Capacity Planning Reference Guide

This guide is designed to help you quickly understand and use the core capacity planning functionality in Fullcast. The guide follows the chronological order that you need to build each component. In this way, it also provides a high-level overview of a capacity planning process. 

For a short video introduction, refer to Introduction to Capacity Planning in Fullcast.

Overview of Capacity Planning Components

The basic capacity planning process in Fullcast involves five components: 

1. The ramp profiles and productivity profiles (schedule) for the roles you are creating the capacity plan for
2. The current headcount and team structure that you will use to base your capacity model on
3. Creating a scenario where the models below will live
4. The Carried Quota model which determines the top-down average quota and number of reps needed to achieve your revenue targets
5. The Effective Headcount model which provides bottom-up capacity planning, including making manual adjustments, planning your to-be-hired roles, and more. 

The primary outcome

The Effective Headcount model and the details view is really where the bulk of the work is done. You can tweak your capacity plan in many ways there. 

A note on models and data sources

In the models, you will have many options for input data sources. You can either manually input numbers or you can leverage data available in Fullcast. This article mentions some common methods of sourcing the data inputs. See the GIF below for a quick visual on how to actually input numbers.

Ramp and Productivity Profiles

The first preparation step for capacity planning is to set up ramp and productivity profiles for a role. At a minimum, you need one role to base the capacity plan on. For that role, you will create the associated ramp and productivity profiles.

• Ramp profiles are used to calculate the “effective capacity” of your team. This is essentially a productivity schedule based on their tenure and experience in role.
• Productivity profiles are used to schedule out the quota across the year. This is essentially a productivity schedule based on the seasonality of your business. 

Example

In the screenshots below, you can see some example Ramp and Productivity profiles for an Account Executive Role.

How-to Documentation 

• Create, Edit, and Delete a Role
• Create Productivity Profiles
• Roles FAQs

Organizational Structure and Current Headcount in Teams

Once you have your role setup, you need to set up your organizational structure and current headcount in the Teams module. The level of detail you create in the team structure will be the same level of detail you can leverage down the road in your Effective Headcount modeling. For example, if you want to be able to plan out which regions you’ll put a new headcount in, you need to have the regional structure built in the Teams module. 

Example

In the screenshot below, you can see a Sales team structure, which is broken down by Global Regions and then by Segments or other smaller teams.

How-to Documentation

• How to create teams using Bucket Values?
• Move People in Teams
• Edit Hierarchy Rules in Teams

Scenario Creation

Once you’ve done the steps above in the Roles and Teams areas of the Fullcast platform, you will move to the Scenarios module. To get started, simply create a new scenario using the documentation below. As you grow your usage of the scenario planner, you can create multiple scenarios. For example, you might create a base scenario then clone (duplicate) and modify it to create best case, worst case, re-cast, etc. 

• Create a New Scenario***Note - to create a new folder, simply type name in the Folder name field and it will create a folder with that name.
• Add a Model to a Scenario Plan
• View and Update a Scenario
• Duplicate a Scenario
• Delete a Scenario
• Edit a Scenario's Title and Location

Carried Quota Model

The first model you need to create is the Carried Quota model. Its inputs are Attainment factor, Quota, and New Revenue Required. Its outputs are Carried Quota, and Ramped Reps in Person Months. Below are some notes on each of the inputs and outputs. 

Inputs

• Attainment: Average quota attainment. You can input this manually based on calculations completed elsewhere in your business. If you have previously built and tracked targets in Fullcast, you could calculate your actual historical attainment on those targets. 
• Quota: Global average quota per month per rep. Again, if you have targets in Fullcast, you can calculate this using historical targets. If you put it in manually, you would just input your average rep per quota and divide by 12.
• New Revenue Required: Your revenue goal for the year. Often, this is input manually based on direction from finance or other leadership. Once you have this number, you can create the schedule based on seasonality to spread it across the year. 

Outputs

• Carried Quota: How much quota, on average, each rep needs to carry. This is calculated by factoring together your new revenue required, average quota per rep, and attainment factor. 
• Ramped Reps (person months): How many people you need each month to hit your revenue goal. 

How-to Documentation

• Add a Model to a Scenario Plan

Effective Headcount Model

The Effective Headcount model is the place where the bulk of the capacity planning work takes place. After you enter your inputs into the Effective Headcount model configuration, the main output shows up in a “Details” tab. In the details tab, you’ll find a table with all your headcount in the rows and their quotas broken down by month (or quarter) in the columns. 

Inputs

• Current headcount: Current headcount provides the starting point for the model. You can either source this from the Teams module or use existing territory coverage assignments. Using the teams module is best practice. 
• Role and Ramp Profile: This section sets the assumptions that will be used for any to-be-hired reps. Although you choose one role here, you will be able to edit in the Details tab. For example, you can leverage multiple ramp profiles for your TBHs that you create. 
• Attrition: You can either pull this in manually or you can use any data available to calculate a historical value to use. For example, if you have fields on the user record that indicate terminations. You could calculate a historical number of terminations per year to project your attrition. 
• TBR Hire Lead Time: You can either enter this manually or you can use any data available to calculate a historical value to use. 
• Required Effective Headcount: This is where you will be able to use the Carried Quota Model’s “Ramped Reps” output to create the Goal for this input. Essentially, this number is the base number of fully ramped reps that you will require to hit the revenue goals. When you use the result of The Carried Quota Model, you are factoring in the average attainment, quota assumption, and revenue goal to get to the number of ramped reps. When you select the Carried Quota model's Ramped Reps input, it should automatically populate the same seasonality schedule that you created in that model. See the GIF below to see how to set up this input.

• 

Outputs

• Snapshot: At the bottom of the Model page, you will have snapshot figures, broken down by month. This snapshot or summary will show you: 
  • TBR Effective Replacements and Actual Replacements
  • TBH  Effective Headcount and Actual Headcount
  • Effective Headcount - which is the total number of people per month that you need 
• Details:  This is a table view that contains all of the headcount, their productivity and ramp assumptions, and the breakdown of the quota expectation per month. You can make individual or bulk adjustments directly within this table. This includes:  
  • Edit Ramps and Productivity Profiles for current, TBH, and TBR headcount
  • Move headcount between teams 
  • Manually adjust any quotas if needed 

Next Steps

Once you have generated your initial model, you can iterate by:

• Editing the details in the Effective Headcount model’s details tab
• Editing the inputs in the Carried Quota model
• Cloning your models and making alternative versions

If you change the inputs for the Effective Headcount model, when you go to the Details tab, you will see a yellow dot to prompt you whether you want to add/remove TBHs that would be required given the changes to your inputs.