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It was a meeting that Planful CFO Shane Hansen tells us that he was not looking forward to. The SaaS developer\u2019s FP&A team had discovered a \u201cfairly large\u201d forecasting error, and Hansen deemed it necessary to brief Planful CEO Grant Halloran on the matter.

So, as planning teams are apt to do, Planful\u2019s FP&A crew performed an extracurricular round of scenario planning\u2014or what might more accurately be described as "CEO planning."

Says Hansen: \u201cWe did our homework and put things together in order to be ready for whatever reaction Grant might come up with.\u201d

Halloran\u2019s response: \u201cOh, that\u2019s just a mistake.\xa0What can we do to improve?\u201d

Of course, whether the Planful CEO\u2019s reaction was among those considered by the planning team in its anticipated responses is not the point. Instead, the tale of the forecasting snag allowed Hansen to bump our discussion concerning continuous planning into the continuous improvement lane.

And make no mistake: Planful\u2019s finance chief views these two realms as one and the same. Only a month away from his 1st anniversary as Planful\u2019s CFO, Hansen leaves little doubt that his leadership voice and actions are making as important a contribution to the company\u2019s culture as they are to Planful\u2019s monthly forecasts.

\u201cThis is about empowering our culture by saying \u2018Let\u2019s improve,\u2019 as opposed to pointing out who is to blame,\u201d explains Hansen, whose words are no doubt intended in part to influence finance leaders inside organizations that have struggled to embrace continuous planning and at the same time perhaps failed to realize the potential of planning tools such as those provided by Planful.

Asked whether his own interactions with Planful\u2019s planning team involve scheduled weekly or monthly meetings, Hansen observes that his arrival at the company more or less coincided with Planful opting to have its employees work remotely due to the pandemic.\xa0 \xa0

\u201cI have found that the consistent interactions that we\u2019ve had while everyone has been working from home have really helped us to band together and provided a lot more unity than there would have been otherwise if not for the circumstances,\u201d comments Hansen, who flags greater unity as yet another underpinning of\xa0successful continuous planning. \u2013Jack Sweeney

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