What It’s Like to Model in a Driver-based FP&A Platform (Hint: You’ll Never Pay a Consultant Again)

At Stratify, we’re here to prove that an FP&A platform can relieve analysts from the burden of modeling. More than that, FP&A tools like Stratify provide the time-savings you need in order to finally shift your focus to more value added work and business partnering.

But how is that actually possible?

Imagine you want to start building a deck onto your home. You can picture the end result in your head, and you even know the steps you need to take to construct it. One big problem: you don’t have any tools. Your project just got a lot more complicated, and now you’ll need to call a contractor to come in and help. 

In other FP&A platforms, you are stuck without the tools you need for the job at hand. It’s difficult to change consultant-built models to adapt to changes in your business. As a result, you’re reliant on specialists to make adjustments. But Stratify equips you with the tools you need to dive into your project, plus some of the initial building blocks to build, modify, and adjust your financial plans with a few simple clicks – no need to scrap the project and start over.

How does configurable FP&A modeling work in Stratify? 

No need to write formulas in Stratify. Instead you configure business logic.

The underlying logic in the Stratify platform mimics analyst behaviors in the real world. We know the various assumptions analysts will need to input to produce a plan, and we have built a bank of drivers that finance teams can use to efficiently build (and modify) their plans, forecasts, and scenarios.

This process makes it easy to simplify and verify the calculations in your plans and forecasts.  

Three Easy Steps 
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There are three steps to configuring a calculation and creating plan data in Stratify:

1. SELECT & CONFIGURE A DRIVER. Choose the business logic driver that aligns with what you want to plan (expense or revenue).
2. DEFINE ADDITIONAL ASSUMPTIONS.  Give the assumption a name and input values that leverage dimensions of your business.
3. MAP IT.  Map the driver to the appropriate general ledger account.

For example, let's take a complex calculation like salary. Here are screenshots that show how easy it is to configure the logic and assumptions for that expense.

Step 1. SELECT & CONFIGURE THE DRIVER. Since you are planning for Employee Wages, you would select Stratify’s Salary driver. Each driver has various pre-built configurations available to you in a "plain English" sidebar. For example, define how many months an employee needs to be with your company before they qualify for a merit increase:

Step 2. DEFINE ADDITIONAL DRIVER ASSUMPTIONS as needed based on your unique needs. In this example, “Annual Merit” (Increase):

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STEP 2 continued. INPUT ASSUMPTION VALUES. In this example, a 5% merit increase in June: 

STEP 3. MAP. In this example we are using the Wages general ledger account (602101 Wages) to map to the Salary measure in Stratify:

That's it! Now you can review the output in your reports and plans.
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You Have Options‍

Configuring drivers is not the only way to plan in Stratify. 

You can input values manually where needed. Expenses that have no driver element – the one-time cost of a team event, for example – are easy to add to the plan.

For the ultimate in flexibility, we also offer a spreadsheet interface for ad hoc modeling. You can import an existing model or reporting template, or create a model from scratch. The advantage here is that formulas in the spreadsheet seamlessly integrate your current workforce and financial data. 

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Is Stratify Right For You? 

,Agility and efficiency are top goals for most businesses, and Stratify makes fast, flexible and transparent planning your new normal. With Stratify, you can support your stakeholders in data-driven decision-making and have a much bigger impact on business performance.

We’re taking a domain-based approach to build a better FP&A platform. Currently, we support expense, and workforce planning for any company that does workforce planning for salaried employees.  As experienced FP&A experts we have built best practices into Stratify. When we encounter customers with new requirements, we build that into our bank of assumptions and drivers so that all Stratify users can benefit.  

Stratify delivers a level of visibility and control that isn’t possible with complex legacy systems. Ready to see your future without the pain of manual modeling? Book a consultative demo now!