Reconcile a Plan in Hindsight

If you didn’t have your marketing plan reflected in Keen, you can leverage your lastest model actuals to back into an “Initial Plan” and, in effect, decompose the past.

1. Create a Report (Build My Own)

   1. Report Type: Standard

   2. Base Model: The most up-to-date model

   3. Select Panel: Model: Tactic Performance

   4. Settings: Skip

2. Panel Settings

   1. Metric: Investment

   2. Visualization Type: Table

   3. Factor View Mode: Independent Factors

   4. Time Aggregation: Weekly

   5. Date Range: Period You Wish to Reconcile

3. Download Data

4. Pivot

   1. Rows: Date

   2. Columns: Tactic

   3. Values: Investment

5. Create as a Plan using the Forecast a Plan objective

   1. Starting Point: Model – Your Last Model, prior to the most recent update

   2. Date Range: Period You Wish to Reconcilate

6. Choose Your Adventure

   1. If you’re trying to demonstrate how accurate the old model would have been with perfect information, replace the default plan Financials and Business Environment with actualized data.

   2. If you’re demonstrating how this Plan would’ve been forecast with imperfect information, leave the default Financials and Business Environment projections as-is, or replace them with your in-going assumptions.

7. Run the Plan Reconciliation Report

   1. Select the Plan you just created

   2. Compare it to the actualized model

   3. Depending on which route you took in #6, you’ll effectively isolate:

      1. the disparities stemming from updated model coefficients or

      2. the disparities stemming from changes in the model reads & the disparities stemming from the environment

With 20/20 hindsight:

1. What would the forecast have been? Did it bear out?

2. What would the reccommended plan have been?