Blog

Day in the life of a Certified Master Anaplanner (Part 1): Management Consulting
Author: Joel Bangalan, Certified Master Anaplanner, Solutions Architect, and Systems Administrator in the consulting industry. Hello Anaplan Community! This is the first of two parts of my blog on my experience as an Anaplanner. Having worked with Anaplan both as an implementation consultant and as an end user, I’m hoping…
Community perspective: Building two approaches to ragged hierarchy
In Two approaches to ragged hierarchy, I presented two ways to fix a ragged hierarchy into a balanced one. Now let's proceed with building based on these two approaches. 👀 Blueprints are included for your reference. Building Hierarchy - Loop20230207.xlsx 1. Common preparation Many platforms with a hierarchical structure…
Model building checklist
Author: Nicole Johnson, Senior Anaplan Model Builder at Autodesk. I love a good checklist. Naturally, that passion comes through when I plan and build enhancements for an Anaplan model. I've created a model building checklist that I use to think through and document changes I need to make to a model, and I'm sharing my…
Change management tips for redesigning processes in Anaplan
Author: Arun Thakar, Certified Master Anaplanner and Vice President in the banking industry. As an organization embarks on its Anaplan journey there may be a lot of questions from the business on what Anaplan is, and what the final product will look like. User reactions to process change can be varied, ranging from…
Tips for learning Anaplan
Authors: Ben Ramirez, Certified Master Anaplanner and Manager at Spaulding Ridge, and Tyler Gareau (@tylergareau), Associate at Spaulding Ridge. Starting out in the Anaplan platform may provoke certain positive emotions such as curiosity, excitement, and stimulation. On the other hand, learning a brand-new platform can…
Community perspective: Smart Data Storage
We’ve all been faced with that question: to version or not to version. The requirements you face, together with your previous experience, will be taken into consideration to make that decision for each new model. But whatever route you decide to take, I think we can all agree that versions shouldn’t be used as storage.…
Anaplan New Year’s resolutions and tips for a successful 2023
Author: Daniel Dunleavy, Certified Master Anaplanner and Sr Associate, Head of Data Integration at Vuealta. Boss calls you into their office. After congratulating you for your hard work last year, he/she says for this year, “We need you to do more, with less, and do it better than before.” After thinking about all the…
Carbon footprinting: Building ESG metrics into your financial plans [Part 2]
Part Two: Scope 3 Planning using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Author: Steve Bows, Certified Master Anaplanner and Managing Director, Zooss Consulting. In Part 1 of this series, we learned the difference between Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 carbon emissions, and how we could incorporate energy use data (fossil fuels burnt…
Community perspective: Performing FVSchedule Excel function in Anaplan
When searching for FVSchedule in Anaplan Community there was seemingly method for/content about this. There are always multiple methods to achieve the same result but this method has provided the required outcome and may be useful for anyone hoping to tackle an FVSchedule or similar calculation in Anaplan. What is FV…
Recognizing our ACE Award winners
This past November at our Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) event, we recognized two Community members who have gone above and beyond in 2022 to represent Advancement, Culture, and Education — the key elements of ACE — and who embody the spirit of the Anaplan Community. The winners were chosen specifically for their…
Reflections from ACE: CloudWorks for Anaplan CoE enablement
Author: Tiffany Rice, Certified Master Anaplanner and Anaplan Model Builder, Prudential Financial. With a new year upon us, this is a great time for reflection on the prior year and the capabilities that have been added to Anaplan. During the recent Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) this past November, there was an…
Top 25 Anaplan features released in 2022
Authors: Misbah Ansari (@Misbah), Certified Master Anaplanner and CEO/Founder at Miz Logix and @WajidAli . Within this fast-pacing world, it is important for technologies to move even faster. Anaplan, being a leader in the Connected Planning world, released a plethora of changes and/or updates in 2022 to almost every…
Let’s kick 2023 into gear!
Happy New Year, Anaplanners! The Anaplan Community team would like to take a moment to say thank you for an incredible 2022. We look forward to bringing this Community more learning, professional growth, and opportunities for connections in 2023! We want to take a moment to share our reflections on the past year, and…
Introducing the new Anaplan Community experience!
The new Anaplan Community experience is now live! Starting today, Community members can access a new and improved Community. We have thoroughly migrated existing content to the new Community, including discussions, blogs, articles, the Idea Exchange, as well as favorite resources such as Planual and the Model Optimization…
Two approaches to ragged hierarchy
Author: Taichi Amaya, Certified Master Anaplanner, and Financial Planning and Analysis Specialist at Pasona Group, Inc. In Anaplan, we consider it a significant feature that lists are hierarchical. Hierarchical structure allows for smooth and meaningful connections from the parts to the whole and gives flexibility to the…
Five lessons I learned in 2022
Author: Manuela Apostol, Certified Master Anaplanner and Anaplan & BI Solutions Architect at Logicor Anaplan is a resilient and very flexible tool and has demonstrated it can be used to adapt plans in days or weeks to current market trends — or rather — shocks! I have found that I’ve also needed to adapt my work strategy…
Community perspective: Version switchover management from UX Page with API
The Anaplan API offers many improvements to model management, which can help improve the data quality and make work more efficient by eliminating repetitive tasks, which are error prone. One area where I have found myself doing repetitive tasks is switchover management. Especially when dealing with multiple models it…
Building with Anaplan while avoiding perfectionism
Author: Dave Edwards, Certified Master Anaplanner and Principal at Columbus Consulting. Inevitably we will all encounter projects that drift too far into the realm of perfectionism. As companies transition to more agile software solutions, the lingering perspective from older system design that a tool must be perfect to…
Carbon footprinting: Building ESG metrics into your financial plans [Part 1]
Part 1: Dealing with Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions Author: Steve Bows, Certified Master Anaplanner and Managing Director, Zooss Consulting. Last year I took a year out to do a Masters in Sustainability. I’ve been building planning models for over 25 years (originally in Adaytum — anyone old enough to remember that?), and…
Building your internal Anaplan talent pool
Is your organization looking to grow your internal Anaplan talent pool, and either begin to establish an Anaplan Center of Excellence (CoE) or move up the Anaplan CoE maturity curve? If you’re not thinking about this component of your CoE, then you’re not thinking about a key ingredient of an Anaplan CoE! Or perhaps your…
Community perspective: Version compare and dynamic module line item description update
There are times when we need to generate output modules with the ability for version comparison. Although Anaplan has its own version comparison function, sometimes we need to build a dynamic scenario creation and comparison function. Please see Planual instructions for versions before proceeding with custom versions, as…
Three foundational steps required to transition from classic to UX
The development of Anaplan’s user experience (UX) has been both a major step in the platform’s maturity as well as a key driver of its best-in-class recognition. However, because the UX represented a major change to the dashboard interface during a time when Anaplan had already amassed a large customer base, not all…
Community perspective: Add a timestamp to processes utilizing Anaplan API and Python
Anaplan is a critical tool for different business processes, and it is used to handle a variety of data. One key attribute for data quality is the timeliness and reliability of the data. It is a known best practice to use Data Hub for centralized data management and then import data to different spoke models. Even though…
Five ways to give back in the Anaplan Community
The biggest thing I’m grateful for in my career is the Anaplan Community. Not just in the sense of this technical website — community.anaplan.com. If it weren’t for all of the people willing to share their knowledge, support others’ growth, and challenge ideas, I wouldn't be in business as an independent consultant. In…
The new Modeling Experience is here!
If you attended ACE 2022 or have been keeping up in Community lately, you’ve probably heard about exciting new changes to the Anaplan model building experience. That’s because the new and improved Modeling Experience will soon officially become the default modeling interface, but you can start using it today! Though the…
That's a wrap on the Anaplan Community Experience!
Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) 2022 is in the books! We had an incredible two days of sessions, networking opportunities, and our first-ever ACE Awards. Thank you to all our incredible presenters, hosts, and producers for making this inaugural ACE a huge success! And most importantly, thank YOU for being members of the…
From spreadsheets to Anaplan
Have you ever worked on a team where spreadsheets are used everywhere and for everything? Have you seen multiple versions of a company’s financial forecast flowing through email from one person to another, back and forth? Have you validated versions of the same file to capture any possible accidental or unwanted changes?…
How I Built It: Dashboard Filter using Line Item Subset
Hello Anaplanner Community! I’m excited to participate in this new Community ‘How I Built It’ video series with a tutorial on dashboard filtering using line item subset (LIS). This video represents one of the functions of LIS, and how can we use the LIS to apply a filter on a dashboard. This filter helps to build a filter…
Case study in workforce and talent acquisition planning
What do you do when you need a single source of truth for headcount approvals, reports, and pay benchmarking with real-time forecasts? You turn to Anaplan! In this case study, I’ll share how we improved our workforce and talent acquisition planning processes, resulting in significant forecast accuracy advancements, time…
Meet Certified Master Anaplanner Jerry Wu
Meet Jerry Wu — Certified Master Anaplanner, and Product Manager, Enterprise Apps at Snap Inc. in Texas. Jerry is part of a team that maintains, supports, and develops revenue planning, sales opps planning, and sales incentive compensation using Anaplan. Snap, Inc. empowers people to express themselves through products…