Annual and multi-year resource capacity-based planning

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Annual and Multi-Year Resource Capacity-Based Planning

    This capability in the Scenario Planning for PPM application allows ServiceNow customers to plan and evaluate portfolios based on resource capacity and financial constraints. Customers can create scenarios for a single fiscal year or multiple years to analyze and prioritize demands and projects. The planning aligns portfolio investments with business objectives by assessing resource utilization, capacity, and budget constraints.

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    Key Features

    • Annual Financial and Resource Capacity-Based Planning: Enables planning for a single fiscal year by creating scenarios that include various demands and projects from one or multiple portfolios. Customers can evaluate total cost, resource usage, and strategic alignment to select the most valuable scenario.
    • Investment Funding Integration: Connects portfolio planning with top-level investment funds to retrieve target budgets. This integration supports funding allocation either at the portfolio level or across all portfolios, based on configured funding entities such as business units. Note that upgrading to Scenario Planning for PPM 2.3.0 or later requires upgrading legacy Investment Funding to the ServiceNow Store version for compatibility.
    • Multi-Year Resource Capacity-Based Planning: Supports longer planning windows ranging from three to 24 months, allowing customers to manage demands and projects that span multiple years or require detailed shorter-term windows. Similar scenario creation and resource allocation analysis help optimize returns and financial value over extended periods.

    Key Outcomes

    • Ability to plan and prioritize portfolio demands and projects effectively within budget and resource constraints.
    • Flexibility to plan for single or multiple fiscal years, accommodating different organizational needs and project durations.
    • Improved alignment of portfolio investments with business objectives through scenario analysis.
    • Enhanced integration with investment funding sources to ensure accurate target budgeting and funding alignment.
    • Empowered decision-making by comparing multiple scenarios to maximize returns and add financial value to the organization.

    Plan your portfolios using scenarios for a single fiscal year or multiple years after analyzing utilization of resources against available capacity. Include demands and projects in all portfolios or a single portfolio to evaluate, prioritize, and select demands and projects that match your business objectives.

    Plan your portfolio and select demands and projects that you want to execute within the target budget. Create scenarios to analyze your portfolio's alignment with the organization's business objectives. The Scenario Planning for PPM application enables you to evaluate multiple sets of forecast scenarios and analyze investments consistently.

    Annual financial and resource capacity-based planning

    Plan your portfolio for a single fiscal year. You can select all your portfolios or a single portfolio for planning. After selecting your portfolio, you can create multiple scenarios to evaluate the demands and projects based on total cost, resource usage and capacity, and strategic objectives.

    In the annual planning, you create scenarios with different combinations of demands and projects from a specific portfolio or all portfolios for a specific financial year. Based on your selection of demands and projects, analyze the resource allocation for the selected demands and projects derived from the associated resource plans. After analyzing the resource availability and capacity, modify your selection of demands and projects in different scenarios and confirm a scenario that maximizes your returns and add financial value to the organization.
    Important:
    The default configuration is Annual Financial and Resource Capacity Based Planning and single selected portfolio for new installation or upgrade. You can change the planning configuration to plan for multiple years and all portfolios.

    Investment funding integration

    Integrate Scenario Planning for PPM with Investment Funding to retrieve the target amount for a portfolio or all portfolios from a top-level investment fund for annual financial and resource capacity-based planning. If you are planning for a single portfolio, the target amount of that portfolio is retrieved from the New Fund column for that portfolio investment and fiscal period in a top-level investment. If you are planning for all portfolios, you can configure the funding entity for which the organization must be funded, and then the investment planner can add funds for that particular entity in a top-level investment. For example, if your organization is a business unit, you can enable that business unit as the funding entity, and all the funds allocated to that business unit are set as the target for your organization.
    Note:
    When you upgrade Scenario Planning for PPM to 2.3.0 or later version, the legacy Investment Funding must be upgraded to ServiceNow Store for the integration to work. For detailed instructions on upgrading from legacy Investment Funding to the ServiceNow Store application, see Upgrading legacy Investment Funding to Store application.

    Multi-year, resource capacity-based planning

    Multi-year planning enables you to plan your portfolio using a planning window ranging from three to 24 months. If your portfolio consists of demands and projects spanning more than one year or if you are planning for a longer duration, you can plan your portfolio in smaller planning windows. The multi-year planning enables you to analyze resource usage for different demands and projects during the selected planning window and adjust your priorities to accommodate any changes to budget, resources, or business environment.

    In the multi-year planning, you create scenarios similar to the annual planning, but for a specified planning window for a specific portfolio or all portfolios. Based on your selection of demands and projects, analyze the resource allocation for the selected planning window. After analyzing the resource availability and capacity, modify your selection of demands and projects in different scenarios and confirm a scenario that maximizes your returns and add financial value to the organization.