Planning Agent

What it does

The Planning Agent is a chat interface to your EPM data. You ask in plain language:

• "Show me the top 5 cost centers driving the opex variance this month."
• "What scenarios have the biggest revenue swing in Q3?"
• "Run a 5% price-decrease sensitivity on the European product line."

It reads the cube, runs the analysis, and answers — often with a chart and a short explanation. No need to build a report.

Why it matters

The single biggest unlock is democratizing data access. Today, an executive has to ask FP&A to build a view; FP&A queues the request behind close work; the answer arrives a day later. The agent compresses that to seconds.

For analysts, it's not less work — it's higher-leverage work. They stop being the report-builder of last resort and start being the judgment provider on what the answer means.

What to know before you turn it on

• Scope matters: give the agent access to the cubes and forms it should read, not the whole tenant. Permissions still apply.
• Hallucination risk in finance is unacceptable. The agent should refuse to answer questions it can't ground in actual data.
• Auditability: every agent answer should log the underlying query so a reviewer can trace it.

Adoption pattern

Start with FP&A power users. They'll find the model's edges fast and feed back what to fix. Once their hit-rate is high, open it to function leaders, then to the wider organization. Don't skip the FP&A step.