Recap: EPM & Data Technology Forum

Many companies still plan in a jungle of tools & spreadsheets: conflicting numbers, manual reconciliations, slow cycles and little room for real scenario thinking.

At the forum, we sketched a modern planning vision:

• Integrated across finance, FP&A, S&OP & operations
• Driver-based & scenario-ready instead of pure budgeting
• Supported by modern planning platforms
• Sitting on a shared, trusted data foundation

👉 Takeaway: better planning is not “just” a new tool – it’s the combination of process, platform & data that turns planning into a true business steering cockpit.

In the joint valantic x Snowflake session, we showed how a Data Lakehouse on Snowflake can turn fragmented ERP/CRM/Excel landscapes into one governed source of truth for planning, BI and AI.

Key benefits:

• One consistent data backbone for FP&A, S&OP & reporting
• Clean, connected data ready for analytics & AI
• Governance, security and scalability built into the platform

👉 Takeaway: with Snowflake as your data backbone, planning shifts from manual data wrangling to fast, connected, AI-enabled decision-making.

The AI in Planning demos showed AI not as a buzzword, but as a co‑pilot that makes planning sharper and more fun:

• Automated modeling: from business intent to structured planning models
• Automated analysis: natural-language questions, variance explanations, driver insights
• Smarter forecasting & scenarios in FP&A, S&OP and beyond

All of this, of course, only works on top of a strong data foundation – exactly where Snowflake and modern architectures come in.

👉 Takeaway: AI doesn’t replace planners – it helps them move faster from numbers to insight, and from insight to action.