From Spreadsheets to Forecast: One Scenario Across Five Pillars

Okay, so first up then, hopefully, Romit, you're on the line. Uh, Romit, right?

Romit Patel 2:59

Yeah, all good.

Elliot Iles 2:59

Cool. Well, I'll hand over to you then.

Romit Patel 3:02

Perfect. Thanks, Elliot. So I was working on something in the last couple of weeks about how we kind of coordinate or use the various pillars around one central theme.

So something that my team's asked for, something that our customers ask for at one of our customer days is, it's great having all of these things that are coming out, but how do you focus it around one particular scenario and use multiple tools to address the need? So I thought, let's do that. We as a team in the PS team focus on doing a forecast for the next three months, right?

So we take whatever works in our diary, we look at where the gaps are, look at where we can extract more from and the resources that we can do that. And we have to forecast on a weekly basis those numbers and week on week they're checked. Now, that's quite an intensive process, and it does require a lot of human intervention to look at diaries and say why this can't be done and why it can be done.

But I'll try and take you through a demo today that addresses that. We have one scenario, forecasting, and we're using multiple pillars. Multiple people need different needs, and it's kind of removing the no from when people say, well, I can't get access to X or this product doesn't show me why. you kind of have an ave around it now with all the pillars that are coming around.

So I'm going to share my screen and hopefully you'll see that. Now, my demo doesn't start and end in Navigator, so apologies for that. It starts with a task in Navigator.

So if I go into my Navigator, my weekly task, which I'm actually quite delayed for because it's meant to be today, is I need to produce our forecast data to various members of the team. So Sonny's high level, just needs a summary of information. He doesn't dive into the detail too often.

The members of the team leads, they need to focus on the current week that we need to action and put that numbers into the forecast sheet. And then everyone on our weekly call needs to analyse the next four weeks to extract as much information as we can and understand where we can do the highest impact in the next four weeks. weeks, right? How our data looks is, and this is actual data, this is our focal point.

It's really colorful, it's really busy, but for me, it's a headache because I can't see easily what spots are. Is that true? What's happening with these bookings?

And we've got a good team here. So again, there's a lot of information that comes out of it. So my first step is actually going into Data Engine.

So using Data Engine to curate this data, clean it and produce one source of truth. So for me, it's taking budget information from Excel sheets that Sunny has sent me. It's taking our team information from a workflow form that Neil's created.

It's taking our revenue data from our actual accounts database and cleaning it to have our figures. And then at the end of it, I have some data that I can work with and use in the various pillars to make sure it's all centred around the same information, the same data, and the same kind of level of information that the users need. So I'm going to take our kind of ESS daily revenue as an example.

So the first step, this is nothing new, but if I just update that task, is analytics. Analytics will give me a great, and it's not a new pillar, but it's an existing one, but this is what we would currently do, right? Analytics will give me a great view on what has happened, right?

So Sunny could log into this, or Neal could log into this, or I could and say, great, that's where we're performing month on month, year on year. Now these numbers have been played around with, so don't take it as fact and reach out to Jonathan saying what you're doing, but this gives us an indication of what's happened, right? What's happening, where should we have been last year, and again, a good visual to see and analyse particular users of particular people.

But I still have to log into that every day, right? So that gives me one view of the world. The second view is what our teams want to focus on.

I want to give them a reason to say, well, I haven't had a chance to look. where, or I haven't had a chance to look, or I can't easily spot where someone's going down week on week or someone's going up week on week. So the next step was, okay, well, let's build something in Evo workflow automation, right? So using that same data on Evo workflow automation, I connect to that data on a weekly basis.

We do a live refresh at a point in time. It does loads of nice things to clean it and put it into a friendly format that the guys want to see it in. And then it just spits it out into our weekly Teams channel that we have our forecasting for and gives them the numbers in the chat, right?

So again, no excuse to say, I don't have enough time or I don't know what the analysis is. So if I just run this, we'll go over to my Teams chat. And you can see it's already spun through, so I didn't have time to show it empty.

But it's giving me my monthly summary. It's giving me my next three months summary. And then right down the bottom, when it spins through, this is the last one, it'll give me a nice summary that Sunny could use that just gives him a high level of what's happened.

So when he's speaking to someone, he can really quickly see, okay, we're doing all right on the week. But there is some underpouring resources. These are the resources that we need to focus on.

So again, they've got that information to hand using the same data that comes from Analytics and the same data that was in Data Engine. Moving over to the next step is then a case of we've got that data, but we need to really dive into it to see where we can extract more in the next three weeks. That's our focus area.

Right, so once we forecasted the next two months, our weeks or the one week 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 is where we can really get some value out of it. So if I go back into here, if I was, and I say if, my teamwork doesn't have a connector to data engine, so I've just uploaded data into data engine, but the same data, So ideally, if there was a connected to data engine, it would make it really useful. But then I've given it a really good prompt and a really good instruction about how we work and what we do and how the data lives and etc.

And I've asked it to produce me a trend for the next four to five weeks. I was going to do this on the topic, it takes a while. It tells me what's going on.

So if I go to my four to five week window, I know what's happened in the past. I know what's happening in the current week. Now this is telling me what's happening in the future, right?

This is telling me we have around 57, 000 pounds worth of revenue that we could convert if we tidied up the diary, right? So if we looked at our white space days, if we looked at our personal notes, if we looked at our utilised non-billable trends, So again, it gives me that future kind of forecasting view. So we have something to hang our hats on.

We could get to this figure if we do the things below. So going through resource by resource gives me a summary, who's recurring kind of patterns. So he's got loads of personal notes for this particular customer.

If we were to convert that, that's 10 days worth of work, right? So it's really good. That's probably a focus to get in kind of the team looking at is convert that early.

Working my way down, because it's just loads of information. We can interrogate this, but the key thing for us is right at the bottom, it'll give me my trends and patterns for that four to five weeks, and it will give me my rank tension summary. Now we know who we look after in the team, so I can go to these resources and say, well, John, this is the focus area, and this is what we've seen.

This is what the opportunity is. How can we convert that? Right.

That's what we want to focus on. And that's your focus to task for the next few days to get sorted. Going down to these low resources area, what are they doing well or what has happened in their diaries that make sure that they're in that green or low priority state?

Can we learn from those? Is that a weekly thing that they're always in the low priority state or is that Okay, so just for the next four weeks, they're in a low priority state. So this is now giving me the future side of things.

So that information kind of tied together is what we can use on our weekly call. So we've got all the data, we've got everything we need, and that's fantastic. The last, I guess, cherry on top is an Eva builder template.

So this isn't got a back end, it's not fully functional, but What we then do with that scenario is we need to do a cat plan for FY26 using the same data. I could connect to it in Data Engine, so it's going to do that now. So let's connect to that data in Data Engine.

You have to bear with me with this one. I'm going to choose that same data that I have access to, the daily revenue. And I'm going to start building my what if scenario.

So what if we did X, Y, and Z? What could we look like for next year? Right.

So there's my data. It's just validating it coming through. I'm going to tidy up a little bit because it's got some of the things wrong because it's told me medium confidence here.

That's actually a time measure. This one down here is actually a measure. I want to measure the rate. measure the billables, measure loads of other things.

And I'm happy with that. So I'm going to go to continue. I can then configure what I want to configure.

So our financial year goes from July. The date column that's going to link back to it is the date column. And I'm happy to kind of do a time granularity of 12 months.

What do I want to group by? So it's picked up my data. We're doing it on a resource by resource, and we're calculating how much revenue each of our resources is bringing in per month.

Now, this gives me that view. So really good. Just going to Give it a tidy up.

This gives it that view. Yeah, and we can see who's doing what over the months and for the future months. I know we haven't completed June, so there's no point having that as an accurate June.

So I'm going to create some scenarios. So the first scenario is for the future months, just replace that with last year's data. So we can get an AZAP picture if we done last year's data plus this year, Where can we, where can we end up?

So, just doing that, that's our new baseline, but we have some scenarios, and so some people have left, so again, I'm going to create a lever, so Sam has left, he's not left, he's going to move teams, so I'm going to remove Sam's data from my thing, so Sam himself. And he actually left back in January. I'm going to create that scenario.

So scenario one, if we were to just carry on as normal, we will end up 15, 000 pounds worse off than we were at this point, worse off this year. So like next year that we were this year. But we're also getting some new starters.

So again, I'm just creating some scenarios. So we're going to get a new starter. It's going to be three of them.

I'm going to add a new row, go to rows, going to be enter a new value. and they're actually going to start straight away in June. How do I know what they're going to get? I can do a progressive ramp up, I can do other things, but I'm going to set my target value.

So between them, they need to get us 15, 000 pounds in the next month. I'm going to create that scenario. And again, it gives me a breakdown of my new scenario, my old scenario, and where we're going to end up, right?

But the key thing I'm trying to highlight here is it's all from this, if I find it right, it's all from this central point of truth. But for different people, they would use different means to get to that data, right? So going right back to my navigator task, Sunny would probably use the forecasting tool in analytics.

The rest of the team would use the team messages that they get, plus the Evo teamwork side of things. And then the forecasting is something we actually sit on recently to then sit and plan out scenarios for next year. So it just gives you a roundabout way of using all of it in one go.

And it's something that our customers say as well, right? How can we do X when the system can't do it? But it's normally centred around one scenario, not multiple scenarios.

So that was a quick whistle stop. If anyone wants to reach out for any questions or anything afterwards, please give me a shout, but I'll hand back to Elliot.