The myriad of plans organizations rely on are typically created in silos, which limits coordination and organizational alignment. Today, though, technology can play a vital role in improving the value and effectiveness of companies' planning processes. Deploying a dedicated planning platform promotes collaborative planning by unifying the data used to plan across the business and making business unit plans accessible to all.

Five key ingredients are necessary for more effective predictive planning and to achieve a higher return on your company's planning processes:

• a unified platform for planning, reporting, and analytics that combines financial and operational data
• short planning, budgeting, and review cycles with measurable objectives
• driver-based planning
• analytics to enable planners to create more accurate plans and budgets
• collaboration and high participation