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A supply chain leader shares what happened when they replaced instinct with precision. Live webinar, early July.

Most S&OP programmes don’t fail dramatically. They fade. And while they fade, they’re quietly generating the very risks they were designed to prevent.

Industrial groups are planning across diverging cycles. As demand shifts unevenly, connected planning is key to maintaining accurate, real-time forecasts and confident decision-making.

The signals are there. Scattered across systems, buried in data, hiding in plain sight. The question is whether anyone is listening.

This article breaks down the features delivering real value today, and why Bedford’s Anaplan-only focus and Master Anaplanner expertise turn platform capability into lasting performance.

That’s where Bedford’s Demand Planning Accelerator comes in—a pre-built, best-practice Anaplan model designed to streamline demand planning implementation and deliver value within weeks

Discover how Anaplan’s scenario planning empowers real-time decision-making, side-by-side comparisons, and customisable templates. Save, revisit, and simplify complex forecasting for impactful results.

Discover how Bedford ensure onboarding and setup success for Anaplan users from Filip Czerniawski, one of our Ignition Consultants.

Bedford Consulting we offer several on-going support packages ranging from access to our knowledge exchange and training support through to a full managed service offering.

Phil Marshall, Solutions Consultant, has worked in Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) roles for more than twenty years, across sales, implementation, training and support roles.

Organisations are moving beyond siloed planning towards a more strategic, connected approach. This shift is enabling better decision-making, more accurate forecasting, and greater agility in an increasingly complex business environment.

Our FP&A accelerator model is a powerful and practical solution that can help you streamline your FP&A processes, improve your forecasting activities and enhance your business performance.

Incentive compensation management (ICM) is, in short, the process of designing, implementing, and managing the compensation plans that reward your employees for achieving specific goals.

To thrive in the dynamic world of business, a robust forecasting strategy is indispensable. Embracing modern planning software can significantly boost the accuracy and speed of financial forecasts.

Innovation requires a certain level of risk-taking. In an innovative culture, employees feel safe to take calculated risks without the fear of punitive consequences if they fail.

ESG (environmental, social, governance) considerations in supply chain planning require organisations to assess and mitigate environmental impacts, promote social responsibility, and adhere to strong governance principles.

Now, more than ever, organisations are expected to not only deliver strong financial performance but also a positive social and environmental impact.

There is no doubt, the ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) landscape is becoming increasingly complex with shifting global goals, increasing regulations, high stakeholder expectations plus the need for consistent reporting.

ESG reporting is a huge challenge for organisations, mainly because it is new, impacts seemingly every aspect of the organisation and expectations from stakeholders are high.

In recent years, the ESG agenda has seen a meteoric rise in prominence, with people and governments around the world taking a strong interest in genuine progress being made.

Supply chain leaders should take advantage of automation with the goal of carrying out real-time reporting with minimal manual input.

When supply chain and finance are connected with a collaborative relationship, supported by accurate data, it drives more accurate and profitable decisions, and supports organisational objectives.

Companies that lag are ignoring forecast accuracy metrics and missing insights generated from external data, which will be a missed opportunity to advance their future planning skills.

Trade promotions, an integral strategy for many manufacturers, CPG (consumer packaged goods), and retail organisations, are typically used to drive sales or increase demand for a brand’s products.

Supply chain planning must consider resilience, agility, and sustainability in addition to balancing supply and demand.

Senior leaders must set the foundational conditions for change; designing a sales model that aligns buying and selling.

A good business continuity plan should maintain trust with the customer during times of crisis, ensuring their requirements are met despite any disruptive events.

The best organisations know how to turn uncertainty into sustained growth. That relies on two elements, a clear view of the world and an adaptable plan to win.

By investing in the digital infrastructure, organisations will have increased accessibility and flexibility to be able to build out alternative scenarios. Learn how rapid insights enable agile decisions.

The characteristics of an agile company include cross-functional collaboration from start to finish, with resources and decision-making powers available when required. Learn more here.

Recent global disruptions have shown how quickly change can happen, and often without warning. Proactive resilience is crucial to creating a truly agile organisations Find out more in our blog.

Embrace real-time scenario planning and get yourself a seat at the table to drive improved decision-making in the business.

Uncertainty makes high-functioning agility and integrated business planning essential to success. Find out how scenario planning can improve agility and speed in our blog.

A good forecasting process should allow organisations to have a better understanding of where they are headed based on current actions and plans.

Financial forecasts are critically important planning tools, in virtually every decision they make, executives today consider some kind of forecast.

Financial forecasting estimates important financial metrics such as sales, income, and future revenue to support budgeting and financial planning. Read more

The pressure of responding to today’s challenges has exposed the limitations of outdated, ineffective planning and forecasting systems.

The pandemic and other disruptions have shown how businesses can innovate and shift focus in little or no time at all responding to customer demands and change to supply chain.

Cross‑functional collaboration only creates value when it leads to better decisions. Learn how finance‑led, connected planning aligns teams, improves forecasting and builds decision confidence across the organisation.

Our values of customer focus, partnership, humility, innovation, quality, and teamwork underpin every decision we make as an organisation, we truly live and breathe them on a day-to-day basis.

Having teams work off a single source of truth, eliminates rework and conflict over the data, driving collaboration. Find out more

Top-performing teams collaborate to focus on customer engagement and innovation strategies. Read more

Collaboration only drives value when teams share insight, assumptions and data. Connected planning brings the organisation together around better decisions.

Sales leaders should be better equipped to interpret the sales cycle, draw out crucial insights and coach the sales individuals to success. Read more

S&OP enables effective supply chain management and focuses the resources of an organisation on delivering what their customers need.

Sales leaders need to act quickly and predict when pivots or adjustments are necessary. There are many routes to achieve the revenue goal. Read more

S&OP enables effective supply chain management and focuses the resources of an organisation on delivering what their customers need. Read more

Advanced analytics can be used to unearth new growth opportunities and even identify early-stage trends.

S&OP is a process that must evolve in line with business requirements as well as any product or portfolio changes. Read more…

Today’s S&OP must align business functions to drive growth and agility

S&OP is a monthly integrated business management process that empowers leadership to focus on key drivers.

An effective sales and operations planning (S&OP) function is essential to thrive in today’s operating environment. Read more…

HR is well positioned to bring data-driven insights to talent decisions, read our blog to find out more

Regular communication is critical in the beginning, both about the “knowns” and “unknowns”; this will ease misgivings, decrease distraction, and keep people motivated.

Ongoing supply chain disruptions are pushing HR leaders to consider a variety of scenarios, including talent plans. Read more

During crisis conditions, finance must accelerate budgeting and forecasting work, providing continually updated business information that can then be incorporated into forecasts

Organisations need to focus on team dynamics and wellbeing, sustainability as well as connecting to the organisation’s purpose. Read more

There are several areas where finance plays a crucial role during (& after) a business disruption such as cash flow, risk management, financial obligations as well as strategy and planning

Finance will have to prioritise and communicate during all three stages of a business disruption. Read more…

Agile organisations require increased adaptability to support employee mobility and the resulting shift in the hiring process. Read more

Flexible or remote working and a more fluid approach to working groups are becoming the latest HR trends, read more

The CFO must respond quickly and strategically to any crisis, that’s in addition to the changing regulatory and compliance landscape

As the organisation of the future takes shape, HR will need analytics to support key business decisions and buy in for a transformation. Read more…

In step 4, the finance team need to present the budget to senior leadership for approval. For a best practice approach, read more.

This blog compares step 3 of a conventional budgeting process to budgeting with a connected planning platform. Read more…

Comparing step 2 of a conventional budgeting process with spreadsheets or legacy systems to budgeting with a connected planning platform.

This blog shares the first step of budgeting using a connected planning platform. setting the high level targets. Read more…

Hypergrowth can be achieved in a couple of different ways, find out the characteristics that create successful hypergrowth organisations.

If last year was about survival, 2021 is about convenience, inclusion and sustainability fuelling the further adoption of financial technologies, both in the coming year and beyond. 

To achieve unicorn status, to be a startup company with a valuation of over $1 billion, is one of the most desired phases of any fintech company’s existence.

Legacy systems can hold back innovation, resulting in significant losses. Outdated software is less efficient, which has a negative impact on employee productivity.

Five risks of using spreadsheets and why they can no longer support business requirements. Discover why legacy systems should be upgraded.

Yesterday’s data architecture cannot meet today’s need for speed, flexibility, and innovation. Find out how to leverage external data.

What will the new normal look like for organisations? Remote collaboration and technology, what do they have in common? Find out how to leverage hybrid working.

These cannot be ignored when growing a business during crisis including uncovering value, decision making and workforce adaptability.

Scenario planning and effective forecasting is just one of the five response tactics businesses must take during a crisis.

A typical crisis unfolds across three phases: respond, recover and thrive. The challenge lies in being able to nimbly consider all three phases concurrently and allocate resources accordingly.

Anaplan PlanIQ with Amazon Forecast, can help teams across finance, supply chain, sales and human resources to make highly accurate decisions.

The way in which businesses support, sell and communicate with their customers has changed, and heightened expectations from customers who now expect nothing less than exceptional service.

Planning is too often siloed in individual lines of business. The key is that they are done as part of a cohesive, integrated, and enterprise-wide whole.

Despite all the negative impacts COVID created, it’s provided opportunities for transformation too – digital differentiation, proactive customer management and global operating models.

Post-COVID CPGs need to adopt a new model, that looks quite different from the old model, by continuing to leverage scale advantages, changes in marketing, supply chain and back office.

To emerge stronger from the pandemic CPGs must look beyond the immediate challenges and into the next normal, such as contactless and subscription shopping.

COVID has caused major upheaval and consumer behaviour shifts. Three trends have emerged, including nesting-at-home and unexpected fluctuations in demand.

Companies with greater enterprise agility can be positioned to respond to heightened uncertainty, including both supply chain responsiveness and consumer-facing experiences.