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The 3 Pillars of Connected Planning: Part 4—Connecting the Pillars
In the first part of “The 3 Pillars of Connected Planning” series, the Community team spoke with Chief Planning Officer Simon Tucker ( @simon_tucker) about the importance of the 'people' pillar of Connected Planning and the need for a cultural shift within an organization. In part two, we took a look at the 'data' pillar…
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Announcing The Master Anaplanner Program 2020 Maintenance Requirements
The Master Anaplanner Program formally launched maintenance requirements, effective starting calendar year 2020. Participation is required for all members who wish to retain their designation as a Certified Master Anaplanner for the following year (2021) and will continue on an annual basis thereafter. The Master…
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Scenario Planning in Anaplan, Part II: From Insight to Action
In my recent blog post titled Scenario Planning in Anaplan, Part I: The Power of 'What If', I introduced the key steps needed for effective scenario planning in Anaplan and focused on the mechanisms to develop a forecast ('what') and evaluate the impact of forecast events ('so what'). In this second part, we look to move…
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The 3 Pillars of Connected Planning: Part 2—Data
In the first part of “The 3 Pillars of Connected Planning” series, the Community team spoke with Chief Planning Officer Simon Tucker about the importance of the “people” pillar of Connected Planning and the need for a cultural shift within an organization. In part two, we take a look at the “data” pillar and what…
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The 3 Pillars of Connected Planning: Part 3—Plans
In the first part of “The 3 Pillars of Connected Planning” series, the Community team spoke with Chief Planning Officer Simon Tucker about the importance of the 'people' pillar of Connected Planning and the need for a cultural shift within an organization. In part two, we took a look at the 'data' pillar and what companies…
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The Master Anaplanners' UX Cookbook
Brought to you by Certified Master Anaplanners. “Our business owner (Finance Manager, FP&A) was ecstatic that this page empowers his team to recognize trends and evaluate variances much quicker compared to with the classic UX equivalent dashboard. It’s so intuitive to use and looks so clean!” – @nickealvarez, Customer Whet…
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#ChooseToChallenge on International Women's Day
Today we celebrate International Women's Day. On March 8 every year, we celebrate the social, political, and economic achievements of women. Beyond celebrating achievements, the day helps raise awareness about women's equality, lobby to accelerate gender parity, and fundraise for women-focused charities. This year's…
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A New Way to Give Your Feedback to Anaplan
At the core of Anaplan is our ‘customer first’ principle, as we have recently highlighted in our Anaplan Listens program. It revolves around creating products and features that improve the Anaplan experience for our customers. Through research, such as speaking to you about your day-to-day processes and asking you to test…
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Sales Planning Meets Production Planning
Planning complexity in manufacturing and order fulfillment stems from the attempt to “fit” forecasted demand with available production machines while hoping to leverage an algorithm that will provide the best “**** for the buck.” This algorithm normally incorporates Level 2 production machine metrics like run-rate, machine…
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Planning for a Company’s Most Valuable Asset—its People
The long-range sales forecast is set, and targets are being communicated throughout the organization. Next on the agenda are costs, margin, and expenses leading to the bottom line. Operating and planning a business is like solving a complex puzzle: an organization can have all the correct pieces for its business but at the…
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Meet our 2021 Community Bosses!
As we kick off 2021, we couldn’t be more thrilled to announce this year's Community Bosses! The Community Boss program aims to recognize customers, partners, and employees who go out of their way to encourage, advise, and share knowledge with their fellow Anaplan Community members. This select group of Community…
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Anaplan Extensions: Building Reports in PowerPoint to Present User Stories
Recently, I interviewed Jared Dolich, a Principal Consultant at Columbus Consulting, about his clever use of Anaplan Extensions as a consultant in an Anaplan implementation project. Q: Tell us about yourself and your Anaplan journey Well, first, Magali, thank you for your interest! It means a lot to me to have the…
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Demand Planning: A Cornerstone of Every Business Plan
Businesses and their environment are growing more complex by the minute. Despite the many approaches, stakeholders, and circumstances around it, there is one invariable truth: serving customer demand is the reason for the existence of any firm. In pursuit of better serving their customers, companies have adopted…
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Happy New Year From Our Family to Yours!
In 2021, we'll work to turn challenges into opportunities and drive transformative change! We'll fill the year with new ideas, bold plans, and big accomplishments. The new year is here, and we’re kicking it off by celebrating with you. From the Anaplan family to you, Happy New Year!…
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Volunteer, Learn, and Grow on MLK Day
This Monday, January 18, we will celebrate the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, as well as his many contributions to the civil rights movement and society as a whole. Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and equal rights activist who played a key role in the American civil rights movement…
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A Tipping Point for Finance
Profit& (and most of my career as an accountant) is about promoting more relevant and agile planning and forecasting. Decision-makers need our best view of the future, not confirmation of the past. I regularly try to persuade management information providers to focus on predicting the future rather than reporting the past.…
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The Age of Anaplan
You have probably heard this at least once recently from a co-worker, a friend, or maybe even a heartfelt marketing email from your favorite big-box retailer: “We are living in unprecedented times.” While that is definitely true, the reality is that our businesses often face unprecedented disruptions and changes. Now more…
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Headcount Alignment Executive Summary
Overview Anaplan has had challenges getting our finance, human resources, and sales team on the same page of what our headcount is and what our headcount is forecasted to be in order to hit our revenue targets. We struggled to understand where requisitions were in the cycle and how many were currently open. We built a…
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The Anaplan Way—Supporting a Remote Working Environment
When working with a cloud-based platform like Anaplan, we are used to building models and collaborating remotely, but how easy is it to run an entire project without any real face-to-face contact? This year most employees have had little choice but to work from home. In my latest project for a large insurance company, we…
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Anaplan Live! December: That's a Wrap
The Anaplan Live! December event was a huge hit with Anaplan model builders across the globe! With content tailored to support Anaplan model builder’s expertise at every level, there was a record turnout with nearly 1,500 people registered—representing 38 countries and 346 companies.…
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Releasing the Anaplan Add-in for Excel 4.0
The Anaplan Add-in for Excel is key for many Anaplan users, helping their business processes for reporting and ad-hoc analysis. We’ve made it even easier to take advantage of the Excel Add-in, with a seamless experience from installation to support. Version 4.0 makes it easier for anyone to install and upgrade the Excel…
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The First Thing I Needed to Know About Becoming A Master Anaplanner
I don’t recall ever being ranked first at anything. By my senior year in high school, I managed to grow to an astounding and towering 4’11”, 98 pounds (1.5 m, 44 kg). I tried wrestling, cross-country, triathlons, trumpet, marching band, debate, public speaking, theater, and squash. I even had a little retail business…
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How do I get a UX Research Superstar badge?
The Anaplan Community recently came out with many new badges to award and show appreciation to our members for their involvement. One of those badges—the UX Research Superstar badge—awards Community members for participating in research carried out by the User Experience (UX) team. At Anaplan, our UX team spends a lot of…
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Gather 4 Clues to Find the Mystery Roadmap Item
The end of the year is fast approaching, and in the UK this usually means lots of quizzes (now done virtually, as opposed to at the pub). In June, I did a quiz about the Extensions, but many things have changed since then—so here is a new one for you to polish your knowledge about those products, as well as to discover an…
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Anaplan—2020 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice
The Anaplan team is thrilled to announce that we have been recognized as the only vendor in the 2020 Gartner Peer Insights 'Voice of the Customer': Sales Performance Management (SPM). View the Anaplan for Sales page on Gartner Peer Insights. As noted in the report, over the past 12 months, Anaplan received 50 published…
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Supply Chain Planning: The Power of Co-Creation
With the world changing at a faster pace than ever before, the need for organizations to be able to react quickly is drastically increasing. This impacts the way we design our business processes. In the complex environments of today, it is not enough to just have processes in place without system support. This was exactly…
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How I Became an Anaplan Addict
Anaplan was not even a blip on technology’s radar when I started college, and I never could have predicted the seriousness of my ultimate relationship with the company and platform. I started out as a nerdy auditor at one of the top accounting firms in the country. While I hate to admit my age, this was a time when a MAC…
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Using the U.S.E.R. Methodology to Move to the UX
Anaplan’s UX is a great feature that can be used to condense multiple dashboards into meaningful apps and pages. I see this as a huge improvement to users' overall experience of the product. By taking an example of a simple case study, I'll explain how to use the new U.S.E.R. methodology to move from Classic to UX. Case…
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Anaplan Live!—Your Opinion Matters!
The team is energized on the heels of this year's CPX, and we're moving quickly to bring you even more valuable content to support you in your Anaplan journey. Planning is under way for Anaplan Live!—an event with you specifically in mind, the Anaplan model builder. Anaplan Live! is a two-day online experience packed with…
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Designing a Better Upgrade Experience: How Customers Helped
As a Master Anaplanner and the Extensions product manager at Anaplan, I'm excited to share today lessons learned from building a better Anaplan product, how our users have contributed to our decision making, and how you can apply those principles as a model builder for your community of Anaplan users. In August we launched…
