As organizations navigate economic uncertainty, evolving market conditions, and increasing pressure to make faster decisions, finance leaders are reevaluating the tools and processes that support planning and forecasting. While technology continues to advance, the most successful organizations recognize that achieving better outcomes requires more than implementing new software. It requires a more mature, agile approach to planning.

Drawing on lessons from the field, organizations that successfully modernize their financial planning and analysis (FP&A) functions tend to focus on a few critical areas: data readiness, stakeholder engagement, operational agility, and the strategic use of AI.

The growing challenge: Doing more with less

One trend is becoming increasingly clear across organizations of all sizes: bandwidth constraints are intensifying.

Finance teams are being asked to deliver deeper insights, evaluate more scenarios, and respond to changing business conditions faster than ever before, often without additional resources. As a result, organizations are seeking ways to improve efficiency while enabling more strategic decision-making.

This challenge extends beyond internal finance teams. During planning system implementations and transformation initiatives, organizations must balance project participation with day-to-day responsibilities. Limited stakeholder availability can delay projects, reduce momentum, and ultimately compromise outcomes.

The most successful organizations address this challenge proactively. Rather than treating implementation as a separate initiative, they align project timelines with business realities, communicate anticipated resource constraints early, and plan around peak workload periods.

Organizations that remain actively engaged throughout projects consistently experience better results than those that take a reactive approach.

Modern planning requires more than technology

Many organizations begin their planning transformation journey with a simple objective: replace spreadsheets or modernize legacy processes.

However, technology alone rarely solves the underlying challenge.

Before implementing a new planning platform, organizations should establish a clear understanding of what they want to achieve. Leaders should define their business objectives, identify reporting and forecasting requirements, and determine which decisions need better support from finance.

Without this foundation, organizations risk implementing sophisticated technology without fully leveraging its capabilities.

Successful planning transformations often begin with key questions such as:

• • What decisions are currently difficult to make due to limited visibility?
  • Which planning processes consume excessive manual effort?
  • Where are forecasting inaccuracies creating business risk?
  • What information does leadership need more quickly?

Having a clear vision helps ensure technology supports business outcomes rather than becoming an end in itself.

Why organizational change often triggers planning transformation

Many organizations begin evaluating planning solutions during periods of significant change.

Growth initiatives, mergers and acquisitions, market expansion, and restructuring efforts frequently expose the limitations of manual planning processes. What may have worked in a relatively stable environment can quickly become unmanageable when business complexity increases.

Spreadsheet-based planning environments often struggle to keep pace with evolving organizational structures, multiple business units, and changing reporting requirements.

By contrast, modern planning platforms provide the flexibility needed to analyze performance before and after acquisitions, model alternative scenarios, and support continuous planning processes without rebuilding reports and models from scratch.

As organizations scale, agility becomes just as important as accuracy.

Data integration is no longer optional

Another lesson emerging across finance organizations is the growing importance of connected data.

Today's finance teams rarely operate from a single system. Many organizations manage financial, operational, workforce, and sales data across multiple platforms. As a result, planning accuracy depends heavily on the ability to move data seamlessly between systems.

In many cases, organizations are connecting three or more source systems into their planning environment while also pushing data into analytics platforms and data warehouses.

Without a connected ecosystem, teams often spend excessive time collecting, reconciling, and validating information rather than analyzing it.

The goal should not simply be automation. It should be creating a continuous flow of trusted information that enables decision-makers to focus on insights rather than data preparation.

AI is accelerating planning maturity

Artificial intelligence has quickly become a major point of discussion within finance organizations. Yet despite widespread interest, many companies remain in the early stages of adoption.

For some organizations, planning software serves as an entry point into broader AI initiatives. Rather than implementing AI across the enterprise all at once, finance leaders are using forecasting, scenario planning, and analytical workflows as practical starting points.

The key question is no longer whether AI can be applied to planning processes. It is where AI can create meaningful business value.

Several common business triggers are driving greater investment in AI-enabled planning:

• • Pressure to improve team efficiency without increasing headcount
  • Growing expectations for faster reporting and decision support
  • Volatile market conditions requiring rapid scenario analysis
  • Increased merger and acquisition activity
  • Executive demand for more forward-looking insights

In these environments, the speed of insight becomes a competitive advantage.

When business conditions are changing by the day, or even by the hour, organizations need planning and forecasting capabilities that can keep pace.

The shift from reporting to decision-making

Perhaps the most significant benefit of modern planning processes is not the technology itself. It is how organizations spend their time.

Historically, many finance teams devoted the majority of their effort to gathering data, consolidating spreadsheets, and preparing reports. Valuable resources were consumed by administrative work rather than strategic analysis.

Modern planning environments fundamentally change that equation.

When data collection and reporting become more automated, finance teams can dedicate significantly more time to analyzing results, evaluating scenarios, and guiding business decisions.

This shift often leads to more mature planning practices, including:

• • Rolling monthly forecasts
  • Scenario modeling
  • Long-range planning
  • Cross-functional planning initiatives
  • Continuous performance monitoring

In other words, organizations move beyond simply producing reports and begin using data to drive action.

Making analytics more accessible

Improved access to data often uncovers opportunities organizations did not realize existed.

As information becomes more organized and centralized, leaders gain visibility into trends, relationships, and performance drivers that were previously difficult to identify. This visibility enables more sophisticated analytics, stronger executive dashboards, and more informed decision-making across the organization.

Many organizations already use visualization tools such as Power BI, but the value increases significantly when planning data is integrated alongside actual financial results.

The result is a richer view of performance that combines historical reporting with forward-looking insights.

Five lessons finance leaders can apply today

Organizations seeking to improve planning effectiveness should focus on five key principles:

1. Prioritize stakeholder engagement

Active participation remains one of the strongest predictors of project success. Establish clear expectations, maintain communication, and plan around resource constraints.

2. Define business objectives before evaluating technology

Start with outcomes, not features. Identify the decisions you want to improve and the challenges you need to solve.

3. Build a strong data foundation

Clean, structured, reliable data remains essential. As the saying goes: garbage in, garbage out.

4. Focus on planning agility

Modern planning should support growth, acquisitions, market changes, and evolving business conditions without creating additional complexity.

5. Measure outcomes, not outputs

The goal is not producing more reports. The goal is making better decisions faster.

Moving from insight to action

As finance leaders face increasing demands for speed, accuracy, and strategic insight, planning maturity is becoming a critical differentiator.

Organizations that combine connected data, engaged stakeholders, modern planning processes, and targeted AI capabilities are positioning themselves to move beyond reporting and toward real business impact.

The future of FP&A is not about generating more information. It is about turning information into action.

Any advice contained in this communication, including attachments and enclosures, is not intended as a thorough, in-depth analysis of specific issues. Nor is it sufficient to avoid tax-related penalties. This has been prepared for information purposes and general guidance only and does not constitute legal or professional advice. You should not act upon the information contained in this publication without obtaining specific professional advice specific to, among other things, your individual facts, circumstances and jurisdiction. No representation or warranty (express or implied) is made as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this publication, and CohnReznick, its partners, employees and agents accept no liability, and disclaim all responsibility, for the consequences of you or anyone else acting, or refraining to act, in reliance on the information contained in this publication or for any decision based on it.