Scenarios let you create and evaluate alternative versions of a plan without changing the committed Base plan. Use scenarios to test business assumptions, compare outcomes, and understand the impact of potential changes in planning drivers before you apply them to the Base plan.
Each scenario provides an independent simulation layer. Changes in one scenario don't affect the Base plan or other scenarios.
Base represents the current committed plan and serves as the reference point for scenario analysis.
A scenario starts from the Base values and lets you simulate different assumptions. Each scenario remains independent, so you can evaluate multiple alternatives without one scenario affecting another.
For example, you can create Best Case, Worst Case, and Cost Reduction scenarios to evaluate different business outcomes.
You can adjust values in a scenario and see how the changes affect related measures. Changes to leaf-level values can flow through the planning hierarchy and update dependent parent and calculated measures.
Scenarios support two primary ways to apply changes:
These capabilities let you model both targeted changes and broader planning assumptions.
Scenario comparison helps you evaluate different planning alternatives across measures, dimensions, and time periods. You can compare scenarios with each other or review how a scenario differs from the Base plan.
Scenario variance highlights increases and decreases between the selected scenario and Base plan, helping you identify the areas with the greatest impact.
You can manage scenarios throughout the planning cycle:
These capabilities help you refine and analyze scenarios while keeping the Base plan unchanged.
After you evaluate a scenario, you can copy its simulated values to the Base plan when you're ready to adopt the changes.
Only simulated values are copied to Base. Native measures remain unchanged. This separation lets you experiment with alternative plans while protecting the committed plan until you decide to apply a scenario.
You can use Writeback to persist scenario data to the underlying data source when a destination is configured. Writeback logs let you review scenario writeback activity.
Scenario security controls who can access and work with scenario data. This helps protect planning assumptions and restrict scenarios to the appropriate users or teams.
Use the following planning process to evaluate and adopt a scenario:
This process helps separate scenario analysis from committed planning. You can explore different assumptions, evaluate their potential impact, and decide whether to apply the results to Base.
Use scenarios when you need to:
Scenarios help you:
Scenarios provide a controlled way to explore, compare, and evaluate alternative plans without changing the Base plan. You can simulate and distribute changes, compare outcomes, analyze variances, and refine scenarios before deciding whether to apply the scenario values to the Base plan.
