Did you know that Right90 can help you create your Annual Operating Plan (AOP)? Here are the steps that many of our customers are following to take advantage of the features offered in Right90 that shorten the time to finalize an AOP.
First, copy your forecast for the year into a new Right90 plan called AOP 2010 or budget or whatever name you’d like to give it. Your Right90 administrator can do this under the “Manage Plans” administration option. It takes less than a minute to do. We recommend that you save what will become the starting point for your AOP at a “higher level” than your sales forecast in Right90.
For example, if your sales forecast is captured at a very detailed level such as opportunity, sub-region and part number level you may want to create your AOP at a customer, region and part number level. Your unique Right90 hierarchies give you flexibility to choose the best rolled-up view for your AOP.
In addition to controlling the level of detail for your AOP, your administrator can control the permissions for your new AOP plan so that only those that you want will have read and write authority to the AOP while it’s being created and over the long term.
After the foundation for your AOP and permissions are set in Right90, you can begin updating using the same features you have available to update your sales forecast. You can make individual or bulk changes on the Right90 Forecast screen. You can also take the AOP offline, make updates in Microsoft Excel® and import the changes back into Right90. We recommend that you continue to follow your standard AOP approval process, giving authority to update the AOP inside Right90 only to the people who need it when they need it.
You can pull up the AOP in Right90 during a meeting and make adjustments on the fly as needed. Once you’ve reached agreement on the final AOP, your administrator can update the permissions so that no further changes can be made.
Some of the key advantages to using Right90 to create your AOP are:
- There’s a natural and logical alignment with the current view of the business by using the forecast as a starting point for your AOP;
- Having it available real-time and online speeds up the typical iterative process;
- You can include comments when you update the AOP so that you have a historical record of who made changes and why; and
- You’ll be able to quickly and easily compare how you’re doing against your AOP throughout the year because it will be a plan in Right90.
Creating your AOP has never been easier. Save some time and use Right90 to create your AOP!