Blog

New Community Challenge – share your fun Anaplan builds and collect a badge!
We're thrilled to announce a brand new Community Challenge kicking off this month — the Builder Challenge! This is an opportunity to showcase your creativity and share the fun and innovative Anaplan model builds you've created. As a bonus, we will select participants to present their model builds in a special Community…
Four tips on Anaplan model documentation
Author: Timmy Thomas is a Senior Anaplan Model Builder at Autodesk, Inc. Documentation within Anaplan may seem like a mundane topic, but it is crucial to the long-term success and vitality of an Anaplan model. Inevitably, there will be change management to deal with throughout a successful model’s lifespan. Whether the…
A conversation with Kevin Cho — Journey | Anaplan Community Podcast
Welcome to episode 15 of Journey, an Anaplan Community podcast. Tune in today to hear host Kas Gengadaren (@KasG), Anaplan’s Senior Program Manager of Global Ecosystem Experience, chat with Kevin Cho (@kevin.cho) — Certified Master Anaplanner, Community Boss, and Planning Systems Manager at Atlassian. Kevin is an…
Converting Text to Date and Date to Text
Author: Julie Ziemer is a Certified Master Anaplanner, Anaplan Community Boss, and Solution Leader/Business Analyst at Akili. While Anaplan has specific functions to convert between data types, converting Text to Date and Date to Text are two commonly searched topics on Community and they require the use of several…
Tips on building out a new model
Author: Andrew Tye is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Anaplan Process Developer at Aviva. As a new model builder one of the more daunting prospects is beginning the build of a brand new model. You’ve completed the various training courses, supported an existing build, and maybe have done some small enhancements to an…
Variance impact calculator
Author: Anya Skvortsova is a Certified Master Anaplanner and CoE Lead at Asana. Purpose FP&A is often asked to calculate the impact of variables on the total variance. There is more than one way to go about it. I’d like to share a variety that uses the typical Salary/HC reporting modules output to define the contributions…
Noted! Using model notes in Anaplan
Author: Hillary Sich is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Consultant Manager at Allitix. We use sticky notes, OneNote, Evernote…. Even if we can’t agree on the type of notes we use in everyday life, we can all agree that notes are an important tool. We use them for organization and communication. The big question here is,…
How I Built It: Real-time goal-seek in Anaplan
About the Author: Tristan Colgate is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Managing Director at Fidenda. Hello, Anaplan Community! One modeling challenge that we sometimes come across — especially when replacing a spreadsheet-based solution — is how to automatically goal-seek to calculate a result, when the calculation is…
June 2024 Community Member Spotlight: Rob Marshall
This month we are thrilled to feature @rob_marshall as our Community Member Spotlight! Rob is our first-ever Anaplan employee member spotlight, and we wanted to highlight all the incredible contributions he has made over the years. Additionally, he’s part of our Community Boss Employees program, which we just launched last…
Introducing our new Community Boss Employees program!
We are pleased to announce the launch of our Community Boss Employees program! In 2023, we rolled out our re-imagined Community Boss program to hand-selected customer and partner Community advocates. This year, we are excited to expand the program by including a select group of exceptional Anaplan employees. These…
How I Built It: Limitless interdependent multi-select filters
Author: Daniel Badura is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Lead Architect at Dr. Oetker. Hello Anaplan Community! In this ‘How I Built It’ tutorial, I show how you can build filters that filter filters, without using any dependent dropdowns. Each filter allows multiple selections, and they are all mapped using a single…
Did You Know? Model building hacks
Author: Kirill Kuznetsov is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Solution Architect at Planingo. Hi fellow Anaplanners, Today I would like to share six model building hacks I use on a daily basis. This is not what can be found in Anaplan learning course — some of them I figured out myself, some are hidden in Anapedia, and…
Custom waterfall methodology
Author: Anya Skvortsova is a Certified Master Anaplanner and CoE Lead at Asana. Purpose: There is more than one way to tackle the waterfall calculations. I’d like to share one custom variety that proved to be especially handy for use cases of new asset depreciation and revenue recognition. Customers seems to like the…
How I Built It: Flagging hierarchy list levels
Author: Timothy Peterson is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Delivery Associate at Spaulding Ridge. Greetings Anaplan Community! Hello and thank you for checking out my ‘How I Built It’ tutorial. In this video, I will showcase how you can leverage ratio and formula summary methods to flag different hierarchy list…
A conversation with Philipp Erkinger — Journey | Anaplan Community Podcast
Welcome to episode 14 of Journey, an Anaplan Community podcast. Tune in today to hear Dennis Lemoine, Director of Customer Engagement & Experience, chat with Philipp Erkinger (@PhilippErkinger) — Certified Master Anaplanner, Anaplan Community Boss, and Principal Solution Architect at Bedford Consulting. Philipp loves to…
How I Built It: YTD values using a fake calendar
Author: Jared Dolich is a Certified Master Anaplanner with 8 years architecting Anaplan models. Anaplan Champions! A colleague asked me recently how I might obtain a YTD value using a fake calendar. Yeah, I know — I should have asked why they couldn’t use the normal time hierarchy, but there are occasions where you are…
Navigating data integration challenges in Anaplan: strategies and solutions
Author: Shivankur Sharma is a Certified Master Anaplanner and assistant manager in the consulting industry. In today's data-driven business landscape, organizations rely on robust tools and platforms to streamline their financial planning and analysis (FP&A) processes. Anaplan, with its versatile capabilities, has emerged…
Experimenting with automated documenting
Author: Taichi Amaya, Certified Master Anaplanner, and Financial Planning and Analysis Specialist at Pasona Group, Inc. When I first started model building, I looked at the model map and was impressed by how easy it was to understand the logic of the model. Even now that we are dealing with larger models, we can look at…
Did you know? Line item references across dimensions
Author: Noah Jackson is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Principal Data and Insights Architect at Anaplan. Hello Anaplan Community! I'm excited to bring you the first video in Community's 'Did You Know?' series! This new series will dive into aspects of Anaplan that are often misunderstood or users have requested more…
April 2024 Community Member Spotlight: Kirill Kuznetsov
This month we are thrilled to feature @KirillKuznetsov as our Community Member Spotlight! Kirill has been active in the Community since 2017, a Certified Master Anaplanner for the last four years, and is currently a Community Boss. You can find Kirill supporting members with answering questions (he has over 570 comments!),…
Planning in high gear: Accelerating manufacturing companies to success
Author: Daniel Dunleavy, Certified Master Anaplanner and Manager at Lionpoint Group. Manufacturing is the lifeblood of the US economy. In 2022, it generated $2.1 trillion of revenue, and would have ranked it as the world’s ninth largest economy(1). The sector also plays a major role in promoting growth around the world.…
Mission NOT impossible: Org hierarchy redesign for production deployed models
Author: Tiffany Rice, Certified Master Anaplanner and Tech Lead at Prudential. In a dynamic and ever changing business environment, it is inevitable that business requirements for forecasting and planning shift over time. Particularly in times of economic volatility we see companies leaning into transformation projects to…
A conversation with Ikhwan Ryan Aditantra — Journey | Anaplan Community Podcast
Join host Kas Gengadaren (@KasG), Anaplan’s APAC Ecosystem Manager, for our thirteenth episode of Journey, an Anaplan Community podcast. In this episode, she chats with Ryan Aditantra, Certified Model Builder and Assistant to CFO at PT Pertamina. Ryan has been with PT Pertamina for over ten years in various roles. PT…
Spring cleaning your Anaplan experience: Best practices for model optimization
Author: Wendy Wen is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Director at Globalization Partners. As we embrace the arrival of spring, it's an opportune moment to fine-tune your Anaplan experience, enhance model efficiency, and elevate user satisfaction. In this blog post, I will delve into essential best practices and…
Anapedia in NMX now! (and some other cool updates)
Author: Kirill Kuznetsov is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Solution Architect at Planingo. Exciting news for Anaplan architects and model builders! A new Anaplan feature has just been sneaked, and I already love it! Now when you open the formula editor you can push the question mark (?) and search through Anapedia right…
Anaplan coach’s playbook
Author: Arun Thakar, Certified Master Anaplanner and Vice President in the banking industry. Seldom has there been a time where a single model builder can solve all an enterprise’s business problems on their own. Anaplan engagements work better with more people than with just the efforts of an individual. That being said,…
Transforming technical field officer alignment and quota planning: Anaplan's impact
Author: Aman Gupta is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Sr. Business Solution Consultant at Voiant Group. The integration of Anaplan marked a significant turning point in operational efficiency for our software client. Empowered by advanced data visualization and analysis tools, this consultancy enables IT professionals to…
Harnessing LLMs for enhanced Anaplan planning
Author: Joe van Bolderen is a Certified Master Anaplanner and founder of Van Bolderen Consulting Group. Introduction AI is changing the business landscape. The integration of external AI systems, particularly Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models, into Anaplan's ecosystem marks a significant shift for the…
March 2024 Community Member Spotlight: Wendy Wen
March is Women's History Month and we're recognizing some of our outstanding female Community members! Our Journey podcast episode featured Silvia Di Feliciantonio (@SilviaDF) , and now in our Member Spotlight we are excited to introduce Wendy Wen (@Wendy)! Wendy is a trailblazing Certified Master Anaplanner whose…
How I Built It: Replacing the "group by" function of Excel in Anaplan
About the Author: Damien Bouquier has been a Certified Master Anaplanner for 5+ years and has developed solutions across a wide range of industries for FP&A, supply chain, and sales operations planning use cases. Hi Anaplan Community! Excel allows you to group and ungroup data areas to explore the data. Anaplan does not…