In this series, Marco Santiago, VP of Finance and Co-Founder of Finicast, shares his expertise on various aspects of collaborative planning, providing valuable insights to help you navigate the transition from a two-dimensional to a multi-dimensional planning mindset. Gain valuable knowledge to shift your planning mindset, harness the power of data dimensions, identify essential platform features, optimize analysis, manage scenarios and models, streamline team collaboration, and evaluate performance and scalability.

Marco loves planning, spreadsheets, and analysis. He created and automated FP&A and accounting workflows for years in Excel, Google Sheets, Anaplan, and other systems. His background includes professional consulting at KPMG, financial analysis at PG&E, and operations management at Optimizely. This has given him visibility into the challenges of large, established companies as well as the unique aspects of high-growth companies.

How does modeling change in collaborative planning? How do you shift from a two-dimensional to a multi-dimensional mindset in planning? 

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How does organizing data differently impact composing formulas in dimensions as opposed to cells? How do I have to think about that differently? 

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How does the ability to utilize dimensions across models affect the way I should consider connected models or table connections compared to Excel?

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What features do I need to be looking for in a collaborative planning platform to be successful?

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What features should I be looking for in a collaborative planning platform to make sure I can produce the best analysis?

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What are the kinds of things I should be doing in terms of scenario planning and managing versions of my models?

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What is needed to make collaborating with teams efficient and effective on a collaborative planning platform?

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What do I need to look at in terms of performance and scalability when it comes to a collaborative planning platform?