Have you got a scenario plan for your water supplier’s insolvency?

Malcolm Brock

Managing Director

It is unlikely that you can answer yes to my somewhat specific question, but it relates to UK media which has been dominated for much of this week by the potential collapse of the UK’s largest water company, Thames Water. Whilst the solvency of your water supplier may not be of significant importance to your organisation the financial situation of other suppliers, customers and stakeholders’ could be critical.

So, do you have contingency plans and do they feed directly into your financial plans?

This is where it gets tricky if you do not have the right financial planning and forecasting processes and solution. A proliferation of spreadsheets will not be manageable for the number and complexity of scenarios you may need. Older EPM planning systems may not have the sort of flexible and expansive scenario planning functionality that will enable multiple scenarios, influenced by the right set of drivers and algorithms, for your organisation.

To be ready for the unexpected, organisations must be able to leverage flexible scenario modelling for crisis and long-range planning, cash forecasting, and more. They will also need to tap into techniques like Monte Carlo simulations, predictive planning, and intelligent performance management to be able to make better decisions should the unexpected or even the expected happens. A really insightful read – Scenario Modeling in the EPM Cloud – Forecasting beyond a crisis gives a lot more detail on the key aspects required to enable good scenario planning.

Our hope is always that the plans we make for these many scenarios are never required, as we also hope that Thames Water resolves its current difficult situation, but should the crisis happen it is great to know you have a plan ready or you can adapt one very quickly.

The team at Brovanture have worked on scenario planning for multiple clients over many different industries. If you would like to discuss this or any aspect of planning or Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) then please reach out via LinkedIn or use the contact page on our website or maybe just give the office a call on +44 (0)1483 685450. We are always happy to talk about EPM, and our work, without any obligation and without any high pressure selling, we just love what we do!

If you don’t want to talk right now, then maybe you would like to read a client success story related to our work with planning and forecasting solutions. This is how Edrington UK enhanced customer partnerships and improved profitability working with us to deliver a new planning and forecasting system and processes.

Until next time

Malcolm