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:moneybag: Version purchased: Allocadia Optimize
:key: Logins are available for Marketing budget holders
Investment Target, with annual and quarterly breakdown. These are the amounts that tie out to the board approved plan. Once the board has approved the plan from the CMO, we will lock down these targets which represent the envelope of money available to each department to plan and forecast.Plans into a hierarchy grid much like you've done in the past within non-head count spreadsheets. Each budget holder can use categories and subcategories as needed to organize their budget, so it makes the most sense for them. This establishes the list of line item expenses they expect to use during the year. If the total planned doesn't equal the investment target envelope, the department does not lose the funds. Once plans are set, we can lock them for the quarter. More in Allocadia docs.Forecasts into these same line items, adding more details and more accuracy as we learn about the specifics of the events/campaigns/expenses.Similar to prior year, if we do not use the full envelope provided to Marketing by the end of the quarter, we will lose those dollars.
This section houses the main grid. This section is more for the Allocadia admin, although all budget holders will make use of it for mapping expenses to their line items as the Netsuite uploads are done monthly.
Also in this section, you can see where teams are from a forecast to plan standpoint by clicking into the view-roll up button. Video walk through in GitLab Unfiltered.
The activity planning section is where you add the tactics of your quarterly/annual plan and where can you see quick high level metrics to help you understand your Investment Target and your Plan vs. Forecast. Depending on what view you are in will depend on if you see this data based on the quarter or based on the FY.
In the top right hand section of the screen, you will see a drop down of different Views. When making changes to your actual activity prior to the Allocadia plan being locked, be sure you are in a plan view. Once the plan has been locked, you must be in the Forecast view to make any changes. We are locking plans quarterly in line with Finance calendars.
Within the view drop down you have the option to look at your targets by quarter or annually. Use whichever view best helps you run your business.
You will notice that there are metrics at the top left of each View that provide you with totals and comparisons between targets, plans and forecast depending on the View chosen.
In the grid below, these are the items that show up in the Hierarchy column. You may organize these however is best for you to run your business.
The same categories (and line items) show up in this grid regardless of whether you are entering your bottoms up Plan for the quarter/year or if you are entering your Forecast as your expenses solidify throughout the quarter.
There needs to be one line item for every contract that will be paid. That being said, if you have multiple charges that relate to the same vendor/ will get billed together, those can all show up on the same line item.
Organizing your line items? It's tricky, but if you hold the little three line hamburger to the left of the line item once you add it, you can move it so it falls under the correct category or subcategory. You will need to see the arrow to show that it is rolling up. There is no sorting other than manual. The nice thing is that once you move them to where you want them, they will remain there.
The idea for the placeholder is if you know that there will be an expense but you have very little information about vendor, etc. It allows you to fully Plan your entire Investment Target dollars so that you know what is left to allocate of your tops down budget. Currently, the FM team would prefer not to use the placeholders. Any placeholders will need to be updated as more information is determined.
This button allows you to delete the line item or category that you mistakenly added. FYI, there is an audit trail so if you accidentally delete something, we should be able to help you determine values, etc from the deleted line.
This button can be used to request funds from another department. Specific approvers have been set up in Allocadia to be notified by email and can approve or deny the transfer. See more details in the Budget Reallocation link above. Note that on the Home page, the transfer will show in red until it has been resolved.
We have just moved the Vendor to the Details panel - for now it shows up in both and can be updated in either place - but we are considering taking it off the main grid if there are no objections.
View, there are columns for your bottoms up Plan and your ongoing 'Forecast'. And then monthly as we load in Actuals from Netsuite, those amounts will show in those columns.You access the Details Panel from the book like icon to the right of the line item name in the hierarchy column. If the book is red, it means that there are missing required details. It turns black once these are completed. The workflow that we've set up in the system once you add a line item should help us capture all the required fields.
Any line items within a category or subcategory default inherit the details from the parent (category/subcategory) AND can also be overwritten at any child line item as needed. Therefore, it makes the most sense to fill out the details panel at the highest category level and then adjust any individual line items that differ.
Details tab
Spend Type is as follows, then you will be asked a Y/N on if the event is In person.
GitLab Internal Calendars
Certain groups within GitLab have the ability to create a calendar invite directly from the details panel within Allocadia.
Groups who have calendar creation access
Brand Activation
How the calendar process is mapped
line item level. Meaning you CANNOT create a calendar invite at the Category OR Sub-category level.Is this an in person event?
in person events and sponsorships calendar - regardless of spend type, if it’s an in person event it WILL show up on this calendar.Spend Type (Campaign Type)
Self-Service Virtual Event use the GitLab Hosted Self-Service Virtual Events calendarVendor Arranged MeetingsExecutive RoundtableSponsored WebcastVirtual Sponsorship
External Virtual Events calendarCannot create calendar invite for this Spend Type.While Workshops & Webcasts DO require a calendar invite, we intentionally left the auto create calendar invite out of the plug in. We did this because the GitLab Hosted Zoom Webcasts calendar requires Zoom integration work and is a locked calendar, given the technical work required to run the campaign types. For more information on booking a GitLab-hosted Workshop or Webcast, please visit this handbook page.
The calendar invite is set for the entire day. If you would like the event to be on the calendar for a specific time, then you may go in and manually change the time.
Here is a quick video walk through to show you how the calendar invite gets created, if you're more of a visual learner!
Today our Field Marketing team is the only team using this function. If you are interested in having this added to your view please open this issue for Marketing Strat & Performance.
We have loaded the past two fiscal years worth of influenced conversion data from campaigns run by field marketing for both the MQL>SAO conversion rates as well as SAO>Closed Won data. We have loaded two FY worth of data to get to these conversion rates given how different our campaigns types were in FY21 due to the pandemic.
If a region did not have a conversion rate for the campaign type (likely because the region did not run that campaign), then the global conversion rate was used. Also, because our MQLs can "skip" MQL status (meaning an SDR can work a lead BEFORE its actually hit our MQL scoring threshold), we used the MQL Inferred Date field to assume MQLs.
Live MQL>SAO regional data can be found here and live SAO>Won data can be found here. These charts will be added to the FMM Dashboard in a future iteration.
The average deal size by campaign by region can be found here (you'll have to refer back to dashboard to change the region if you want to see a specific regions data) are also loaded for calculation purposes. If there were less than 3 closed deals then we did NOT use that deal size information, but relied on the ASP from the TOPO model to fulfill that deal size.
A calculation is then done by then taking into account the MQLs, region, segment data and campaign type that has been given at the line item level in the details panel.
Video walk through (and yes, you know you need to be logged into Unfiltered to see! ;))
We are discontinuing use of the Strategy tab at this time. We had thought we could use this tab to connect line item to Marketing level quarterly OKRs or Project Compass, but the bigger ask was to connect with GTM Motions and we moved those to the Details Panel in the Activities grid.
Most reporting is done within the Insights tab within Allocadia. Reports are built at the highest level and then use a drill down feature so each team does not have to recreate reports.
The reports in Allocadia make use of GoodData. The first time you attempt to access reports, you will be prompted to sign in to GoodData. Also, if you are using Safari as your browser, take note of the following:
Safari for OS X – Disable Blocking of Third Party Cookies Safari has moved away from their "Block Cookies" section. In order to make it work with the current version of Safari, you must have both "Prevent cross-site tracking" and "Block all cookies" checkboxes unchecked.
This section is where you can see the highest level of detail.
The reports are broken out in folder format and once you click into the folders, more reports open up.
Insights>Dashboards>1.Investment Planning Summary To understand your regions budget (referred to in Allocadia as Current Target)
Insights>Dashboards>1.Investment Tracking SummaryTo understand how much you're on track to invest - Watch this video walk throughInsights>Dashboards>2. Pipeline>Quarterly Drill in Details All>Pipeline Plan by Campaign Type - This report allows you to see the ROI data (MQL, SAO, expected pipeline), based on the impact modeller -
Insights>Dashboards>2. Pipeline>Quarterly Drill in Details All>Pipeline Plan by Motion - This report allows you to see how your plans are aligned to the FY22 Marketing GTM motions. Please be sure you are filtering by Activity plan, NOT by Region.
view roll-up button. Video walk through & select which view you're looking for - i.e. Q1, Q2 etc.view roll-up button. Video walk through & select which view you're looking for - i.e. Q1, Q2 etc.You have the ability to create a GitLab procurement issue directly from Allocadia for a given line item. You will not be creating from category or subcategory lines as we need the expense to match the Vendor and the issue approvals.
Here is a video walk through on how to create a procurement issue for vendor contracts. As we move to Coupa, we will be changing this to be a Create PO button instead.
For Field Marketing, the reviewer/approver will click into the linked Allocadia line item and will review the impact modeller there, as well as have the ability to click into the Marketing issue from your line item, so you will not need to address the ROI question in the issue template. You will however, need to address the justification question on if you're requesting to spend more than $500 per MQL in the procurement issue.
More information on the campaign tag creation can be found on the FMM handbook page.
You may also create a procurement issue for software & that video will be forthcoming.
If you find yourself needing to update a procurement issue template for any of the issues above - please submit an issue for the Marketing Strategy & Performance team, as this must be done through our Allocadia CSM.
If you've hit the GitLab Procurement issue template button and the wrong issue template has been created, not to fear! Someone with owner or admin rights to your folder can assist you. To determine who has owner or admin rights to your folder from the home screen you would find your folder, click in the Users column that person icon with (number), from there, you see a list of people who have access + their rights. Search until you find Owner or Administrator and then slack that person in the #mktg-budget-holders slack room. Video walk through (must be logged into GitLab Unfiltered!).
As mentioned above, there is a listing of available FY22 SFDC campaigns to choose from in the detail panel. Once the initial connection has been made between Allocadia and SFDC on a given campaign, Allocadia will push over all the fields that have been completed in the details panel. In addition, we will be sending over forecast amounts into the SFDC Campaign Budget field as it gets updated. If there are multiple line items for a given SFDC campaign, they will be combined for the updated SFDC Campaign Budget. Keep this in mind when considering which line to map to a SFDC campaign: it does not matter which one you decide to use (line, category or subcategory). It's up to the user to figure out their folder structure and determine the highest level ID that houses all the information. When a category or sub-category ID is used, the SFDC Campaign will be auto-tagged to all the line items within that category or sub-category.
Please login using SSO, so that all marketing budget holders can sign in easily without worrying about yet another login password. Note that we are on Allocadia's eu1 server.
We will be using CSV transfer files to upload plans from Allocadia to Adaptive. Our finance business partner will be the DRI for this.
We will eventually be able to use an FTP data integration to download actual expenses from Netsuite. In the meantime, we will be using CSV transfer files. Instructions for Allocadia Admin to upload were prepared by Allocadia. Actual expenses will not be available though until after month end close for Accounting, so generally mid-month of the following month. These expenses will automatically map to the line items and show in the Actuals column if there was an Allocadia ID set up initially. However, until we have all set up, we will have to work through a manual process to map expenses to the line items. Allocadia will do its best guess but without the Allocadia ID, we will need to confirm or correct.
Go to the home page. In the Actuals column, see if your Map column has a Map (#) in red. If so, click on that link, and it will open a new screen to show you what needs to be mapped. Scroll over to see descriptions, invoice numbers, etc from Netsuite. All you do is select the hierarchy category and then the line item to match each one to. Then hit map. You can also bulk map by shifting /clicking several lines and then hit bulk map for a smaller screen with its own “map” button.
If you accidentally map something incorrectly, it can be corrected. You'll need to go to the Activities grid for the line item where you accidentally mapped it, right click and select Go to Actuals. A new screen will appear where hopefully you see your error line and you can delete by scrolling to the far right.
We strive to have all monthly expenses mapped within 3 business days of actuals being loaded by Finance.
