Annual and multi-year resource capacity-based planning

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Annual and multi-year resource capacity-based planning

    This feature enables ServiceNow customers to plan portfolios by analyzing resource utilization against available capacity for either a single fiscal year or multiple years. It supports including demands and projects across all portfolios or within a specific portfolio to evaluate, prioritize, and select initiatives that align with business objectives and budget constraints. Scenario Planning for PPM allows the evaluation of multiple forecast scenarios to ensure consistent investment analysis.

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    Key Features

    • Annual Financial and Resource Capacity-Based Planning: Plan for a single fiscal year by selecting one or all portfolios. Create multiple scenarios to assess demands and projects based on total cost, resource usage, capacity, and strategic goals. Analyze resource allocation and adjust selections to maximize returns and financial value.
    • Investment Funding Integration: Integrate with Investment Funding to retrieve target funding amounts from top-level investment funds for portfolios. Supports configuring funding entities such as business units to align allocated funds with portfolio targets. Note that upgrading to Scenario Planning for PPM 2.3.0 or later requires upgrading legacy Investment Funding to the ServiceNow Store application for integration.
    • Multi-Year Resource Capacity-Based Planning: Enables planning over a window of 3 to 24 months, suitable for portfolios with demands and projects spanning multiple years. Similar to annual planning, it lets users create scenarios, analyze resource allocation for the selected window, and refine project prioritization to accommodate budget, resource, or business environment changes.

    Key Outcomes

    • Improved portfolio alignment with organizational business objectives through scenario-based evaluation.
    • Enhanced resource allocation decisions by analyzing capacity and utilization across multiple time frames.
    • Ability to plan comprehensively within budget constraints by integrating financial targets from investment funding sources.
    • Greater flexibility in planning horizons, supporting both annual and multi-year portfolio management strategies.

    Plan your portfolios using scenarios for a single fiscal year or multiple years after analyzing utilization of resources against available capacity. Include demands and projects in all portfolios or a single portfolio to evaluate, prioritize, and select demands and projects that match your business objectives.

    Plan your portfolio and select demands and projects that you want to execute within the target budget. Create scenarios to analyze your portfolio's alignment with the organization's business objectives. The Scenario Planning for PPM application enables you to evaluate multiple sets of forecast scenarios and analyze investments consistently.

    Annual financial and resource capacity-based planning

    Plan your portfolio for a single fiscal year. You can select all your portfolios or a single portfolio for planning. After selecting your portfolio, you can create multiple scenarios to evaluate the demands and projects based on total cost, resource usage and capacity, and strategic objectives.

    In the annual planning, you create scenarios with different combinations of demands and projects from a specific portfolio or all portfolios for a specific financial year. Based on your selection of demands and projects, analyze the resource allocation for the selected demands and projects derived from the associated resource plans. After analyzing the resource availability and capacity, modify your selection of demands and projects in different scenarios and confirm a scenario that maximizes your returns and add financial value to the organization.
    Important:
    The default configuration is Annual Financial and Resource Capacity Based Planning and single selected portfolio for new installation or upgrade. You can change the planning configuration to plan for multiple years and all portfolios.

    Investment funding integration

    Integrate Scenario Planning for PPM with Investment Funding to retrieve the target amount for a portfolio or all portfolios from a top-level investment fund for annual financial and resource capacity-based planning. If you are planning for a single portfolio, the target amount of that portfolio is retrieved from the New Fund column for that portfolio investment and fiscal period in a top-level investment. If you are planning for all portfolios, you can configure the funding entity for which the organization must be funded, and then the investment planner can add funds for that particular entity in a top-level investment. For example, if your organization is a business unit, you can enable that business unit as the funding entity, and all the funds allocated to that business unit are set as the target for your organization.
    Note:
    When you upgrade Scenario Planning for PPM to 2.3.0 or later version, the legacy Investment Funding must be upgraded to ServiceNow Store for the integration to work. For detailed instructions on upgrading from legacy Investment Funding to the ServiceNow Store application, see Upgrading legacy Investment Funding to Store application.

    Multi-year, resource capacity-based planning

    Multi-year planning enables you to plan your portfolio using a planning window ranging from three to 24 months. If your portfolio consists of demands and projects spanning more than one year or if you are planning for a longer duration, you can plan your portfolio in smaller planning windows. The multi-year planning enables you to analyze resource usage for different demands and projects during the selected planning window and adjust your priorities to accommodate any changes to budget, resources, or business environment.

    In the multi-year planning, you create scenarios similar to the annual planning, but for a specified planning window for a specific portfolio or all portfolios. Based on your selection of demands and projects, analyze the resource allocation for the selected planning window. After analyzing the resource availability and capacity, modify your selection of demands and projects in different scenarios and confirm a scenario that maximizes your returns and add financial value to the organization.