Budgeting and Planning Overview

Performance Management in Allocadia is a multi-step approach - it begins with planning, moves into an operating stage, and continues with evaluating.

1. Corporate marketing starts with a top-down plan that supports corporate goals. This top-down budget number is generally a target to spend provided by Finance or the CMO. This is the Target
2. The Planning Phase is the initial estimate of your Marketing Activities and the bottoms-up plan that collectively equals the top-down target
3. Once the planning process is over and the Plan Column is locked, the Forecast Column becomes the record of your plan “as it is today.” The Forecast Column will reflect the current estimate and status of your Activity Plan (Marketing Activities) throughout the period
4. Requisition amount, generally from a finance Purchase Order System is called Purchase Orders (PO). These are brought into Allocadia after the Forecasting phase
5. Invoice data, generally from an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System. Actuals information can be either manually entered or systematically imported from a finance ERP system. Actuals can be mapped to individual marketing activities to allow comparisons between your Plan and Forecast numbers