Rolling data snapshots of Weekly and Monthly forecast for different Versions

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gaurav
gaurav Member, ALL USERS, Partner, Certified Model Builder Posts: 5 New Contributor
in Planning & Modeling

We have a scenario where there is a need to do a weekly forecast for short term (next 13 weeks) and monthly forecast for remaining periods of the fiscal year. The forecast and actuals need to be captured in both weekly view and monthly view. Also the monthly view needs to be tied to a consolidation system (another tool having data at monthly level fiscal periods).

 

There are many entities and the fiscal calendar is not same for all of them. Majority follow the Gregorian calendar but there are several entities having different starting and ending dates for each fiscal periods. For Ex.

Entity 1 = Period 1, Jan 21, 1st Jan to 31st Jan

Entity 2 = Period 1, Jan 21, 1st Jan to 28th Jan

Entity 3 = Period 1, Jan 21, 1st Jan to 4th Feb

 

Since this can't be accommodated within the Model calendar due to different dates for fiscal period and the weeks not rolling to specific periods, an option is to have the native calendar set to "Months/Quarter/Years" to get the monthly view and creating a custom weekly list to get the weekly view.

 

The entity dimension is very big (3000+) and other dimension being used in different modules includes currency type, customers, vendors, channels, time, versions and will result in large sized modules.

 

Additionally there is a requirement to snapshot the forecast into different versions and use them for variance analysis within Anaplan. So the current forecast needs to be saved into the following snapshots for all key modules and also require variance analysis between them. The Prior 1 to Prior 4 are rolling snapshots and needs to be updated as week changes.

 

Forecast - WK1 : Snapshot at the start of current quarter
Forecast - Prior 1 : Snapshot 1 Week Ago
Forecast - Prior 2 : Snapshot 2 Week Ago
Forecast - Prior 3 : Snapshot 2 Week Ago
Forecast - Prior 4 : Snapshot 5 Week Ago

 

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Any suggestions on the best approach to achieve the weekly and monthly views and also the efficient way to manage the snapshots?

 

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Comments

  • gaurav
    gaurav Member, ALL USERS, Partner, Certified Model Builder Posts: 5 New Contributor

    @ArunManickam 

     

    We can do that but there are many modules and we will have size constraint. please suggest the best approach considering model size constraint.

     

    Gaurav

  • gaurav
    gaurav Member, ALL USERS, Partner, Certified Model Builder Posts: 5 New Contributor

    @ChrisAHeathcote 

     

    Yes, Model size is the main issue. Customer wants to have the snapshot for previous weeks as well to check the variance and there are many modules so model size is the biggest concern.

     

    Gaurav

  • zach_hird
    zach_hird Member, ALL USERS, Partner, Certified Master Anaplanner, Certified Model Builder Posts: 5 Certified Master Anaplanner

    @rob_marshall 

     

    Can you elaborate further on "bulk copy can be used on any list, not just native versions." 

     

    Thanks 

  • zach_hird
    zach_hird Member, ALL USERS, Partner, Certified Master Anaplanner, Certified Model Builder Posts: 5 Certified Master Anaplanner

    @rob_marshall 

    Thank you very helpful! Have you seen a good solution for taking monthly forecast snapshots and not letting the data change in those snapshots?

     

    I thought versions and bulk copy would do it, but if a switchover date is included in the snapshot version then actuals could technically change for any line item using "if isactualversion()..." before the switchover date. And if a switchover date isn't used in the snapshot version then actuals data will never get to line items that use "if isactualversion()..." because the system doesn't know when actuals start/stop (even after a bulk copy from actuals to snapshot version A). I'm torn. 

     

    Basically I'm looking to freeze/ snapshot data (actuals and forecast) and never have that data change but also be able to refer to these snapshots for variance and other reporting 

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