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The Planual Rises
It’s time. For the last 18 months, we have been working hard to fully understand how the Anaplan engine works, what the associated best practices should be, and how they should be put together in a digestible format. It’s 4:11 p.m. I am in a very hot Pier 29 building in San Francisco, standing in front of an expectant…
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March 2023 Community Member Spotlight: Tiffany Rice
We are excited to continue our celebration of Community with our monthly Member Spotlight for March, Tiffany Rice! Last month we introduced this new series with our first spotlight on Mishbah Ansari. Tiffany, Anaplan Model Builder at Prudential, is a Certified Master Anaplanner for the last four years, and an active…
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Meet Certified Master Anaplanner of the Year, Asslam Umar Ali
Meet Asslam Umar Ali (@Asslam) — our Anaplan 2022 Certified Master Anaplanner of the Year, and Manager, Financial Performance Management with over 15 years of experience. Asslam currently manages the enterprise planning program, including the Center of Excellence, at Fortescue Metals Group. Asslam is passionate about…
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Meet Certified Master Anaplanner Dmitry Sorokin
Meet Dmitry Sorokin — Certified Solution Architect, Certified Master Anaplanner, and Senior Model Engineer at lululemon in British Columbia. Dmitry focuses on supply chain planning, demand forecasting, allocation, and replenishment. He enjoys setting up best practices in model building to improve model performance and user…
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Retail Planning: The Business Case for Anaplan
The vision and interest to connect retail planning activities was well understood before 1990, but technology wasn’t as evolved as our ambition. Anaplan is an ideal platform to enable virtually all retail, wholesale, and eCommerce planning activities. The value provided by Anaplan combines the flexibility of spreadsheets…
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Community perspective: How to achieve multi-app accessibility from a single dashboard
As Anaplan moves forward, many companies are implementing Connected Planning across their entire organisations. This means that as the Anaplan implementation grows - multiple models or multiple functional areas across a single model- generally arise. This is currently being resolved through the use of multiple Apps to…
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Introducing the Connected Planning Playbook
Connected Planning isn’t easy. That’s why we can’t help but smile a bit when we hear our customers and prospects say, “Well, of course, Connected Planning at Anaplan is great. It’s what you do!” The reality is: our own Connected Planning journey was hard. And, if it was hard for Anaplan, it had to be hard for our…
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Day in the life of a Certified Master Anaplanner (Part 2): CoE Administrator
Author: Joel Bangalan, Certified Master Anaplanner, Solutions Architect, and Systems Administrator in the consulting industry. Hello Anaplanners! This article is the second of two parts on my experience as a Certified Master Anaplanner. I’ve worked as an Anaplan implementation consultant and as an end user, I’m hoping to…
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February 2023 Community Member Spotlight: Misbah Ansari
Congratulations to our very first member we are featuring in Anaplan’s Community Member Spotlight, Misbah Ansari! As one of our top contributors over the course of the past five years he’s been part of the Anaplan Community, Misbah can be seen continually helping members and sharing valuable insights. About Misbah We asked…
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Top three underappreciated features of the UX
Author: Kait Chura, Certified Master Anaplanner and Solution Architect at LiveRamp. Reflection is a common practice for me when entering a new year. It's important that I find appreciation in both my personal and professional life, so I know what made my year better. Then, I can either build upon good behaviors in the…
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Community perspective: Flat-file Data Load - CSV Encoding Issues
Problem: In the same way we cannot load .txt files (usually tab-delimited) through a data load action originally created with a .csv (comma delimited file), trying to load .csv files with different encoding parameters can result in an issue too. This is the error message you will get in both cases (attempting to load a…
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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…
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PLAN Ahead [March 2023 Community Newsletter]
There's a lot happening in the Anaplan Community, and it’s easy to miss new articles or the opportunity to share your perspective and help a peer. Take a look at what’s been going on lately. Have you seen the great thought-leadership and technical guidance in Community this month? Here are recent articles you may have…
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Community perspective: Time Settings impact on PERIOD function
When changing the model calendar or available time ranges beware of the unintended consequence on any PERIOD functions in your model. Here are the details on what caused a phantom issue at a customer and how we solved it. Problem While working with a customer to reduce model size we took a hard look at how they were using…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Spotlight event: Transitioning from Classic to UX
Don't miss this upcoming virtual event for the Anaplan Community — Transitioning from Classic To UX! On Wednesday, July 20 at 10 a.m. ET I’ll be joined by Taylor Rogers, @taylor_rogers Certified Master Anaplanner & Merchandise Systems Model Builder at Stitch Fix, and Andy Martin, @andrew_martin_1 Director, Operational…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Announcing an improved Anaplan Community experience, launching soon!
Anaplan Community is excited to announce it is moving to a new platform and adding new capabilities to elevate the member experience. Launching in mid-December, the new Community experience will include upgrades such as content personalization, a simplified process for user-contributed content, new badging/rewards, and…
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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…
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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…
