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Can you post an architecture diagram…would like to understand the details a little more.

@BrentOrr - this is incredible! A Christmas Tale for the ages! Thank you so much for this little spot of cheer as we wrap up another fantastic year at the DISCO!

Author: Brent Orr is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Global Data Architect at Accenture.

Set to the tune of 'Twas the night before Christmas'.

’Twas the sprint before go-live

’Twas the sprint before go-live, when all through the model,
Not a calc was circular, not even a toddle.
The blue cells were sparse, all formatted with care,
In hopes that St. Planual soon would be there.

The end users nestled all snug in their seats,
While visions of UX cards danced with their sheets.
And I with my laptop, and they with their asks,
Had just settled in for a few final tasks.

When out in Dev tenant there arose such a clatter,
I alt-tabbed from Slack to see what was the matter.
Away to the history log I flew like a flash,
Tore open the ALM pane — please don’t crash.

The source–target mapping on the new import flow
Gave the luster of horror to objects below.
When what to my bloodshot eyes should appear,
But “Dimension mismatch” and an ominous sneer.

With a grizzled old builder so lively and spry,
I knew in a moment it surely was… me (oh my).
More rapid than CloudWorks my fixes they came,
I whistled and muttered and called lists by name:

“Now L1! Now L2! Now L3 unite!
On Variant! On Style! On Category bright!”
To the top of the hierarchy — don’t you dare fall!
Now aggregate, aggregate, aggregate all!

As SYS modules soar when good builders try,
When they meet a hard problem and refuse to ask “Why?”,
So up to the blueprint my cursor then flew,
With a brain full of mappings, and a lookup or two.

And then, in a heartbeat, I heard on the chat
The pinging and dinging of “Can you just… fix that?”
As I turned to the UX and was spinning around,
Down fell a card with no context to be found.

It was dressed all in grids, from the headers to base,
And the layout was tangled, all over the place.

Its line items twinkled, its formats looked right,
But Sums mixed with Lookups? A terror at night.
A SELECT on a list hiding deep in the code —
I winced, for such sin might cause Prod to explode.

The eyes of the client — how they started to glow!
Their emails like snowflakes began to bestow:
“Just one tiny change,” they said with a grin,
“Can we pivot fake time and add Climate back in?”

I spoke not a word, but went straight to my work,
Untangling logic where gremlins might lurk.
I duplicated modules, but lean, not obscene,
Then pushed all the logic to SYS, nice and clean.

I mapped each product level, from fine up to broad,
With booleans so tidy they made users applaud.
Each LOOKUP and SUM had a crisp single role,
No SELECTs in target, no rogue top-level goal.

The UX got reshaped with a deft little click,
I turned off the totals that recalced not quick.
Then context selectors—just one, not a herd—
Drove every dimension with one simple word.

The performance returned, every calc running fast,
No more stalling rollups like ghosts of the past.
And users exclaimed as they tested with glee,
“This page actually works how we thought it would be!”

I flipped to ALM with a satisfied sigh,
Compared Dev to Prod with a critical eye.
Then pressed “Create Revision,” with fingers crossed tight,
And deployed to Production that cold winter night.

The jobs all completed with nary a hitch,
Not one lonely error, not one broken switch.
And I stepped from my desk into winter’s soft light,
Breathing out a blessing for models done right:

“May your logic stay elegant, your futures bright—
Happy planning to all, and to all a good night!”

@SriNitya if you are attempting recertification, then the free attempt is extended until Jan 31 2026. The only thing that isn't being extended by a month is the free attempt that recertified Solution Architects get to take the MA exam.

Thanks to Becky and team for the extension!

Hi @SriNitya - great question! I'm confirming Steven is correct. The special offer for Professional Solution Architects to up-level to Certified Master Anaplanner by taking the initial Certified Master Anaplanner exam for free expires on December 31st.

-Stacey, Program Manager for Anaplan Certified Master Anaplanner and Center of Excellence Programs

Author: Tingting Xia is a Certified Master Anaplanner, EPM Manager and Supply Chain practice lead in Keyrus with 8 years of Anaplan experiences. She has been leading and wrapping up a trade promotion planning solution at one of the top global breweries.

Client challenges prior using Anaplan

First and foremost, the massive data: both master (SKU properties, Banner attributes, pricing structure etc.) and transactional (history sales, commercial guidelines, costs, competitor data, etc.) needed by the client’s KAMs (Key Account Managers, those who oversee trade promotion planning) to conduct trade promotion planning sit in various source systems and come with high volume. It took the KAMs a lot of manual efforts to pull all those data and consolidate them in Excel spreadsheets. Therefore, the promotion planning was only done once a month, mismatching the fact that their promotions are running on a weekly basis. This has led to the lagging and inaccuracies in their promotion planning already.

The inevitable human errors, lack of traceability and auditability throughout the whole processes added to the inefficiencies and inaccuracies of the planning as well.

The Excel spreadsheet-based planning came with another issue whereby every KAM had their own way of planning with guesstimation. It became hard to justify the plan to the management should there be a problem. The whole planning practices were not standardized nor scalable.

Due to the limitation of Excel spreadsheets, there was no advanced data analytics or insights either: scenario simulation to understand various drivers’ impact on promotion outcomes, real-time insights to drive timely action to capture revenue, etc.

The solution roadmap in three releases

We decided to take a phased approach with an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) design in mind and with an end state (link TPM to financial planning to realize revenue growth management) in vision. In this way, we do not flood the KAMs with seemingly endless of discussions, loads of transformations but not seeing a working product in a short time. We guaranteed shorter time to value and earned their trust to guide them step by step away from their excel templates but on to adopting Anaplan.

Release 1

The MVP covers the listed basic functionalities below to remove the manual data consolidation time from the KAMs, automate their products’ baseline forecast with statistical models and standardize their promotion planning practices.

1. Datahub: set up data integration with various data sources, perform data checks and then push relevant data into TPM model. With this, Anaplan becomes the single source of truth for the KAMs whenever they need raw data.
2. Statistical baseline forecast by SKU by Banner by Week based on weekly history sales. A suite of statistical methods is developed to cater to different products’ selling pattern from simple ones: MA, DMA to sophisticated ones: Winters Additive, Winters Multiplicative, Ensemble, etc. Our final best fit method gives a forecast error as low as 2-3%. This has hugely improved their baseline planning accuracy compared to their old way of applying MA on their past 6 months sales on monthly bucket and then just flat average into weekly bucket.
3. Standardized promotion creation template and mass creation (“copy-paste”) capability. We defined how a promotion should be created inside Anaplan properly following the same template across all KAMs to ensure consistency. Error prompt messages and security lock features are also developed to ensure planning accuracy. Instead of being only able to create promotion one by one, we also developed a feature which in layman term called “copy-paste”. It allows the KAMs to select one created promotion and then mass create it into the indicated future period carrying all the planned parameters like promotion price, uplift volume, discount offered etc. This saves the KAMs a lot of time when similar promotions are planned to run in a repetitive pattern into the future.
4. Promotion calendar with detailed price and volume view. We custom-built a promotion calendar view instead of just using Anaplan NUX’s Gauntt chart feature because the client wanted more to be displayed in the calendar itself. The KAMs are now able to view their promotions vividly and intuitively in a chart-like view but also contains the detailed information they want to see.
   

Release 2

Release 2 solution focused on the commercial side of trade promotion planning and more advanced planning features. We standardized client’s pricing structure and price waterfall planning, set up commercial guidelines management and linked it to promotions, automated approval workflow and developed scenario simulation playground for KAMs to simulate how their promotion plan will change if they change their discount, price point, etc.

1. Pricing waterfall: Master pricing structure was cleansed from their source SAP systems, keeping only relevant parameters going to TPM price planning. Specific pricing structure changes at SKU x Banner level due to client’s business nature. With this, KAMs can plan their products’ prices at the lowest granularity across weeks from Shelf Price to Net 3 accounting for relevant cost factors in between. Waterfall charts are used to visualize this Shelf Price to Net 3 evolvement to make price planning and each cost factors impact more intuitive and straightforward.
2. Commercial guideline management: commercial terms are the pricing rules (i.e. minimum price, max discount, etc. allowed to offer for a specific SKU on promotion) for different depths of promotions across SKU and Banner. This was not properly set up and hence not strictly enforced during KAMs’ promotion planning in Excel era due to the level of granularity and multi-dimensionality it requires. With Anaplan, the commercial guidelines can be mass uploaded or fine tune via NUX direct interaction with ease. System automatic alert message then will be displayed should there be a breach of commercial guidelines when KAMs are planning their promotions.
3. Approval workflow: Anaplan’s native workflow is set up with two main purposes. Firstly, the KAMs will submit promotions that are outside of commercial guidelines but the KAMs deem them necessary to achieve for example revenue, depleting aging stock goals etc. to their management for review and accept or reject. Secondly, review of commercial guidelines will be done in a regular basis to cater to changing business and market dynamics. If any revision for commercial guidelines is needed, then this revision will be submitted to higher management for review and approval. Approval workflow plays a critical role to facilitate, automate and make the whole trade promotion planning process auditable.
4. Simulation playground: There are three types of simulation capability built for the client to cater to their different what-if analysis requirements.
   
   1. Market share percentage simulation: Our client has access to competitors’ sales data at product category level with which historical market share percentage can then be derived coupled with client’s own history sales data. With this knowledge, we built market share percentage simulation for KAMs to simulate forecasted volume based on different target market share percentages at Category, Banner and Week level. Category level simulated percentages will be cascaded down to SKU level to simulate SKU level forecast volume. The simulated forecast volume will connect to below two types of simulations to form a wholistic simulation outcomes on financial impact.
      
   2. Promotion parameters simulation: This capability allows the KAMs to play around with promotion parameters like promo price, discount, scan, promo volume etc. to see their impact on financial outcomes in terms of Revenue, GDM, ROI, Customer Margin.
      
   3. Pricing simulation: Pricing simulation playground allows the KAMs to simulate different cost / expense factors from Shelf Price to the final Net 3 and eventually their impact on financial outcomes. Additionally, there is a “goal-seek” functionality built whereby the KAMs input their desired NIS (Net into Store) price and Anaplan calculates backwards what the Cycle Discount will be to achieve that target NIS.
      

All fore-mentioned simulations are connected to promotion planning and therefore generates a wholistic TPM planning scenarios from volume to financials. KAMs or management can then compare the different outcomes across scenarios and make informed decisions on commercial planning as well as final promotion planning.

Release 3

Release 3 solution is to link trade promotion planning outcome to financial planning and analytics and management reporting so that the management team can view the real-time financial outcomes based on KAMs’ updates in planning and hence aide their decision-making. In this release, P&L report together with other key management reports (S&OP, Market share) are developed integrating actualized financial data from the client’s ERP system and forward-looking planning data inside Anaplan. Key managerial KPIs like Revenue/HL, GDM (Net Profit)/HL, YoY (Year over Year), YTD (Year to Date), YTG (Year to Go), etc. in terms of both monetary values and volume are also at the fingertips of the executives.

1. P&L report: P&L report is built by SKU, Banner, Week, covering both actualized data & forecast data. It links finalized (meaning after simulation) baseline forecast, price planning and promotion planning to churn out the final report, showing the management the evolution from Gross Revenue, cost / expense items in between, Net Revenue and then finally to GDM. It auto-refreshes once there is a change in the underlying planning. Therefore, whenever the KAMs report to their management, they are always referring to the latest updated planning. No more reporting on outdated data and then the KAMs take another probably half-day if being asked “how about now?” question.
2. S&OP report: S&OP report definition by the client reports on volume (both actual and forecasted) in terms of both Hectoliter (HL) and Consumer Unit (CU) and final Revenue/HL by SKU by Banner across both history and future periods. It is a more concise management report dedicated to higher management for them to have a quick understanding on both volume and revenue.
3. Actualizations vs Plan Summary: This report allows the management to review key metrics like Volume HL, Revenue, GDM, etc. comparing actuals vs what has been forecasted and planned inside Anaplan. Key comparison metrics like YoY, YTD, YTG are also implemented to give the management an overview of how the business is performing at a quick glance.
   

Summary

It has been a fulfilling 15-month journey with the client and the solution has helped the client to minimize manual work, changed their once-a-month planning to run weekly or even real-time, added science and advanced analytics to their planning instead of human guesstimation, improved their revenue planning accuracy to as high as over 95%, automated the whole process from data management to final management reporting onto Anaplan. No more crunching numbers in Excel; no more taking 4 hours to address management question on profitability, etc. Every step now is handled systematically and updated real time inside Anaplan with traceable auditability. The linkage from basic trade promotion planning to financial planning & analytics helped the client to truly transform and digitalize their revenue growth management.

To give everyone more flexibility during the busy holiday season, the recertification exam deadline has been extended to January 31st.

The details

• Exams must be passed, not just scheduled, by January 31st.
  
• The promotion for Professional Solution Architects to take a free attempt at the Certified Master Anaplanners exam will still end on December 31st.
  
• For more information on what happens if you miss the recertification deadline, please see this community post: What happens if you miss the Anaplan recertification deadline?

Delayed response from Academy team

Please note that due to the holidays, the Academy certification team will have significantly limited coverage the week of December 22nd. You can still reach out to Academy@anaplan.com for certification questions, but please expect a delayed response. We will do our best to respond to your inquiries as quickly as possible upon our return.

For any immediate technical support, please reach out to Kryterion for support Support@KryterionOnline.com. A live chat is also available during the exams for support.

Recertification resources

To help you prepare, we have a wealth of resources available on the Anaplan Community:

• Anaplan Certifications
  
• Exam Prep

We encourage you to use these resources and schedule your exam soon. Good luck with your recertification!

Author: Artem Shchaulov is a Senior Anaplan Consultant and Solution Architect with 8+ years' experience implementing global EPM solutions.

In my experience, User Access Management (UAM) inside Anaplan works perfectly as long as the model footprint is small. The built-in UI allows administrators to add users, assign roles, and set selective access on lists. That approach is fine for a few dozen people, maybe even a few hundred.

But when a company expands across functions, regions, and planning processes, it becomes more complicated. With thousands of users, dozens of selective-access hierarchies, and millions of potential user–item intersections, it’s best to explore different methods.

Administrators can have challenges keeping up, business users cannot see their own access, identity systems cannot translate structure into selective access, and onboarding/offboarding becomes a time-consuming, error-prone process.

This inevitably pushes enterprises to look for a scalable, governed approach to access. And when you examine all available options closely, it becomes clear why so many deployments get stuck — and what is needed to build something stable.

Four ways to manage access in Anaplan — and my recommendation for the most scalable option

Before discussing architecture, it’s important to lay out all options that enterprises have today. Each option has strengths and weaknesses.

We will go through them in order of increasing sophistication.

Option 1: Manual access

This is the default; you add users manually, give them roles manually, and assign selective access manually.

It works best when:

• you have <100 users
  
• you have only a few lists with selective access, if any
  
• each model is operated by a small team
  

It becomes challenging when:

• there are thousands of users
  
• there are dozens of selective access lists
  
• lists contain hundreds of thousands of items
  
• you have a dozens of onboarding request daily just to your architect
  
• users need to compare their access with colleagues
  

Manual access is simply not an enterprise-grade solution.

Option 2: SCIM (Identity System → Anaplan Workspaces)

Most large companies use an identity management system such as Okta, Azure AD/Entra, Ping, SailPoint, or OneLogin. These platforms rely on SCIM to create and deactivate users in Anaplan automatically.

SCIM is excellent at:

• provisioning new users
  
• de-provisioning users
  
• keeping identity data consistent across systems
  

But SCIM cannot:

• assign model roles
  
• assign selective access
  
• interpret hierarchy logic
  
• enforce read/write/none
  
• limit what permissions a user can grant
  
• understand business responsibility boundaries
  

SCIM solves the identity lifecycle — not the permission lifecycle.

Option 3: Custom API solutions

Another option is to automate access purely with the Anaplan API. API scripts can grant model roles, assign selective access, and even push updates on a schedule.

But pure API solutions may not be the best solution because:

• every model requires its own custom script
  
• logic becomes fragmented across environments
  
• scripts cannot enforce governance rules
  
• there is no visibility for business users
  
• there is no concept of qualified users or responsibility boundaries
  
• APIs know nothing about business hierarchy or ownership
  
• maintenance cost grows with every model and hierarchy added
  

API solves the mechanical part, but not the business logic or governance.

Option 4: UAM Model (SCIM + API + Anaplan logic combined)

The fourth option — and the one that scales best — is to introduce a dedicated User Access Management (UAM) model into the Anaplan landscape.

This UAM model becomes the centralized access brain of the entire ecosystem.

It takes:

• SCIM’s ability to create and remove users
• API’s ability to pass identity metadata (emails, names, department, region, status, etc.)
  
• CloudWorks’ ability to assign roles, selective access and run nightly
  
• Anaplan’s build in logic, responsibility boundaries, transparency and scalability
  

…and unifies them into one controlled, scalable process.

The UAM model is where access is defined, validated, governed, and distributed.
It replaces manual chaos, SCIM limitations, and API fragmentation with a clear, stable, controlled flow.

Everyone starts to trust it.

My recommendation: SCIM + API + UAM + CloudWorks

Once you evaluate all four access methods, the architecture practically designs itself.

Here is the flow that works in every large deployment:

Identity System -> SCIM -> Anaplan Workspaces

SCIM automatically creates users in all necessary workspaces. They appear as empty shells — active users with no roles and no selective access.

This keeps identity lifecycle clean and consistent.

Identity System -> API -> UAM Model

API is used to push additional identity metadata into the UAM model. This metadata includes:

• Department
  
• Region
  
• functional responsibility
  
• cost center
  
• employment status
  
• organizational grouping
  
• any custom attributes needed for planning
  

This allows access logic to be tied to business rules, not to static user lists.

UAM Model -> CloudWorks -> Spoke models

This is where access is actually assigned.

CloudWorks cannot create users. But CloudWorks can:

• assign model roles
  
• assign selective access
  
• push changes at scale
  
• execute scheduled updates safely
  

This is why the chain works: SCIM creates users. CloudWorks changes users.

This separation prevents performance issues, avoids duplication, and stops uncontrolled user creation.

Why the UAM architecture works

When you combine SCIM, API, CloudWorks, and Anaplan logic inside a single UAM model, you solve every structural problem that appears at enterprise scale.

The UAM model enables:

1. Centralized access logic: One model defines every rule, every hierarchy boundary, and every selective-access assignment.
2. Ease of management: Only qualified users can change access, they cannot grant access outside their responsibility, they cannot modify their own access, and admins are removed from the daily loop.
3. Business transparency: Every user can finally see what access they have; not in UAM, but in Spokes models. They can compare with a colleague and understand what’s missing and why.
4. Cost allocation support: Since the model knows who has read and who has write access to which models, it becomes a natural place to allocate Anaplan license cost.
5. Integration with org metadata: Access can be tied to departments, regions, cost centers, or any other structure.
6. Scalability to millions of intersections: UAM can handle full loads and delta loads. I plan to write about this next!

Conclusion

At small scale, manual access is workable.
At medium scale, SCIM and API can help.
At enterprise scale, only UAM is sufficient.

The UAM model is the only architecture that creates a stable, governed, scalable access-management process across dozens of models and thousands of users. It unifies identity lifecycle, permission lifecycle, business hierarchy, transparency, and cost allocation into one model.

Questions? Leave a comment!