Individual cells can show supporting detail such as expected transactions that will take place in that month

Description

Drill-down functionality in Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software enables users to view and analyze data at a detailed level. This feature allows individual cells to display supporting detail, such as expected transactions for a specific month, providing a deeper understanding of the data.

Example Use Case

Scenario: An organization is planning expenses for the next 12 months, with a big increase in spend in May. The number has come under scrutiny, as it is simply a cell with a large value in a spreadsheet.

Solution: With supporting detail, users of a CPM tool can add line item detail to the expected future expense. In this case, the department owner forecasting the expense adds in several trade shows that will be taking place that month.

Considerations

This requirement is different from “transaction drill-down” which is looking at actual transactions on a cell or sheet in the past. In the case of this requirement, the goal is to justify a future expense or other future account value by itemizing what will make up that value.

In this case, the cell will be populated with $37,000. Selecting “Supporting Detail” or something similar will show the three planned transactions.

Some products allow the creation of an entirely separate table, with its own assumptions, that when populated produces an output that can then be dropped into another cell. For example:

Destination is a driver for an estimated flight cost. It might also be used for nightly hotel instead of manually inputting a number.

The level of driver detail that users should dig into should directly correlate to the value they receive from putting in this work. It is not always worth the trouble to plan at this granularity if, in the end, you come close to the same result without it.

Questions to Ask a Vendor

• Usability: Can we add supporting detail to a cell? Does it do the math, or it just notes?
• Docs: What about uploading supporting documents, like invoices?
• UI: How can we see that an item has supporting detail behind it?