Budgeting with Writeback
Posted on August 20, 2024 | By Admin
The process of budgeting, an instrument of fiscal discipline and accountability has evolved from the times of its introduction in the late 1700s in public domain and the later in the 20th century in the backdrop of industrialization. Companies of all sizes have taken to preferred methods and technologies to conduct this exercise – from manual excels to systems that can help conduct what-if analysis, aid workflows and also integrate business planning.
Today, the concept of continuous planning with real-time data has become an inevitable part of any serious budgeting process. In the world of data and analytics too, planners need mechanisms to make live updates to multiple enterprise systems, explore scenarios without having to be switch applications or worry about accuracies or delays. The ability to update, explore data within their analytical context is crucial.
Let’s take the case of a US-based grower and consumer of Qlik Sense analytics having pertinent questions during budgeting:
- How do you allocate budgets based on historical truth (weightages derived from past data)?
- How do you modify budgets and understand business impact (across product, SKU, geographies)?
- How do you use live data to make budgeting decisions?
The writeback experience with SenseOps
Let’s explore this case with a simple writeback experience for budget planners. The SenseOps Writeback extension allows for real-time data inputs on budgetary spends from Qlik Sense applications, synchronizing updates across multiple sources.
The extension relies on a widget-like user interface to make it easy for users of all types (business and power users alike) to build their own writeback table and map fields from their table to those in the source databases. Users can also collaborate to add row-level comments, unlocking new engagement levels.
How it works
- Direct, contextual inputs: No more storing data manually, creating a connection, retrieving it to view in Qlik Sense. Users directly input budgets from their applications, track live results and store data in desired format and path for future retrieval.
- Dynamic splitting: In dealing with budgets across products/ categories or any metric , the ‘split’ feature helps in dynamically calculating weightage of the factors involved and assigning values in the budgeting hierarchy. Factors may include product sales over time/ for a period, market trends/ seasonality, events and more. Ex: A $125K budgetary spend for the category of Vegetables split across Tomatoes, Broccoli, Artichokes, Beans can be viewed as a cascaded allocation. A pre-calculated weightage of 0.5, 0.2, 0.2, 0.1 has been assigned (Alternatively, this can be derived from past performances).
- Room for adjustments: Modifying budgets at granular levels (in this case – products) is another common scenario enabled for planning with inputs from field teams, management or partners. While manually altering an existing split here, planners can choose to override the weightages allocated for products or increase/ decrease budget overlays at the aggregate (in this case – Category).
Live updates allow users to explore how totals get rolled up or rolled down, depending on where modifications are done. Decision-makers can rely on historic data, dynamic or manual weightages to form their budgeting model across data at scale involving variables. More importantly, there’s flexibility to simulate from within Qlik Sense applications and trigger actions– including notifications or workflows.
To try a full-fledged experience with your data, write to us, schedule a demo or try it live.
