Continuous Planning in a Volatile World

By GrowCFO in partnership with Acterys

The era of static annual or quarterly planning is over. In a world shaped by inflation, supply chain disruption, geopolitical volatility, and shifting customer behaviour, finance leaders must adapt in real-time. Yet most organisations still rely on slow, rigid cycles and manual models.

Why Static Planning Fails Today

Traditional planning creates several challenges:

• Slow response to external shocks
• Heavy reliance on manual data collection
• Lack of cross-functional alignment
• Inefficient budgeting cycles
• High operational costs
• Limited flexibility

Finance teams often spend 80% of their time gathering data and only 20% analysing it — the inverse of what organisations need today.

Continuous Planning: A New Standard for 2026

Continuous Planning enables finance teams to:

• Update forecasts in real time
• Model scenarios instantly
• Refresh assumptions dynamically
• Align with operational data automatically
• Respond to external changes with agility

It is a fundamental redesign of how organisations plan and make decisions.

Acterys: Powering Real-Time Planning

Acterys makes Continuous Planning achievable by enabling:

• Live write-back to Fabric, Power BI, and Excel
• Connected financial and operational modelling
• Predictive forecasting
• Instant scenario simulation
• Rapid cross-department collaboration

A multinational manufacturer shared:

“Before Acterys, our forecast process took six weeks and involved 20 spreadsheets. Now it takes two days, and every department contributes through a single connected platform.”

Why It Matters

Volatility will not ease in 2026. But the organisations that thrive will be those that turn volatility into opportunity — using real-time insights to take advantage of emerging trends, protect margin, and guide strategic decisions.

GrowCFO Insight

Volatility isn’t the enemy — rigidity is. Continuous Planning transforms uncertainty into a source of competitive advantage.