Decision Lens Accelerate - Spend Plan

Decision Lens Accelerate

SPEND PLAN

• The new Decision Lens Spend Plan capabilities rounds out our robust offering for the FM use case:
  • POM
  • Budget Formulation
  • UFR
  • Spend Plan
• The new capabilities allow users to be able to tie tactical Execution Year tracking back to strategic decision making.
• The new Spend Plan capabilities all users to instantly see if expenditures are ahead or behind schedule by tracking the planned and obligated spend amounts on projects in an execution year.

SPEND PLAN ENABLEMENT

• The Spend Plan option is available for portfolios using Yearly Budget Planning.
  • Monthly resource planning (with monthly, not yearly budgets) is not currently supported to use Spend Plan.
• The display of this option is a configurable setting.
  • By default, the option will be off for all users unless otherwise communicated.
  • Spend Plan can potentially be used as upsell opportunity for different product bundling.
• The option to enable the Spend Plan can be accessed both when creating a new portfolio and from the portfolio settings view.
  

ACCESSING THE SPEND PLAN

• When the Spend Plan capabilities are enabled there will be an additional section of the application that will be accessible.

• For Owners and Participants:

  • Spend Plan from Quick Links.
  • Spend Plan tab in the main navigation.
  
  
  
  
  

• For Contributors:

  • Spend Plan tab in the main navigation.

PROJECTS INCLUDED IN THE SPEND PLAN

• The Spend Plan helps customers plan not what they are funding, but rather how and when are they spending the funds that have been approved for a given project.
• Users must select a Time Horizon to specify the window of analysis.
  • Existing time horizon from Budgets and Schedule page will carry forward.

• Any Projects that are in an Allocated status (Scheduled, In-Progress, or Completed) will be displayed on the Spend Plan page.
  • These are the only projects that have been “approved” for execution.
  • Owners and Participants will see all Projects.
  • Contributors will see only the Projects that they are contributing on.

ELEMENTS OF THE SPEND PLAN

• The Spend Plan has two Primary Sections:
  • 

SPEND PLAN TABLE

The Spend Plan table is designed to capture both planned and actual costs.

• Data can be manually entered in each cell.
• Import capabilities are in progress and will be available shortly.
• Supports multiple Costs/Budgets with expand/collapsible rows.

SPEND PLAN TOTALS

There are two Totals sections that are added to the left side of the table providing aggregate Spend Plan views.

• Total Allocated – Planned Spend
• Cumulative Planned – Obligated

Totals are provided by individual Project and for the Portfolio in aggregate for the Analysis Time Horizon.

TOTAL ALLOCATED - PLANNED SPEND

The Total Allocated – Planned Spend section provides a snapshot to ensure that all of the Allocated amounts have been Planned.  It compares the Total Allocated amount to the Total Aggregate Planned amount  for the analysis Time Horizon.

• Allocated – Total Allocated Cost for the analysis Time Horizon.
• Planned – Sum of each of the monthly Planned Costs for the analysis Time Horizon.
• Diff – The difference between Allocated and Planned Totals.
  

CUMULATIVE PLANNED - OBLIGATED

The Cumulative Planned – Obligated section provides a snapshot to identify if the project is on plan as of the current date: Does the amount of spend to date equal the Planned amount?

• Planned – Sum of each of the monthly Planned Costs for the analysis Time Horizon to date.
• Obligated - Sum of each of the monthly Obligated Costs for the analysis Time Horizon to date.
• Diff – The difference between Planned and Obligated Totals.

SPEND PLAN ALERTS

Alerts will display to notify users of areas where the Portfolio is off plan

❗️Will show in the following scenarios:

✅ Will show in the following scenarios:

Note that both ✅ and❗️can display when Total Actual Obligated to Date exceeds Total Planned Spend whereby the total planned spend is complete however the actual spend has exceeded what was planned.

SPEND PLAN VISUALIZATION

The top part of the Spend Plan Page displays a graphical visualization that depicts the data from the underlying table.

The graph lines along with the individual Project alerts allow Portfolio owners, participants, and contributors to quickly determine if the Portfolio is on Plan and which Projects are influencing the deviations.

MULTI-YEAR TIME HORIZONS

• The Spend Plan Page can accommodate multi-year time frames to look across Calendar or Fiscal Years.
• The Visualization will only be displayed when looking at a single Calendar or Fiscal year year.

SPEND PLAN FILTERING

• The filter Panel is available on the Spend Plan page to get to specific desired views of the data.
• The data can be filtered by Cost, Tag or any Category.
• Any filter will update data in both the table and the visualization.
• Additional columns can also be added to the table.
  • Only the Project column is locked when scrolling.
• Note that Spend Plan filter and Budget/Schedule filter settings are unique and not saved.
  • Both will be saved locally individually.
    

SPEND PLAN CUSTOM TERMINOLOGY

• The Terminology for the Spend Plan can be customized as with other areas of the application.
• Users can specify Custom Names for Planned and Obligated Costs.
  • For example, Obligated costs could be renamed as Committed or Executed Costs depending on the use case.

SPEND PLAN PERMISSION

• The Spend Plan Page edit Permissions can be managed for Portfolio participants.
• Portfolio Owners can determine for each Participant if they are permitted to edit:
  • Cost Request
  • Allocated Cost
  • Planned Cost
  • Obligated Cost
• Participants can view all costs regardless of Permissions.
• Contributors all have access to edit Planned and Obligated Costs for the Projects that are contributing on.

SPEND PLAN GOALS

• Set what your goals are for your Spend Plan and then see if you are hitting them on the Spend Plan visualization. Goals defined visualize how your Obligated amounts should meet your Allocated amounts for the fiscal year.
• The Spend Plan Goals add a line to represent the overall spending goals. The goals line represents the spending goals by month for the fiscal year.
• Goals are a straight line extrapolation and automatically generated but can be edited if desired. ​
• To modify the goals, select the pencil icon in the bottom right or the Spend Plan chart and select within any month's cell to enter a new goal. Changes will be applied immediately.
• The visualization has red/green indicators for when the plan is below goals and/or actual is below plan.

Exporting Spend Plan Data

• Spend Plan data can be exported from the “...” menu in the upper navigation bar. If a filter is applied, there will be an option to export all data or the filtered subset. 

  Exporting the data breaks it down into 3 tabs within the Excel workbook: 

  • Spend Plan: an overview of the data for each project including Start and End Dates, Request, Total Planned, Execution to Date 
  • Planned: All of the Planned data for the given date range set in the top right corner 
  • Obligated: All of the Obligated data for the date range set in the top right corner 

 

Exporting Spend Plan Graphic

In the top right of the Spend Plan visualization, select the menu to export the visualization. It can be exported as a .png, .jpeg, .pdf or .svg. The export factors in applied filters and page resizing. ​