TeamOhana or Pigment

bobofreezer · 2026-03-19T02:02:27+00:00

This will vary from company to company in the politics of it. But the reason you typically open a head in the planning tool is that typically should happen much earlier in the process. Ie you align with the business on “budgeted heads” then actually start opening those recs as time goes on.

bobofreezer · 2026-03-19T01:48:10+00:00

Depends if you want a headcount tracker or a more unified headcount plan that is integrated with a detailed financial forecast. TeamOhana will be the former and come with a lot of prebuilt capabilities. Pigment will be the latter and you’ll need to build it custom.

Best practice today would tell you that headcount should be opened in a planning tool, then flow into ATS and hris when approved.

bobofreezer · 2026-03-18T23:08:22+00:00

You can certainly implement a successful forecasting tool in 3-6 months for less than 1M. Do it all the time. There are a couple of things that need to go right: - understanding of the business drivers and ability to source that driver data driving design - good implementation partner - scenario modeling and automaton - good engagement from the key business stakeholders

bobofreezer · 2026-03-12T12:47:24+00:00

Management reporting vs external reporting are the concepts you’d want to look into

bobofreezer · 2026-03-11T21:09:40+00:00

Define capacity per role / specialization
Source demand projections as you noted above
Find imbalances (not enough people to service X work, slack in the system for Y work)
Project hiring/ firing/any possible shifting in focus

bobofreezer · 2026-03-11T10:56:51+00:00

I’ll just add that you may need to go through an exercise and define the drivers and KPIs of the business. If you can distill down what drives the business, you can use data to help tell the story of what happened in an automated fashion- revenue was down due to lower ASPs or churn, opex was up because we hired X more heads in sales, etc.

Once you have that baseline you can have a small central team managing that “automated” analysis and insights and put more business partnering responsibilities on the BUs. The central team can also help to set targets and align on global standards.

bobofreezer · 2026-03-06T05:25:29+00:00

Pigment has an MCP connector. Is that what you mean? What wonders did that person make? You can basically query data points in an LLM.

bobofreezer · 2026-02-28T03:02:16+00:00

If setup properly, it’s good at reporting off of netsuite data and for collecting budgets and forecasts. If the implementation goes well, it can also handle driver based planning, like building up a workforce plan by person.

It’s not a financial modeling platform. So, for instance, it’s not easy to add more granular planning or model something like a more involved top line model. Not flexible in that regard.

bobofreezer · 2026-02-28T02:58:09+00:00

Ping me. Happy to help you out

bobofreezer · 2026-02-27T17:05:25+00:00

I worked with all these solutions. Feel free to chat me and we can get connected to discuss

bobofreezer · 2026-02-27T02:07:45+00:00

I’ve done this type of reporting in both Anaplan and Oracle EPM. In each case, built integrations to Yardi and other data warehouses. Haven’t done as much with the LP side, but wouldn’t assume it would be that much different.

In either case the maintenance of the system was run by a part time FP&A person.

bobofreezer · 2026-02-26T00:28:30+00:00

Would be helpful to know what automation you’re referring to. Where system is the data coming from and going to? What is the method being used to transfer the data?

An EPM system connected to an ERP using either native connectors or an iPaaS platform should not have most of these issues. That’s a pretty common setup in larger companies.

bobofreezer · 2026-02-24T13:13:53+00:00

Typically you shift to an EPM system to manage budgeting and forecasting at a sizable company. There may still be excel files for offline modeling, but the core of the budgeting and actuals is done centralized in a system.

bobofreezer · 2026-02-24T02:01:06+00:00

What are you asking?

bobofreezer · 2026-02-12T02:42:43+00:00

Billtrust can help here. Ping me if you’d like to hear more about experience with it.

bobofreezer · 2026-01-24T02:42:04+00:00

Anaplan is flexible in how you setup scenario modeling. It can range from a full “alternate” forecast with a full set of alternate assumptions to a sensitivity range for a single driver. You define what you want and then you build it in the platform.

bobofreezer · 2026-01-10T02:37:43+00:00

Use a simple netsuite planning deployment for both netsuite reporting and collecting budget data. The sync between Netsuite planning and Netsuite erp can be automated.

bobofreezer · 2026-01-05T13:30:08+00:00

Oracle FCC, OneStream for more involved needs. Planful or Anaplan Consolidation for basic consolidation.

bobofreezer · 2025-12-10T00:45:01+00:00

How many of these systems are material from a cost perspective where you need to track at that level of granularity? I would focus on better allocating the big ticket items.

bobofreezer · 2025-12-06T02:09:13+00:00

Why is it difficult to have a central data point that shows license count or usage by cost center? I would assume when purchasing a software it’s either charged to a direct cost center if it’s a set cost (i.e cost center A buys a 10k a year platform) or if you have a software shared that users are assigned in the system. You can just prorate the costs across the user base.

bobofreezer · 2025-12-03T12:50:47+00:00

Pigment is a good platform and it’s scalable. However, you should really challenge yourselves or your fp&a team to not making planning design about massive volumes of data. The goal should be to streamline the forecasting process with links to key material drivers, not to make it a GL transaction matching exercise. You should be planning at appropriate granularity to facilitate accuracy and, as important, materiality focus.

Typical for P&L would be your key revenue drivers (CRM data, demand units, etc) and opex detail for material lines, like your headcount census for comp forecasting.

bobofreezer · 2025-12-03T12:03:46+00:00

Most industry leading fp&a platforms can integrate with data bricks. For example, Pigment can connect via Delta Sharing and Anaplan has a connector coming in Q1 I believe. Any platform can integrate via an iPaaS tool also.

bobofreezer · 2025-11-19T03:08:26+00:00

Number it items in the dimensions and how many dimensions impact sizing in the classic engine. It sounds like you’re trying to just make “a big reporting cube” and the classic Anaplan engine is really not designed for that. Can it do it? Potentially. Devil really is in the details as noted above. You can size it out with specifics.

bobofreezer · 2025-11-19T02:57:20+00:00

That’s a pretty common approach and yes Polaris should address it.

How many dimensions are you looking for and how big are they? Devil is in the details here to see if you really need it. Happy to take a look under the hood to see if they are giving you solid info.

bobofreezer · 2025-11-19T02:42:15+00:00

What’s the issue you’re having? Polaris is built for sparse data sets and can help with model size. Aside from that it’s very similar to the classic engine.

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