Cervello’s Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB) tool in Anaplan

David Wheeler
Cervello, a Kearney Company
3 min readSep 14, 2020

Enabling companies to create a budget from scratch, regardless of last year’s spending, allows them to be evaluate their company’s expenditures. Businesses can dynamically create cost drivers and rates modified to fit their needs. By having the ability to evaluate by division, location or at any level of the hierarchy, firms have total transparency for their budgeting plans. The ZBB methodology highlights the areas of the business that make good use of the money they spend and forces management to take a hard look at some of the less than optimal areas, where savings could be made.

Our ZBB tool enables management to engage in this critical decision making process, and allows companies to run in a more effective way, better suited for today’s challenging environment.

Cervello’s Zero Based Budgeting tool, in Anaplan, provides a convenient and cost-effective method by utilizing data, bottoms-up planning, and promoting connectivity.

  • Data — Leveraging siloed data to track progress on employee & organizational objectives in real time. Objectives, employee information, and actual sales data exist in all organizations; however, many fail to leverage their data in a common solution. Meaningful source data from Salesforce, Workday, SAP, etc. integrate into the ZBB model, which allows for real-time visibility into the performance against predefined measures.
  • Bottom-up Planning — Enabling companies to create a budget from scratch, regardless of last year’s spending, allows them to be evaluate their company’s expenditures. Businesses can dynamically create cost drivers and rates modified to fit their needs. By having the ability to evaluate by division, location or at any level of the hierarchy, firms have total transparency for their budgeting plans.
  • Connectivity — In Anaplan, connectivity can be quickly and effectively achieved. Data can flow in and out through either a button or automated process through the Connected Anaplan Ecosystem. The ZBB model can connected to a Sales Model to create a P&L or Income Statement, with changes in one model to seamlessly reflect in the other.

About Cervello, a Kearney company

Cervello, a Kearney company is a data and analytics consulting firm and part of Kearney, a leading management consulting firm. We help our leading clients win by offering unique expertise in data and analytics, and in the challenges associated with connecting data. We focus on performance management, customer and supplier relationships, and data monetization and products, serving functions from sales to finance. Cervello is an Anaplan Gold Tier partner. Leveraging our extensive planning, modeling and consulting experience we have successfully implemented over 100 planning solutions. In addition, we ensure maximum ROI on your Anaplan investment by utilizing the connected planning approach, enabling client center of excellence, and providing training.

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