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Many Planning Tools Talk About Versioning. They Do Not Mean the Same Thing
Many planning tools talk about versioning. But they do not always mean the same thing.
Often versioning first means: we save an earlier state. That is useful, you can see exactly how things looked back then.
For steering that is not enough. What also has to become visible is what has changed since, who changed it, for what reason, and with what effect on the income statement or cash flow.
This exact expectation came up again in a recent conversation. Earlier plan states should be viewable, but above all the differences between them should become comprehensible.
A corrected figure changes the data basis. An adjusted assumption changes the expectation. And formulas, hierarchies, mappings or system settings act on the model itself.
Many systems can log parts of this. Impact analysis goes further: it connects the change to the result. That makes versioning a question of accountability for content too.
Investments worth millions can hang on planned figures. And yet the current version often differs from the last one only by the suffix in the filename.