming for enterprises across a wide range of industries. Over the past few years, organizations have faced challenges due to the pandemic and rising inflation. In such a volatile environment, enterprise teams need to remain adaptable in order to succeed.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution that will safeguard your organization against an economic downturn. However, proactive enterprise planning and forecasting—paired with efficient internal processes—will certainly make it easier to handle whatever challenges come your way.
If You’re Not Automating, Now is the Time
When a recession happens, your team needs to be able to respond and make decisions quickly. While recessions may force you to downsize or make budget cuts, they also present unique opportunities that you wouldn’t have during times of economic prosperity.
Your mantra, motto, or “whatever you want to call it” is just one word…automation.
The goal is to either decrease or eliminate the effort by automating as many processes as possible. Then you can put your people to work in terms of actually:
- Finding insights within the organization.
- Being able to pivot on a dime.
- Understanding different market conditions.
- Having your data guiding your C-suite decision-making.
- Automating enterprise planning means you’ll spend less time executing repetitive tasks and more time planning for what is next or what could be next
Automation becomes even more critical when you’re working with a more constrained budget. You obviously want all of your internal resources to be working together effectively. Overall, automation frees up time and resources across your organization to focus on other problems and high-value tasks.
This more proactive approach is not only helpful during a recession. Efficient enterprise planning gives you the agility to handle challenges regardless of the current economic climate.
It’s All About Time to Insight and Insight to Action
As I write this, the recession hasn’t hit…yet. So now is the time to start making some significant changes across your organization.
You cannot remain stuck in a continuous loop with your annual budget, quarterly forecast, or even when you’re producing monthly financial statements. You need to be outside of that loop, looking at scenario analysis and what-if analysis, and being able to then make decisions pretty much in real time.
It’s all about time to insight and insight to action.
Whether it’s a pandemic looming, a potential recession on the horizon, or dealing with inflation over time, any organization in today’s world needs to be able to pivot on a dime and understand their business—as well as be able to flex a business scenario, model it, and instantly get feedback to make decisions.
Collectiv can help in a number of ways.
From a tactical point of view, our experts help you with tools and processes across the Microsoft data stack and across your organization. From a strategic point of view, we look at the whole planning ecosystem to see where the opportunities are to increase efficiency and take action.
A great step forward for your organization is to address inefficiencies by using Power BI for planning and forecasting. Our Power BI experts are here to help if you need guidance.
