Four Things You Can Do Right Now to Get Future Ready
As the saying goes: the past causes the present and influences the future.
This interrelation between past, present, and future is key to using the past as a mirror to look into the future. This is of immense significance for both individuals and organizations. And it is the secret to getting your company’s future ready. There are just four steps you need to take, here they are :
1. Understanding what happened in the past, and why—Data Management and Data Visualization
Analyzing data related to your past can provide key insights into your past performance. It can help answer questions like:
- How did you perform in terms of your revenue?
- How do your direct & in-direct costs compare to your revenue?
- Is your cost of sales high?
- Are you able to control your overhead costs?
- What is the effect of seasonality on your sales?
- Which region, customer, channel, or product is performing up to your expectation?
- Is there any region, customer, channel, or product that requires special attention to improvement?
- Does your CAPEX allocation produce the intended results?
- Is your workforce headcount, transfers, additions, attrition, and cost tracking to the detailed level of granularity for better human capital planning?
As you can see, historical data (your past) holds the key to understanding your performance and deciding whether you should continue what you are doing or make any course corrections for a better future.
Data that you need for this introspection will come from various enterprise systems like General Ledger, Sales & Marketing System, Asset Management System, Customer Relationship Management System, HR/Payroll System, and various other mission-critical systems on which your business is dependent.
Data management & data visualization can play a major role in dissecting your historical data and preparing for the future.
2. Understand what is happening currently—Consolidation & Close
Current data represents your current financial year data. And this is even more important due to the recency factor. Your recent history is a more accurate representation of what is going to happen in the next few months/years. All the questions we raised earlier based on historical data are also relevant to your current data.
- Collection of raw data from various source systems/modules such as ERP, CRM, HR systems
- Reconciling & consolidating the data to eliminate redundancies
- Providing narrative reporting of the data.
Current data collection & reporting is a very systematic process that requires the utmost expertise and a deep understanding of your business processes.
3. Understanding what you need to do next—Strategy & Planning
With a clear understanding of our past (history) and present (current), it’s time to plan for your future. You have the option to continue doing what you are currently doing with a risk of competition or obsolescence taking you over or change your course and adapt to new products/solutions/methods/technology which is futuristic.
Remember the days of printed encyclopedias like the ones published by Britannica? They were big and bulky and heavy, but it was all we had. Then came the era of Encarta from Microsoft, which was originally sold on CDs/DVDs, and we all marveled at how compact it all was. Now nobody talks about encyclopedias or Microsoft Encarta. They all vanished with the rise of Google and Wikipedia. This journey from printed encyclopedias to in-memory Encarta to online Wikipedia underscores the need to understand the pulse of the consumer and the necessity of constant change to stay relevant. And that, in a nutshell, is why strategising and planning for the future is so important.
Planning for the future starts with redefining your vision, mission & goals, and charting out a strategy to achieve them. This includes translating strategy to key performance indicators (KPIs), setting targets for KPIs and measuring these KPIs.
4. Understanding how to get there – Digital Transformation
Once you define your strategy & plan, and your strategy map is ready, the next step is to put digital systems in place to document your strategy/KPIs/targets and monitor them.
- Tracking Strategy using KPIs – Scorecards
- Historical (Past) Data Management – Data Marts/Data Lake
- Current (Present) Data Preparation – Consolidation & Close System
- Future Data Generation – Data Science, Planning & Budgeting System
- Data Visualization – Dashboard Systems
- Integration & Automation – Data & System Integration and Process Automation Systems
How Constellation Consulting Group (CCG) Can Help You?
CCG can help you link your past to your present and forward to your future in a seamless way and, yes, we have this done before, multiple times. We lead digital transformation initiatives for some of the biggest businesses in the Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) region.
When it comes to sourcing, analyzing, and reporting your past data, CCG brings rich experience in heterogeneous source systems, handling structured and unstructured data, platform agnostic integration capabilities and excellent data visualization expertise.
CCG stands out with its multi-industry, multi-geography experience in delivering Consolidation & Close, Accounts Reconciliation and Narrative Reporting Systems to take care of your Current (Present) Data Preparation.
Future data generation in the form of Planning, Budgeting & Forecasting is our sweet spot. We can help you with your Operational Plan, Financial Plan, Strategic & Long-Term Plan. Scenario Modelling, Cash Flow Planning, What-if Analysis, and the ability to prepare models to handle unexpected eventualities like COVID-19 using your Planning & Budgeting Systems.
In a nutshell, we can help you get future-ready, through predictions about your future using historical (past) & current (present) data as a source with the help of predictive analytics and cutting-edge machine learning algorithms.
Ready to step into the future?
