Connected Planning, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 3A Planning Operating System

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

—CHARLES DARWIN

You have a lot of data. Tons of it. And you're getting more every day.¹ The trick is to turn that data into information that will help you take some action to further your goals.

Data comes from a wide variety of places these days:

• Structured transactional systems (internal and external)
  • Enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), human resource information systems (HRIS), and other primary systems
  • Rate services (foreign currency rates, interest rates, economic indicators)
  • Myriad “legacy” systems
  • Partner systems (e.g., a supplier's inventory system)
• Unstructured internal systems
  • Email and calendars
  • Documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoint files
  • Notes, annotations, announcements
• Unstructured external systems
  • Twitter
  • Blogs and comments
  • Facebook
  • Newswires
  • Websites

So how do you make sense and meaning of it all? How do you make it useful and work for you?

Context

First we need some context. A number doesn't actually mean anything by itself; 127 could mean anything. It's not until you know more attributes about the number that you can do anything about it.

Some of the most common attributes of plan numbers include:

• Units. This could be dollars, volumes, days, and so on. Let's say 127 means dollars for this exercise.
• Account. For example, sales, travel expenses, headcount. ...