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August 2023 Community Member Spotlight: Steve Bows
Join us in celebrating @sjbows as our featured Community Member Spotlight for August! He has been in the Anaplan ecosystem and in the Community for five years, a Certified Master Anaplanner for the last four years, and is currently a Group leader for the ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) - Sustainability. We're excited to share more about Steve's impressive background, expertise, and contributions.
About Steve
We asked Steve about his background, current role, and history with Anaplan. Here’s what we learned!
I’m the founder and Managing Director of Zooss Consulting, where we’re pioneering the concept of ‘Sustainable Business Planning’. This is about applying the goals and techniques of sustainability analysis to the world of Connected Planning, and doing our bit to help solve the looming crisis that the world faces. I’ve been implementing planning systems for nearly 30 years now, initially with Adaytum, then Cognos Planning, and for the last five years with Anaplan. I’ve been a Certified Master Anaplanner for the last four years.
We asked Steve a few questions to get to know him!
Please share an Anaplan success story you’re proud of.
I actually have two that spring to mind. Firstly, I’m really proud of the Academic Workload Planning solution that I helped design last year for LaTrobe University in Melbourne, in collaboration with another Australian-based Anaplan partner. We had to come up with a simple and elegant process to make life easier for 500+ academic staff, and based on the rave reviews we got, I think we succeeded!
Secondly, we have a fantastic success story in the making at Timberlink — a company that produces timber from sustainable pine plantations. We’re starting with demand and supply planning, and then moving on to longer term planning — including integrating sustainability metrics. They are a ‘purpose-based’ business like us, and its really rewarding to be working with like-minded people.
Please share something you can teach about Anaplan - any tips and tricks you’d like to highlight?
I would say that the single most important success factor in any Anaplan project is the process design. Be relentless in asking “WHY?”, not just “HOW?” – and be as creative as you can. Not only does it make the project much more fun for everyone, but you’ll really be adding value and building trust. Aim for elegance (as few moving parts as possible) and be comfortable with the idea that ‘less is more’. You’ll get a lot of pushback initially, but if you show you can incorporate positive feedback and roll with the punches, you’ll get real user engagement. When key stakeholders start defending your design to the wider group, you know you’re on the right track. 😊
What do you enjoy about the Anaplan Community?
I’m a big fan of the collaborative approach to building best practice. Anaplan is such a flexible tool that there will very rarely be one single ‘right way’ to do things. Being able to search and interact with people who have different approaches and perspectives really helps me to validate my thinking when coming up with a design. It's also very satisfying to be able to contribute to this body of knowledge and know that my insights have been useful to someone else.
What's a hobby or interest of yours that most people might not know about?
I’ve always been a keen student of history, in particular the Classical Greek period (5th Century BC). I have a Bachelors in Classical Greek Language, for a which I did a thesis on Aristotelian ethics, and a Masters in Ancient History. Aristotle was a supreme system builder (contributing to logic, botany, zoology, literary criticism, politics, as well as all the various sub-disciplines of philosophy), and I think he would have made a great Certified Master Anaplanner! Realizing the connections between disparate systems and processes and drawing all these strands together were his unique genius, and we can all learn from it.
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We hope you enjoyed learning more about Steve in this month’s Community Member Spotlight. Thank you, Steve, for being an outstanding Community contributor and advocate!
Steve's ESG articles:
- Carbon footprinting: Building ESG metrics into your financial plans [Part 1]
- Carbon footprinting: Building ESG metrics into your financial plans [Part 2]
- Carbon footprinting: Building ESG metrics into your financial plans [Part 3]
- If the topic of ESG interests you, be sure to join our ESG-Sustainability Group that Steve leads!
Want to learn more about our Community Member Spotlight series? Check out this post.
Do you know someone in the Community who you think should be featured in a Community Member Spotlight? We want to hear about it — please nominate them here!
Re: Pivoting with more than 3 rows
Hi All!
There is a workaround for this, which I do NOT recommend to use regularly, but sometimes it is the only way.
You have to put 4th dimension to the right bottom corner of the existing one in rows.
Like on this picture.
It doesn't work in newUX, but you can create saved view and publish it.
Re: How I Built It: Dynamic month, quarter, and year filter
We use this same approach! Users love the ability to custom filter and compare relevant time slices ad hoc.
Re: Lv.2 Sprint1 1.5.2
I see you have used the wrong subset in your module - instead of selecting the subset from G3 Location, your module has the subset from Location Flat.
Go to blueprint, and change your dimension using the 'Applies to' column.
Re: 2.3.8.2 Import into DEM01 Module
When map the source data into the timescale,
we should chose the Periods and set Custom fixed-position pattern as YY-MMM.
and watch out the options of Language for month names to be set as English, which is very important.
Re: Can I have a code in a list mapped to different parent between two time periods?
@DanielSvocak I have built something that is a slight variation to what @ramonito recommended. Implement 2 lists for cost centres:
- one that belongs to a financial hierarchy (this is the one you currently have). Follow what ramonito recommended with respect to prefixing the code with the parent. In his example, cost centre is "D" and is either prefixed by the parent "EMEA" resulting in EMEA_D or "EASTASIA" resulting in EASTASIA_D. For purpose of this discussion let's call the list "CC Hierarchy"
- one that is a flat list (only has D as code). For the purpose of this discussion let's call the list "CC Flat"
- create a mapping module between the financial hierarchy cost centre and the flat list cost centre. For example, create module below and call it "CC Mapping"
Item | CC Flat Mapping |
|---|---|
EMEA_D | D |
EASTASIA_D | D |
The benefit of this is that you are able to report on cost centre D regardless of its parent while also being able to report on cost centre D specific to its parent.
So if you have a module dimensioned by "CC Hierarchy" and Month with history below. Let's call this module "CC Hierarchy Cost" and line item is value.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | Jun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
EMEA_D | 10 | 20 | 30 |
|
|
EASTASIA_D |
|
|
| 40 | 50 |
You can have a module dimensioned by "CC Flat"
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | Jun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
D | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 |
You would just need use a sum function
'CC Hierarchy Cost'.value[SUM: 'CC Mapping'.'CC Flat Mapping']
There's a bit more work you will need to do from the current design state you have at the moment but should help provide flexibility in your model for future use cases. Hope this helps.
TristanS
Re: Ability to display negative numbers as positives
@MirBorishkevich Went through a similar build requirement recently, and found the following discussion from a few years back to be very helpful.
Re: Time mapping for daily data imports
@rob_marshall thanks, I think I've figured this out.
There was one column in the source file that had a blank column header. If I delete that column in the file then I get the normal time mapping window.
