Business Processes and the Application

The application generates data that can be integrated into corporate business processes as either a budget or a periodic plan. The application supports these scenarios:

  • Creating a budget based on another imported budget and using a solicitation process to finalize the budget.
  • Creating a top-down forecast based on an imported budget and using a solicitation process to finalize the budget.
  • Creating a bottom-up projection of expenses and revenues based on an aggregation of historical weekly data from retail departments. The data can be used for one of these options:
    • Used in a solicitation process to finalize this data as a budget.
    • Used as a plan and comparing plan against actuals or an existing budget.

These sets of data are collectively referred to as plans: budget plans, forecast plans, bottom-up projection (BUP).

The application continuously verifies that the plan data conforms to the minimum required hours and the maximum allowed payroll. The application can publish data from any plan to act as a scheduling constraint in Labor Forecasting and Schedule Optimization (LFSO). This constraint prevents the cost of implementing a schedule from exceeding the planned cost.

The application uses types to identify the sets of data required for these processes. SeeTypes.