Connected Planning, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 7Understand: Why Did We Get the Results We Got?

To understand is to perceive patterns.

—SIR ISAIAH BERLIN

What is the next step once you have all the data you need that not only suits your role and your tasks at hand, but is also a good reflection of reality? Understanding why you got the results you did can potentially help you avoid them (if they're negative) or help you duplicate them (if they're positive) in the future. It's also the gateway to new insights.

If we look at the Understand process within the Planning Operating System in more detail, as in Figure 7.1, we see:

• Drill Down. Consumers of all that information will want to drill down into the details.
• Point of View (POV). When users “slice-and-dice” the data, they create a specific point of view. They look at specific products, by customers, for certain time periods, compared to historical information. And when they want additional reporting on their findings, they want that specific point of view passed on to the Visualize process.
• Financial and Operational Analytics. These include trending, benchmarking, outliers, ratios, ranking, and visualization.
• Facts. Facts uncovered in the Understand process can be fed into the models within the Debate process.
• Predictions. When a what-if scenario is developed, you want to analyze the probabilities of various predictions to see which is the most likely to occur.

  Figure 7.1 Close-Up of the Understand Process, and Its Inputs and Outputs

  Drawing by Meredith Dimon. ...