Case study

Planning Central (AWS Fintech)

Design Manager/Lead UX designer - AWS Fintech
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Planning Central is a comprehensive AWS Finance planning hub that coordinates, analyzes, and organizes the biannual OP planning process for top-level executives, now transitioning to a new Continuous Planning approach with advanced scenario modeling tools.
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As the manager of the Planning Pod Design team, I led a group of four skilled contractors to deliver this crucial AWS Finance planning hub in strategic phases. Our approach ensured a solid foundation and gradual expansion of capabilities, aligning with AWS's evolving financial planning needs. The team consisted of a senior developer, a UX/UI specialist, a data analyst, and a full-stack developer, each bringing specialized expertise to the project.

We structured the development in key phases: Metadata Management as the foundation, followed by Analytics and Insights, and then SWIFT (Scenario-based What-If Financial Tool). Between the second and third phases, we developed a comprehensive North Star Vision to guide future enhancements. Crucially, we also created a central Planning Central homepage, serving as a unified access point for all AWS financial planning tools and providing personalized dashboards, real-time updates, and quick navigation to various modules.

Throughout the project, our team focused on key delivery aspects including system integration, user experience optimization, robust data handling, and security compliance. The phased approach, coupled with the development of a user-centric homepage and guided by our North Star Vision, allowed us to create a stable, scalable, and strategically aligned platform. This comprehensive solution significantly enhanced adoption, efficiency, and cross-functional collaboration in AWS's financial planning processes.

Planning Central Homepage - Command Central for AWS Financial Planning
SWIFT - Scenario-Based What-If Financial Modeling Tool
Insight and Analytics Hub

Looking at the big picture

Background: AWS initiated a project to streamline and automate financial planning processes, aiming for more accurate, up-to-date rolling plans.

Challenge: The existing planning process was complex, involving multiple teams and systems across 10+ planning systems, with heavy reliance on Excel models. The process took approximately four months (April to July) due to its serial nature, limiting AWS's ability to plan frequently and adapt quickly to changing business environments.

Solution: Developed the Planning Central homepage as a command central for AWS financial planning.

Key Features:

  1. Centralized Dashboard: Provides an overview of all ongoing planning initiatives across AWS finance, business, and tech teams.
  2. Process Visualization: Illustrates current planning processes, inputs, outputs, and dependencies through interactive flowcharts and diagrams.
  3. Documentation Hub: Houses comprehensive documentation on planning processes, including inputs needed, outputs produced, and key systems involved.
  4. Initiative Tracker: Monitors progress of various improvement projects, such as the Revenue Planning Module and SCARF feature enhancements.
  5. Resource Allocation View: Displays capacity and resource allocation across different planning activities.
  6. Real-time Data Integration: Connects with various systems to provide up-to-date financial metrics and forecasts.

Implementation: The homepage was developed iteratively, with continuous feedback from stakeholders. It integrated data from multiple sources, including TM1, SCARF, and other planning tools. The design focused on user experience, ensuring that complex information was presented in an easily digestible format.

Results:

  • Improved visibility across the entire AWS planning process
  • Reduced data gathering and reconciliation time by 30%
  • Enhanced decision-making with up-to-date information
  • Reduced planning cycle time by 20% through initial design and proposal
  • Facilitated better coordination between teams
  • Increased average monthly users from 13 in 2023 to 22 in 2024 (69% increase)
  • Total number of unique users increased from 13 in 2023 to 94 in 2024 (623% increase)
  • Number of planning cycles supported increased from 4 in 2023 to 9 in 2024 (125% increase)
  • Total number of intersections impacted by Guidance increased from 243 in 2023 to 832 in 2024 (242% increase)
  • Percentage of Service OP guidance onboarded to PC increased from 14% in 2023 to 36% in 2024 (2100 bps improvement)

Future Plans: The Planning Central homepage will continue to evolve, incorporating more automated features and predictive analytics to further streamline the planning process and move towards the goal of continuous, rolling forecasts.

This case study demonstrates how the Planning Central homepage serves as a crucial tool in AWS's journey towards more efficient and accurate financial planning, acting as the command central for all planning-related activities.

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Brief

AWS Finance teams faced challenges in their planning processes, including manual inputs, inconsistent assumptions, and inefficient scenario analysis. To address these issues and support the Automated Continuous Planning (ACP) vision, AWS Fintech developed SWIFT (Scenario-based What-If Financial Tool).

Problem

The main challenges included:

  1. Inaccurate forecasts due to manual inputs and human bias
  2. Inconsistent assumptions in what-if scenario analyses
  3. Time-consuming processes for evaluating AWS's long-term financial health
  4. Lack of a centralized platform for creating, storing, and comparing financial scenarios

Solution

SWIFT was developed as a centralized platform enabling AWS leaders to:

  1. Run scenario-based analyses by adjusting various business drivers
  2. Generate actionable insights for AWS financials
  3. Compare historical trends against bottoms-up plans
  4. Conduct what-if/sensitivity analyses on financial metrics
  5. Publish guidance as guardrails for downstream planning systems

Implementation

The Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) focused on supporting the EC2 finance team to generate P&L forecasts with configurable business assumptions at product/region level on-demand. Key features included:

  1. Scenario Creation: Users can create new scenarios, selecting team, forecast length, and historical data to include.
  2. Baseline Forecasting: Automatic generation of baseline forecasts using historical growth or percentage of revenue target methods.
  3. Configurable Assumptions: Users can adjust key drivers like utilization, ASP growth rates, and revenue inputs.
  4. Version Control: Ability to save multiple versions of a scenario and compare them.
  5. Analysis Tools: Functionality to review percentage of total net revenue, MoM and YoY variances for each P&L line item.
  6. Publishing and Collaboration: Users can publish scenarios within their team and leave comments for review.

Impact

  1. Improved Efficiency: Reduced time spent on manual data gathering and Excel modeling.
  2. Enhanced Decision-Making: Real-time visibility into financial impacts of changing business drivers.
  3. Consistency: Standardized approach to scenario modeling across teams.
  4. Transparency: Better traceability of assumptions and changes in financial forecasts.
  5. Collaboration: Improved ability to share and review scenarios within teams.

Future Directions:

  1. Extend forecasting capabilities up to 10 years
  2. Integrate machine learning models for predictive analytics
  3. Expand to cover more AWS services beyond EC2
  4. Enhance integration with other planning systems like Origin and A-CAPS

Overall SWIFT represented a significant step towards AWS's vision of Automated Continuous Planning. By providing a centralized, efficient tool for scenario modeling and financial analysis, it empowers finance teams to make data-driven decisions and respond more quickly to changing business conditions and helped AWS Fintech set a north star vision for the next couple of years.

Background: Planning Central (PC) is the central command center for AWS financial planning, designed to accelerate AWS Automated Continuous Planning (ACP). It aims to provide a cohesive 'one-stop-shop' for end-to-end planning needs across AWS. The platform empowers users to monitor financial plan health, model scenarios, manage planning metadata, and drive transparency in the planning process.

Challenge: The development team faced the task of launching the Analytics and Insights module within Planning Central. This module needed to enable SFP&A and Service finance users to generate custom reports for reviewing planning KPIs, performing reasonability checks, and analyzing key metric correlations. The challenge was to streamline a process that previously took about nine days and involved manual data gathering, offline Excel models, and extensive coordination among multiple teams.

Approach:

  1. Feature Development: The team focused on three key features: a) Custom report dashboards for four metric correlations b) Configurable data validation rules and thresholds c) Customizable duration and frequency of data refresh for reports
  2. Iterative Development: The project underwent more than five major iterations, resulting in over 50 unique screens.
  3. User-Centric Design: Eight comprehensive user sessions were conducted to understand the SFPA process and effectively aggregate the OP process within the solution.
  4. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Close coordination between development, design, and stakeholder teams, including SFP&A, AWS Fintech, and various service finance teams.

Results:

  1. Successful Launch: The Analytics and Insights module was successfully integrated into Planning Central, significantly enhancing the product's capabilities.
  2. Improved Efficiency: The launch eliminated the need for manual, offline processes, reducing the time and effort required for bottoms-up planning cycles.
  3. Enhanced Decision Making: Users gained real-time visibility into analysis, accelerating data-driven decision making.
  4. Strengthened Controllership: The module provided a singular, comprehensive view of up-to-date reports and tracked report versions.
  5. Positive User Feedback: Users like Dylan Davis from SFP&A praised the automation of manual data gathering steps and the valuable time saved during busy planning periods.

Conclusion: The successful launch of the Analytics and Insights module within Planning Central demonstrates the power of user-centric design and iterative development in addressing complex financial planning needs. By streamlining processes and providing real-time insights, the module not only improved efficiency but also laid the groundwork for future enhancements in AWS financial planning tools.

Future Directions: The team is now working on SWIFT, a dynamic scenario-based modeling tool, and further enhancements to guidance management and orchestration, continuing to evolve Planning Central as a comprehensive financial planning solution for AWS

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