-
Building a Center of Excellence
Overview
Standing up a Center of Excellence is complex. There are many decisions to be made. Here are some of the materials to help get a basic understanding of building a CoE that are part of our CoE Success Accelerator Workshop.
What is a Success Accelerator Workshop?
Anaplan offers targeted workshops, Success Accelerators, which will enable you with the skills and tools you need to succeed with speed. Anaplan product experts will help you build a prescriptive plan tailored to your specific needs and we will run the first mile together, so you feel confident executing against the plan.
The Success Accelerator workshop is comprised of three phases; Learn, Strategize, and Plan. At the end of the workshop you will have a deep understanding of the components that are required to set up and run your internal Anaplan capability. For more information on pricing and scheduling please contact your Customer Success Business Partner.
On-Demand Modules
Reviewing these modules (plus the workbook) on your own will give you a good feel for the CoE building process. As you review these items please keep in mind this is not an end-to-end training program, but is more of an introduction to the elements and topics you will need to consider when building a CoE.
We recommend progressing through in the following order:
On-demand: Governance and Ownership (8:00)
On-demand: Establishing a Governing Body (2:47)
Workbook: Sections 1 & 2
On-demand: Maintenance and Enhancements (5:30)
On-demand: New Model Requests (3:54)
Workbook: Sections 3 & 4
On-demand: Roles and Team Structure (12:36)
Workbook: Sections 5 & 6
Read community article: Topics > Importing and Exporting Data > Shared Best Practices > Building a Data Hub
Workbook: Sections 7 & 8
-
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, not everyone has the same level of experience with the Connected Planning software. In cases where we find opportunities to upskill the next aspiring architect, here are three coaching plays for your playbook.
* Coach to help your team members to work independently and unlock your organization’s potential. Remember those times when something clicked, and you learned how to write that formula or found the functionality in the settings menu that helped you succeed in delivering something on time. You have the option of explaining all those things to your teammate OR you can show them the tools they need to fit the puzzle pieces together just as you did. It might be a mix of both, but keep in mind successful model builders can solve problems creatively.
* Design features as an architect with model builders in the room to showcase the design process. Design should not happen in a vacuum. In fact, it’s better to have other architects and model builders on some of the more complex features because they can probe design concepts which lead to a higher quality output. Aspiring developers benefit immensely from sitting in on design sessions. They learn best practices and the why behind what they are tasked to do. They also get a window into the role of Solution Architect, which they might be considering as well.
* Host shadowing sessions for experiential learning opportunities. It’s a privilege to teach others. By hosting shadowing sessions, you give your team members an opportunity for them, to see you — the master craftsperson — at work. Calmly narrating your decision-making process as you code and solving for unexpected modeling consideration will give your teammates a better chance of success and may also earn you some kudos.
If the goal of the coach’s playbook is to create more knowledgeable practitioners, the plays themselves are the knowledge sharing interactions we have day in and out. Coaching team members is important for any Center of Excellence, and personally, I’ve always found that my own understanding of a concept is better when I have been able to successfully share it with someone else.
What tips would you add?
-
Anaplan for career growth
Author: David Edwards is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Principal at Columbus Consulting.
Anaplan has long been a tool for driving growth and transformation within the companies that utilize its technology. However, it is also helpful to understand how being well-versed in Anaplan implementation and development is a method for building one’s own career potential.
Consider two career tracks: full-time employment with an Anaplan customer and consulting through an Anaplan partner organization. With a quick search through LinkedIn, Indeed, or other job search platforms, it is apparent that both tracks currently exhibit a shortage of professionals with sufficient subject matter expertise. This leaves a ripe opportunity for those who add Anaplan certification and implementation experience to their résumé.
Within typical customer ecosystems, Anaplan allows for rapid efficiency gains and expansion into multiple areas and corporate functions. This is depicted through Anaplan’s land-and-expand (or honeycomb) sales growth model. To drive one’s own personal career growth, this presents the opportunity to similarly gain quick exposure to a company’s inner functionality, an asset for advancing within one’s area of interest:
Additionally, gaining implementation experience allows for upward growth as companies seek to expand from single use cases to full-scale Centers of Excellence, or CoEs. Becoming a subject matter expert in the Anaplan platform strategically places a model builder in a position to lead future implementations and solution architecting initiatives, eventually leading to direct oversight of the entire ecosystem and internal software strategy as the CoE reaches into multiple functions within a company:
Now consider the second career path as a consulting partner. This presents the same opportunities to advise on the growth strategies and platform expansion opportunities as customer-based developers and architects but with additional potential for experiencing a wider array of use cases and project roles.
Anaplan is an exceptionally flexible tool for handling diverse business processes across industries. To name a few, the software is actively used for financial planning and analysis, supply chain management, workforce planning, investment management, and revenue forecasting. These are only five of the dozens of use cases currently being managed through the platform. An Anaplan consultant, therefore, is strategically positioned to grow their knowledge base of these use cases in a relatively short period of time. This allows for the eventuality of becoming a subject matter expert in one area of business strategy, or for well-roundedness across numerous:
Specifically, within an Anaplan implementation there is also the opportunity for consultants to develop their expertise across various project roles. For example, these include model building, solution architecting, data integration, user experience design, project management, training, and change management. Similar to learning multiple business strategies, gaining exposure to both Anaplan development and implementation strategy is a valuable opportunity that leads to increased career growth as someone who can effectively guide a successful project:
Regardless of which path is taken, both customer and partner-based employment as an Anaplan subject matter expert provide incredibly valuable career growth opportunities. Having an understanding of industry use cases and implementation strategy is a widely sought-after skillset in today’s economy, so it is strongly recommended that Anaplan certification and model building experience be considered as a path for one’s own future career growth.
-
Essential Anaplan topics
The best way to hone your expertise is practical experience. We recommend one or more years of hands-on experience using Anaplan to uncover all you can do with the platform. Training can also help you advance your technical skills and learn best practices for working with Anaplan.In addition to our required training, the following materials can help you get a well-rounded understanding of the platform. Learn how you can grow your knowledge in the areas below:
Center of Excellence Topics
Data Hubs
* Data Hubs: Purpose and Peak Performance
Governance & Structure
* Building a Center of Excellence
* Introduction to Centers of Excellence
* Selecting Center of Excellence Governance Structures
* Center of Excellence Roles and Responsibilities
* Why Do I Need a Center of Excellence?
Data Integration Topics
Importing and Exporting Data
* Data Related Training Classes
* Get Started with Imports
* Export from Anaplan
* Overview of Private and Default Files
* Import Data Sources
Integration Platform and Connectors
* Data Integration
* Anaplan Connect
* Guide to Data Integration using Anaplan REST API
* Anaplan API Guide and Reference
* Tableau Connector for Anaplan
* Excel Add-in Version 4.0
* Third-party Data Integration
* Anaplan Connector Guide for Dell Boomi
* Anaplan HyperConnect Powered by Informatica
Model Building Topics
Model Building Best Practices
* Best Practices for Module Design
* Formula Optimization in Anaplan Knowledge
* Time Range Application
* Reduce Calculations for Better Performance
* PLANS–This Is How We Model Shared Best Practice
* Add Notes
Formulas and Functions
* Calculation Functions
* YEARTODATE Function
* Formula Structure for Performance
* SELECT Function
* RANK Function
Dynamic Cell Access
* Dynamic Cell Access
* Dynamic Cell OR Selective Access
* Dynamic Cell Access Learning App
Selective Access
* Selective Access (Anapedia)
* Selective Access (Academy)
Time Ranges
* Time Ranges
* Introduction to Time Ranges
* Time Ranges–The Basics
Dashboard Filtering
* Filter (Anapedia)
* Filter Best Practice
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
* ALM Overview
* Revision Tag Best Practices
* Save Incomplete Changes when Synchronizing in ALM
* Production Lists Overview
* Structural Information Reference
-
Model history api endpoint
As a integration admin, i d need to be able to access to the model history through an api endpoint and in the model
This is required in order to
- listen to models actions and check if / whenservicess outside anaplan should be triggered
- extract for audit purposes the history of anaplan model and expose it to auditors or even bring it back to expose it to users.
- additionnally, within a model, an import action to be able to expose in a module the list of changes from the model history is a frequent request from users that needs currently to be operated manually.
Model history works well at a small / single model scale.... it doesnt at the enterprise level scale where you have tenths of frequently changing models around
-
Finished LEVEL2
Hello
Thank you to everyone who has answered my question and doubts and helped me understand and solve exercises.
SO thats it? This is the model builder certificate? how to I get the model builder batch?
Thank you ALL
-
Center of Excellence: centralized vs decentralized
Author: Bram Kurstjens is a Certified Master Anaplanner and leads a consulting team at EyeOn.
You might expect a five-step plan to build a successful Center of Excellence (CoE) from a consultant, but that would be highly misleading in my experience. With this post I would rather like to start a discussion and hopefully help you make better decisions in setting up/growing your team. I’m not married to any of the statements below, so if you have different experiences, let’s have a discussion!
First, a little background on me — why do I think I’m qualified to start this discussion? I have been working with over 30 global companies to set up and support new planning systems over the past eight years. In the past three years, I have internally set up a Center of Excellence around Anaplan, which has grown from 3 to 12 people. In this team we are doing all the usual activities of a CoE: we build and maintain several models, we connect to internal and external stakeholders, we train new colleagues, and provide a strategy and roadmap to our leadership. Enough experience to write something on the topic, but I bet there are plenty of cases still to come where I will have to adjust my current view. I hope to fast-track that process.
In this post I will start with the most difficult question: centralized vs decentralized. The name ‘Center of Excellence’ suggests having the team co-located and reporting in the same business unit, but that is not obvious for every company. There are risks involved with both centralized and decentralized and it requires a different type of effort to mitigate those risks. There are more benefits and risks than written here, so please add to it in the comments and I will summarize in a follow up post!
Centralized
Benefits
Challenges
Learning curve on development is higher as you have people surrounding you with Anaplan knowledge.
Flexibility decreases as the number of use cases goes up. Longer lead times to update existing models, leading to stakeholders creating excels again.
Standardization across solutions becomes easier, as quality and maintainability of the models is a bigger priority for the team leader.
It is more difficult to understand the real business challenge, which makes building the right solution less effective and efficient.
The planning solutions can be discussed at the coffee-corner, driving progress towards Connected Planning.
Finding the right use cases for Anaplan becomes more difficult. When the business oversees innovation without proper Anaplan knowledge, the input for when Anaplan is a good solution becomes less obvious.
Decentralized
Benefits
Challenges
Addressing business needs becomes easier when the developers are in the business and experience those needs themselves.
A wild growth of siloed use cases can occur, leading to a hard to maintain ecosystem.
Prioritization of development is clearer to the stakeholder as they have their own development resource.
Progress of use cases are dependent on the skill of the developer within the team, making growth of the platform dependent on individuals.
Time saved by automating tasks is experienced by the team itself, causing rationalization of requirements.
All the developers need to be both technically and business savvy, making it harder to find the right people.
My personal preference is a decentralized CoE with a strong community feeling. As Anaplan is an extremely flexible tool, the profit for the company is the greatest if that flexibility is applied straight into the business. I find it much more difficult to create champions of non-technical people than to create a strong community of developers. It is good to mention that within the community, certain roles can have a central focus across business units, such as: architect, data integration, innovation lead, and knowledge management. These roles can be distributed across the community or centrally organized.
In general, I have found that most teams do not really have a choice in centralized vs decentralized, the company ecosystem decides for them. Both centralized and decentralized pose challenges that require constant effort to mitigate. I have put some of the practices in the table below.
Ways to optimize your Center of Excellence
Centralized
Decentralized
Make it a requirement to have an ‘Anaplan Champion’ in the business for each business case. They should have some basic understanding of Anaplan capabilities and should be linked to and praised by the CoE.
Organize co-building events to share experiences and collaborate on the Connected Planning roadmap.
Maintain clear development prioritization and time-line estimations to the business (development roadmap).
Organize regular learning meetings where one of the developers shares any learning they have related to Anaplan. (Might be related to functionality, project management, change management, supporting tools, etc.)
Organize days for the CoE team to work alongside business teams to understand their work better and spot easy to build use cases.
Stress the importance of one way of working with development best practices, current use cases and available data. Have regular meetings to review progress, but be wary that these meetings become a burden –> make sure progress is visible. (Also relevant for centralized, but crucial for decentralized.)
Unfortunately, I do stick to traditional consultant phrase to what is a best practice — ‘It depends’. There is no straight forward answer that works for each business, but whatever you choose, be aware of the challenges. With a bit of structure and effort you can make sure your Anaplan solution truly supports the business in the long run.
Now my question to you — which practices triggered you and what do you think is missing to achieve and maintain Anaplan greatness? Leave a comment!
-
November 2023 Community Q&A Challenge — join the discussion and collect a badge!
Building on the incredible success of our inaugural Community Q&A Challenge in September 2023, we're thrilled to announce our second Q&A Challenge! In the Anaplan Community, we've always believed that the key to success lies in members coming together to connect, share knowledge, and support one another. Your enthusiastic participation, insightful discussions, and the wealth of expertise you shared during our first challenge left us truly inspired. So, get ready, because it's time to embark on another journey of sharing and learning!
Question for the Q&A Challenge: What are some of the common Anaplan-related challenges your users encounter? What is your internal support process for enabling those users and troubleshooting any problems they have? Share with us and explain your problem-solving process!
Please comment in this post with your answer!
How to participate in the November 2023 Community Q&A Challenge:
* The challenge starts today, November 6, 2023, and will conclude on November 17, 2023.
* Provide a response to the Q&A Challenge question by commenting below: What are some of the common Anaplan-related challenges your users encounter? What is your internal support process for enabling those users and troubleshooting any problems they have? Share with us and explain your problem-solving process!
* Community members who participate in the discussion will receive a unique participant badge at the end of the challenge.
We will provide a recap of November 2023 Q&A Challenge in the coming weeks after the Challenge concludes. The recap will also include Anaplan’s Operational Excellence Group's shout-outs and recognition of a few outstanding responses from the completed Challenge!
Are you ready to join the discussion? Participate in the Q&A Challenge by commenting in this post below.
We look forward to seeing your responses!
For a full outline of our challenge rules and restrictions, read our full Terms & Conditions here.
-
2.3.10 Activity: Create Demand Forecast (Big doubt )
Hello Everyone
I have a logical question to make sure my approach and formula is correct for demand forecast in question on the LEVEL 2 SPRINT 2 activity .
As we see, we have to create the baseline forecast for the current FY by importing the historic volumes data to the current FY from previous year FY19 data which we have already offseted the values of historic volume data FY19 to current FY20 in DAT03 module as shown below
As we see below I have successfully , OFFSETED the values of FY19 to FY20 by adding new line item for 1st Forecast year
Now as per the question is to create the baseline forecast for the current year, i can just pull the values from the DAT03 module that I've created by offsetting the values for FY20 as shown below
My question is
* Is the logic and formula correct for sustainable or its like hardcoding? What happens for 2nd year forecast FY21 ? how it can change or pull data automatically for future years when we calculated for only FY20 in the DAT03 module ? Can anyone help me with the correct formula and logic?
* I have a doubt when the hint in the lesson said to use this IF ELSE formula with SYS time settings which i haven't used it here but my data is correct. and also i dont know why we have created 2nd forecast year in SYS week module
-
CoE Connect Newsletter | November 2023
Welcome to CoE Connect, your monthly destination for news and insights from the Center of Excellence Program! We hope this newsletter proves both informative and inspiring, and we always welcome your thoughts and ideas for future editions. Thank you for being an integral part of the CoE community — let's stay connected and grow together!
* Check out recent articles in the Anaplan Community:* Nick Alvarez shares tips on how to unite an Anaplan Center of Excellence based on lesson's he has learned leading Autodesk's Connected Planning journey.
* This month, we asked Community members to share feedback on the following: What are some of the common Anaplan-related challenges your users encounter? What is your internal support process for enabling those users and troubleshooting any problems they have? Share with us and explain your problem-solving process! Read the answers here!
* Steven Kraplin, from The Mathworks, shares how he solved a recent challenge of designing a model that could efficiently consolidate travel data from various systems. See how he tackled that problem in his recent blog post.
* Have you seen the most recent videos in our ‘How I Built It’ series?* How I Built It: Number format converter (thousands and millions)
* How I Built It: Combining two custom time schedules
* How I Built It: Two-step approval process and audit trail
In this month's interview, we had the privilege of delving into the career of Matthew LePori, who works at Applied Materials in Austin, Texas. He shared candid insights into their Anaplan journey, how their CoE operates, and the key steps taken to evolve it over time.
Q: Hi Matthew, please tell us about yourself!
Matthew: I am the Finance Systems & Integrations Director and Anaplan CoE Lead for the Finance Organization at Applied Materials, based out of Austin, Texas.
Share with us your career path and how did you become the CoE Leader?
Matthew: My career is a little unique, in that I've been with Applied for 23 years. Many folks may not be familiar with Applied Materials, but we're the world's #1 semiconductor and display equipment company. We are the leader in materials engineering solutions used to produce virtually every new chip and advanced display in the world. At Applied, I've had the opportunity to take on a number of different roles in multiple capacities between IT and Finance, with the majority of my career focused on business & digital transformation. In my current capacity, I lead our global financial data and dashboard governance, management reporting and analytics, and system administration.
In September 2022, our executive team approached me about taking on the Anaplan CoE Lead role. At that point, the organization had implemented three separate waves, with over five major use cases and another in the pipeline. The challenge at that time — like many other implementations of this size — was to transition from an implementation / hyper care phase to a "steady state."
I'll admit, at first the Anaplan CoE role was very intimidating and challenging. The deployment team had done a fantastic job of developing the initial Anaplan CoE structures and constructs, but further effort was required to implement an effective operating model with clear roles and responsibilities. The team faced an extensive backlog of enhancement requests, break-fixes, performance optimization issues, and an unhappy user base. Over the past nine months, we've invested the time and resources to improve the CoE and user experience and have made great strides. We successfully implemented a two-year roadmap, deployed a velocity calculator, reduced production tickets by nearly 60%, and are now delivering new enhancements on a scheduled basis. Even with all the successes, we still have a ways to go with our Anaplan journey. There are still a few key pain points impacting our users, unrealized uses cases and new modeling capabilities we need to deliver in order to achieve our goals. But I'm excited for the road ahead. The team has purpose, we're motivated, continuously learning and upskilling ourselves, and finding ways to push the envelope.
Do you need to be an Anaplan technical expert to be a CoE Leader?
Matthew: Does it help? Yes. Is it necessary? No. I believe being an effective leader requires us to develop and motivate our teams. It's more than just autonomy or empowerment, but finding ways to build them up. Upskill their skillsets so they can become masters in their domain. As a CoE leader, it's our responsibility to nurture the curious learning in our team. To keep them eager to adopt and learn new technologies, platforms, and methodologies. With upskilling the team comes purpose. Each of our team members must have purpose and understand how even the little things they are doing add up to significant improvements that are impactful to the business. I ask a lot of my team, challenge them constantly, but also have complete trust and faith in them.
As an Anaplan CoE Leader, you must be able to think outside the box. Anaplan provides you with a white canvas, the question is, how will you take the business requirements and turn that into a story? As a CoE Leader, it's up to you to help foster the storytelling. This requires a strong understanding of end-to-end process integration, business inputs/outputs, and the ability to take abstract requests from your business partners and visualize that into tangible outcomes. Having the technical experience and knowledge to help understand both the platform's potential and limitations is key to setting proper expectations and achieving long-term success.
Tell us about your PS engagement and how they helped you scale your CoE?
Matthew: Shortly after taking over the Anaplan CoE Lead role, our Solutions Integration lead had mostly rolled off and we had experienced some attrition within the group. We had reached out to Anaplan Professional Services to come in and assist with reviewing our models, work on maturing our CoE, and help implement best practices. They gave us the tools and building blocks to scale our CoE, while also improving our user experience. With the assistance of the Anaplan SIM, we developed a CoE resource velocity calculator which enabled us to calculate available hours to support enhancements vs. time needed to support sustaining activities. Working with a Master Anaplanner, we were able to upskill our internal team of architects through hands-on instruction, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and new solutions. Lastly, and most importantly, the PS team helped us leverage Anaplan's agile methodologies and model building best practices.
As a CoE Leader, in your opinion, what are some of the benefits to having a CoE within an organization?
Matthew: A CoE is critical to the long-term success and sustainability of the platform. But that CoE must have a clear charter and operating model to be effective. Without that, the team can become easily lost, disgruntled, and focused on the wrong priorities. Once you have that in place, the CoE is really the catalyst to taking concept into reality. A strong CoE will have their finger on the pulse of the user experience, acting as the first point-of-contact and line-of-support for their user base. Our job in the CoE is to proactively identify and address the high-value problems of business partners. To do this, we must be able to understand all perspectives of the business processes from end-to-end — the data sources, structures, integration points and connectivity, inputs/outputs, and where to gain new insights to deliver to the Finance organization.
As a CoE Leader, how do you manage your talent mix? Do you hire externally or upskill talent from within the organization? What are the benefits of the approach you've taken?
Matthew: It's a healthy combination of both. First and foremost, I am a strong believer in building up talent from within the organization, through upskilling and hands-on development. Applied invests heavily in its employees. We have a long-tenured team (our department alone has nearly 300 years of total service across 18 employees), but all have a passion for continuous learning. It's about leveling up each individual to reach their fullest potential, encouraging the team to take on stretch objectives to promote growth, and to pursue next-level certifications (L3, SA, Master Anaplanner). With this much talent, system/process knowledge and tenure, it behooves us to take advantage of this internal talent pool. When presented with new use cases, the team knows exactly what is being asked, because they've lived it first-hand. They know who and what our stakeholders are expecting. Where it makes sense, we do leverage contracted resources to assist with day-to-day execution of administrative tasks, system preparation, and production monitoring as well as to augment the team with external expertise, such as Anaplan PS. These resources are not sourced to perform the work on our behalf, but to serve as advisory resources for our team to leverage and exchange ideas. We look to our PS resources to impart their knowledge and experience, and help us build up and develop our team even further.
As a CoE leader how do you prioritize between new projects, enhancements, bug fixes?
Matthew: Break-fixes always take priority, first and foremost. Our support teams are the first line of defense when it comes to bugs and break-fixes. Depending on the severity and complexity, the more senior CoE team members may get pulled in to assist. The majority of our CE resources are focused on projects and new enhancements. Since the demand for new enhancements is increasing, the finance organization has implemented a Planning Council, which is made up of planning FP&A leaders from across the organization with the CoE Lead. The council is tasked with providing governance and prioritization of our planning processes and functionality. We review and prioritize requests for enhancements based on business impact, and ask the question, what high-value problem does the enhancement address? We assess if the enhancement is aligned with our goals and our new digital way of working. To determine priority, the benefits are weighed against the scope, level of effort, velocity or available capacity, impacted user base, and impact to the model performance and size.
A big thank you to Matthew, for sharing his story and expertise with us!
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter and look forward to engaging and helping you achieve your Connected Planning vision. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment.
-
How to unite an Anaplan Center of Excellence
Author: Nick Alvarez is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Manager, Anaplan Model Building Empowerment at Autodesk, Inc.
Introduction
We’re on a journey to unite Anaplanners across Autodesk under one Anaplan Center of Excellence (CoE). As we expand the Anaplan honeycomb and our models become more and more connected, we’ve recognized the need to shift from a decentralized to a hybrid governance model to better support and scale our Connected Planning ecosystem.
Keep reading for tips to unite an Anaplan CoE based on lessons learned as I help lead Autodesk’s Connected Planning journey.
Craft and present a gameplan to leadership
Leadership support is crucial in the journey to develop and unite your CoE — you need leaders to buy into and advocate for your vision. Start by putting together a gameplan and present it to key leaders across your Connected Planning ecosystem. Include information such as:
* Executive summary: Why and how are you proposing that your company unite under one Anaplan CoE? What actions or support do you need from leadership?
* Vision: What will your united Anaplan CoE look like? What are the key elements of the vision?
* Value: What value will a united Anaplan CoE provide your company? What areas will a united Anaplan CoE help improve?
* Next steps: What are the key steps to achieve your vision?
For inspiration on these topics, leverage the wealth of CoE resources offered by Anaplan.
The goals for this presentation are to secure leadership buy-in, and to collect feedback that you can use to improve your gameplan.
Create a CoE Charter
A united Anaplan CoE needs a united mission — work with all Anaplan teams / people at your company to draft a charter (use the template provided by Anaplan). As stated in the charter template introduction, “This charter will provide details of your Anaplan CoE’s mission and established processes that are best suited for your company.”
If there are multiple Anaplan teams or people building models at your company, it’s important to include representation from every team during the drafting of the charter. There are two major benefits to drafting the charter together:
* The teams will learn about each other (e.g. team structure, subject matter expertise, model support management, how each team currently operates).
* The teams will begin to build trust and respect with each other.
Send a draft of your charter to your Anaplan Customer Success partner and use their feedback to improve your charter.
Create avenues for CoE members to connect
For an Anaplan CoE to unite, you need to create avenues where CoE members can regularly interact and knowledge share with each other.
Schedule a recurring, quarterly CoE meetup where Anaplanners across your company can connect with each other on all-things-Anaplan. Invite all members of your Anaplan CoE, including leadership, model builders, Solution Architects, product managers, and project managers.
It may be challenging to find a meeting time that works for everyone, but it’s okay if everyone doesn’t attend every meeting — what’s most important is that these meetings provide a consistent avenue for CoE members to learn from and engage with each other.
When putting together agendas for these meetings, choose topics that your CoE members will find interesting and valuable. Here are a few topics we’ve covered in our meetups:
* Review existing and crowd source new Anaplan model standards and best practices used at your company.
* Have each team share their Anaplan roadmap.
* Have a CoE member demo an Anaplan model.
* Have a CoE member showcase an Anaplan feature (e.g. Management Reporting).
* Divide into breakout rooms for CoE members to chat and get to know each other.
Over time, these meetups will help create and strengthen bonds across your CoE, and set the foundation for further collaboration, trust, and knowledge sharing.
Consider creating a company-wide Slack or Teams channel for all CoE members to chat, collaborate, ask questions, and “phone-a-friend” if they get stuck while model building. Having a way to reach out to other subject matter experts at the company can help remove blockers faster.
Explore opportunities to collaborate
Explore opportunities across your CoE for Anaplan teams to collaborate on a project — you can use the recurring CoE meetings suggested above to start the conversation and brainstorm ideas for opportunities!
Below are a few examples of potential projects. If the Anaplan teams at your company have never collaborated with each other before, start small and build trust:
* Optimize a model.
* Work on new, connected builds in parallel (e.g. two models that will be connected via integration).
* Co-build on a new model build.
* Identify a new end-to-end Anaplan use case that spans multiple teams’ areas of expertise (e.g. Finance and HR).
By working on a project together, the Anaplan teams will learn from each other, be better aligned on the creation and adoption of shared model standards, and act as a united voice for the benefits and value delivered by Anaplan across the company.
Conclusion
Uniting an Anaplan Center of Excellence is a journey that takes ongoing time and effort, but the benefits of doing so make it a worthwhile endeavor. One key benefit to CoE members is that being part of a united CoE helps them feel a greater sense of purpose through understanding that their work is helping drive the greater mission of their connected planning ecosystem.
Have a tip for uniting an Anaplan CoE? Drop a note in the comments below.
-
CoE Connect - Newsletter October 2023
Welcome to the October edition of CoE Connect, where you'll find the latest news and insights from the Center of Excellence Program! We hope you'll find this informative and helpful, and we're always eager to hear your feedback or suggestions. Thank you for being an essential member of our CoE community — let's continue to grow and help out our fellow CoE Leaders!
* Check out two recent articles authored by CoE Leaders:* Kevin Cho, Certified Master Anaplanner and CoE team lead at Atlassian, share his tips and best practices for managing a distributed Center of Excellence.
* With Anaplan, it is easy to run multiple scenarios within the same model by using optionality. Sandi Duffy, Certified Master Anaplanner and Finance Manager at Challenger Unlimited, shares how to vary model inputs using optionality.
* Have you seen the most recent videos in our ‘How I Built It’ series?* How I Built It: User-friendly hierarchy management
* How I Built It: Solving world’s hardest Sudoku with Anaplan Optimizer
* How I Built It: Dynamic month, quarter, and year filter
* Plus two more coming in the next two weeks! One on creating an easy approval process and audit trail, and another on combining multiple payment schedules for a custom cash flow schedule module.
This month's spotlight interview features Kyle Sakowski (@sakowski27), from Everest Global. Below, Kyle shares more about his career path, how having a Center of Excellence impacts an organization, how he prioritizes projects, and more!
Q: Hi Kyle — tell us about yourself!
Kyle: For the past two years, I have held the position of Director at the Anaplan Center of Excellence within Everest Global, a prominent player in the insurance and reinsurance sector. My work is primarily conducted in a fully remote capacity from the Tampa, Florida region. In this role, my responsibilities encompass strengthening our CoE's capabilities, spearheading integration initiatives to support the ongoing global expansion of our Anaplan practice, and serving as the Solution Architect for our internal project implementations.
Q: Can you share more about your career path within the Anaplan Ecosystem from first experiences to today?
Kyle: My journey with Anaplan commenced immediately after graduating from college, where I was introduced to the platform as one of my first software experiences. Following several weeks of intensive training and collaboration with our implementation partners (a special acknowledgment to Peloton Consulting Group), I achieved certification as a model builder. The problem solving and creative aspects of Anaplan model building deeply captivated my interest, prompting me to pursue advanced training. Remarkably, I attained the status of a Certified Master Anaplanner within just the initial year and a half of my introduction to Anaplan.
Over the past four to five years, I have consistently maintained my status as a Master Anaplanner and actively contributed to more than 20 successful implementations. I remain committed to furthering my expertise and am resolute in my dedication to advancing the Anaplan platform.
Q: What are some of the most valuable skills you have learned along that journey?
Kyle: Effective communication and collaboration are pivotal components of success. My experience as a customer utilizing Anaplan has underscored the importance of ongoing discussions about project requirements as the most efficient means to achieve successful outcomes. Engaging stakeholders consistently enables the identification of existing process pain points, fostering the opportunity to implement Anaplan best practices seamlessly throughout each project's timeline.
Q: As a CoE Leader, in your opinion, what are some of the benefits to having a CoE within an organization?
Kyle: Some key benefits to having a CoE within any organization are:
* Expertise and knowledge sharing: A CoE can provide guidance, training, and support to other users across the organization, ensuring that Anaplan is used effectively.
* Consistency and standardization: The CoE can establish standardized processes and best practices for building models, creating reports, and conducting analyses in Anaplan.
* Governance and control: CoE's play a crucial role in governance by defining access controls, data security measures, and data integration standards.
* Innovation
* Performance monitoring: A CoE helps identify bottlenecks, optimizes calculations, and ensures that models run efficiently.
In summary, a CoE can provide substantial benefits by fostering expertise, consistency, governance, scalability, innovation, and more. It plays a pivotal role in ensuring that Anaplan is an asset for the organization, driving better planning, analysis, and decision-making processes.
Q: As a CoE leader how do you prioritize between new projects, enhancements, and bug fixes?
Kyle: As the leader of the Center of Excellence (CoE), I have implemented a structured communication framework, encompassing both weekly and monthly calls, to maintain consistent and open lines of communication between our technical Anaplan users and key stakeholders. These calls are designed to engage various stakeholder groups, including technical builders, and are instrumental in prioritizing projects, enhancements, and bug fixes.
Our weekly calls revolve around an Enhancement Tracker, where we harness a specialized model dedicated to identifying and addressing bug fixes and enhancements. Additionally, ongoing projects are thoroughly discussed during these weekly sessions.
Conversely, our monthly calls assemble major stakeholders from different segments within the organization to deliberate on new projects and associated timelines. Subsequently, these projects are integrated into a comprehensive project timeline. The prioritization of Anaplan projects on this timeline is managed collaboratively by our Group FP&A team and regional CFOs.
Upon reaching consensus on project priorities, we extend invitations to new project stakeholders, incorporating them into our weekly CoE calls until project delivery has been successfully accomplished.
Q: As a CoE Leader, what are some benefits to having that connection with Anaplan Business Partners and Customer Success?
Kyle: Building strong connections with Anaplan Business Partners and Customer Success teams offers several benefits, including expert guidance, tailored solutions, faster implementation, scalability, troubleshooting support, access to updates, continuous improvement, networking opportunities, enhanced user adoption, and alignment with Anaplan's roadmap. These connections can be instrumental in maximizing the value of the Anaplan platform for your organization.
Q: What are some of the resources in the Anaplan Community that you find valuable?
Kyle: Some valuable resources within the Anaplan Community include discussion forums, documentation, webinars, Anaplan Model Exchange, Idea Exchange, training and certification, user groups, Anapedia, support and case management, customer success stories, release notes, and the Anaplan App Hub. These resources offer knowledge, support, and networking opportunities to maximize the benefits of Anaplan for your organization.
In addition to these resources, active participation in the Anaplan Community fosters collaboration and the exchange of best practices among peers, further enhancing your organization's proficiency with the platform.
A big thank you to Kyle, for sharing his story and expertise with us! Kyle shared his Certified Master Anaplanner story with us last year, if you would like to view that interview!
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter and look forward to engaging and helping you achieve your Connected Planning vision. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment.
-
You Have Been Removed From the Talent Builder Program
Dear Rahul,
Our records show you have not completed any courses in the last 30 days of the Talent Builder program.
Your account has been removed from the program due to inactivity, and your access to an Anaplan workspace through this program has been revoked.
Please, DO NOT CONTACT Anaplan support teams as they do not manage this program.
For interest in re-applying to the program, there will be a 30-day wait period for inactive users who have been removed. Any re-application submitted within the 30 day wait period will be declined.
Thank you,
The Anaplan Academy Operations Team
I recently received this email from the Anaplan. I did use the Anaplan model workspace and saved my version yesterday (24th September 2023). Please help me to get me access to workspace so that I can pursue my progress to earn Anaplan Model Certification.
Thanks,
Rahul Shah
-
Managing a distributed Center of Excellence
Author: Kevin Cho is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Anaplan Team Lead at Atlassian.
Managing an Anaplan implementation used by a geographically dispersed team can be challenging. There are the standard challenges of remote working — fewer direct and spontaneous interactions, isolation and lack of team bonding — alongside Center of Excellence (CoE)-specific challenges, like schedule conflicts for CoE meetings and role clarity across different geographies. All of which can all impact how a Center of Excellence functions, in turn producing a poor experience for your users.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way — even a small Center of Excellence can support a team around the globe by integrating your CoE composition and rituals with existing team structures and processes, and leveraging different tools to make the coordination efforts seamless and more efficient.
Team representation
It may seem obvious, but having strong representation within the Center of Excellence across each location ensures a balanced voice in project prioritization, risk management, and general cohesiveness of the platform.
This also extends to the support that you can provide to the everyday users of Anaplan. It is a much better experience having a support resource available in a local time zone, compared to having to wait for a support team to come online during their normal working hours. Conversely, this can vastly improve the work-life balance of your team, especially during critical planning and reporting periods, where round-the-clock support may be required.
Communication and collaboration
One of the main challenges that comes with managing a geographically dispersed CoE is effective communication and collaboration, especially with larger teams running projects in parallel. Alignment across a CoE is normally addressed through the regularly scheduled checkpoints ranging from daily stand-ups with project teams, weekly change management meetings, to quarterly steering committees. With geographically dispersed teams, this can get surprisingly difficult to schedule as time zone differences can very quickly add up!
To address this, focus instead on regular asynchronous communication (emphasis on the regular!):
* Prioritization meetings can instead turn into living documents, where stakeholders can provide input in their own time, easily delegating and sharing information across their team members who may not be necessarily invited to a synchronous prioritization meeting.
* Updates from daily stand-ups can be provided through posts on a common chat thread, summarizing yesterday’s achievements, blockers, and the upcoming day’s focus. Similar to a live stand-up, emphasize succinct updates — those interested in delving more into the detail can then reach out directly.* However, be sure to not disregard the team building benefits of a daily sync!
This can be accomplished by leveraging the right tools:
* For live document tracking and editing, check out Confluence or Google Docs. Both are great options in providing the option for concurrent editing.
* For chat, tools which support asynchronous collaboration are key. Slack and Microsoft Teams both offer the ability to create channels and threads, where users can localize conversations and stay engaged whilst not requiring live interaction.* Bots that can organize certain rituals (e.g. daily stand-ups, fortnightly kudos/thanks) are also a great way to incorporate them with less manual burden.
* For task management, tools like Trello and Jira can help model builders and testers stay organized and on track, by providing regular status updates on tasks through the tool itself.
Save the meetings for when synchronicity matters — for example, in intensive training sessions, and design and process workshops. This is especially useful in ensuring Executive Sponsors remain engaged with the CoE. Keeping them in the loop without a heavy time commitment will help in keeping them on your side.
A success story (and continuing)
Even prior to the pandemic, the Atlassian team has been working in a distributed manner, with teams located across Australia, the Philippines and the US — this has become more ingrained in our philosophy with the official adoption of a geographically flexible workforce (TEAM Anywhere). In turn, this has shaped how our Center of Excellence has been structured, and how we engage with our stakeholders. By utilizing the tools and techniques listed above, we’ve successfully grown our Anaplan implementation and user base, whilst still maintaining a lean team.
What tips would you add regarding best practices on managing a distributed team? Leave a comment!
-
CoE Connect - Newsletter September 2023
Welcome to the September edition of CoE Connect, your source for news and insights from the Center of Excellence Program! We aim to both inform and motivate, and we're always eager to hear your feedback or suggestions for what's to come. Thank you for being an essential member of our CoE community — let's continue to grow and help out our fellow CoE Leaders!
* We have two upcoming events! * Your Business Powered By Anaplan AI: September 27 at 10:30 am EDT (virtual event)
* Anaplan Community Event in Denver: Hosted by Spaulding Ridge on September 28 at 2 pm
* Join in on our new Community Q&A Challenge! This month, Community members are answering the question, “As an Anaplan model builder, what steps do you take to ensure that changes you make to an existing module don't create unexpected results in the module you made changes to and in other modules?” Check out the incredible advice from people so far and join in with your own expertise! This is a great resource to share with your team!
* Our latest podcast episode features CoE Leader Stacey Gibbens! In this episode, you’ll hear about Stacey’s introduction to Anaplan, how her career evolved over the years, her thoughts on the Certified Master Anaplanner program, and more.
September's spotlight interview is with Michael Downer! Michael works as the Head of Process and CoE Lead at HSBC in London. Get to know Michael and hear about his perspective on running a CoE, his past experiences, and lessons he has learned.
Q: Hi Michael! Please share with us your career path within the Anaplan ecosystem from first experiences to today.
Michael: I have worked in business forecasting and planning for over 20 years and have a wealth of experience working in larger organizations, helping create and maintain accurate forecasting processes. I started working with Anaplan in 2016 with a previous employer where we built a global resource forecasting model. Over the course of a few months, I learned the basics of Anaplan (I am still learning something new in Anaplan every day!).
In 2018 I was contacted by HSBC to help build/support their planning function within their risk operations area. Here I built out a risk inventory planning solution using Anaplan. The successful deployment of this solution exposed a whole new audience in the bank to Anaplan and better ways of planning. During a random townhall where leaders were talking about AOP planning and its process, I suggested Anaplan might well be a great solution to oversee this process. I was given the task of building out a proof of concept in Anaplan that would do what I had suggested. The following day I presented a rough proof of concept, which was immediately adopted as the new AOP process. At this point we caught the eyes of the senior leadership within the Global Operations teams who asked us to design and oversee a planning solution that would enable the global operations teams worldwide to plan resource levels in a synergized way. This led to the setup of my current Anaplan CoE team within HSBC. We ended up building out a multi-model resource ecosystem that eventually was deemed best in class in the bank and we are now in the midst of a bank wide roll out meaning we will soon be planning resources using Anaplan for over 250k full-time equivalent (FTE).
Q: What are some of the most valuable skills you have learned along that journey?
Michael: Anaplan is a very powerful tool and it’s easy to say “yes, that can be done!” (as most requests can somehow be achieved!). Where I think (as a solutions team) we add value is to be the cog between Anaplan and the business, and always ask the question whether it should be done and whether what the business wants is, a) possible, but also b) logical/practical. Having that logical problem-solving mindset is essential.
Q: What are some of the specific opportunities that being a CoE leader brought to you?
Michael: We started as a team looking after 8k FTE and are now accommodating plans across the bank for over 250k FTE. This has exposed me to many new areas in the bank and massively exposed my network within a massive org structure. This has also allowed me to get involved in processes that are outside of my natural skillset and allowed me to learn much more about processes that teams use within the bank. Learning and applying processes to look after and protect the Anaplan deployment within a CoE have probably been my greatest learning.
Q: As a CoE Leader, in your opinion, what are some of the benefits to having a CoE within an organization?
Michael: The bank’s org structure is gigantic and one of the benefits of introducing Anaplan was that we are now moving towards a bank-wide approach for planning resources. Previously we had countless different approaches to planning with many teams doing similar work but getting there via different paths. Within our new Anaplan world, we have this new shiny solution but without a CoE this could potential quickly grow out of hand if its managed in a decentralized structure. There is a constant danger; people will start inventing new solutions that have already been solved for elsewhere. Having a good CoE and a good relationship with your Anaplan contacts is essential to making sure that new areas within the bank don’t re-invent an existing process and re-create the siloes we have broken down.
Q: How has your journey been leading an Anaplan CoE?
Michael: It’s been very challenging as we set up Anaplan, the new ways of working and the CoE at the same time. This led to many challenges but also allowed us to set up the CoE as close to what we think is best practice (for the bank). Where we spend most time today maintaining key stakeholder relationships that enable us to understand when people are struggling with existing processes. That allows us to keep deployed solutions relevant and adopted. Having engaged stakeholders is also essential for the continued development of new solutions.
Q: In your opinion, do you need to be an Anaplan technical expert to be a CoE leader?
Michael: No, but at HSBC it helps as our CoE is relatively small considering the size of deployment. Our view is that a CoE is the cog that connects how HSBC works with how we can/should build out processes in Anaplan and then build them using best practice. As a team leader, I want my team to solve issues in a creative way but this can sometimes come with risks as our ecosystem is very large.
Q: As a CoE leader how do you prioritize between new projects, enhancements, and bug fixes?
Michael: We separate these duties between different team members. We also apply a backlog for all new projects and enhancements that gets reviewed monthly by a bank-wide user group who help prioritize these requests. And lastly, we track all issues (bug fixes) in an Anaplan model. This model allows users to self-raise an issue they have with any Anaplan dashboard/model (from within any dashboard). My team can then handle those requests and maintain an audit log of all changes (and document these in the revision tags). This helps us gage/forecast the number of changes we expect on any given month. This is also a useful tool to see what type of issues are being raised and indicate what area of our models we should be focusing on.
Q: As a CoE leader, how do you manage your talent mix? How you hire Anaplan talent (do you hire externally, or you upskill talent from within the organization)? What are the benefits of the approach you have taken?
Michael: We have a good mix of in-house trained Anaplan resources and Anaplan skilled hires, so we have seen both sides of this approach. The good thing about this is that it allows for the external candidates to learn the bank’s processes faster but also allows the internal employees to receive coaching from Anaplan skilled team members. All if this needs to be underpinned by training, and the training courses by Anaplan are a must for my team members.
Q: As a CoE leader how do you manage your stakeholders?
Michael: With a good CoE, it is important to know who your stakeholders are. Once you have a strong network of participants (users, IT, compliance, finance etc.), understanding their needs is very important and having regular contact time with them is vital. This allows everyone to understand what’s happening and avoid bottlenecks in decision around the models use and adoption.
Q: As a CoE Leader, what are some benefits to having that connection with Anaplan Business Partners and Customer Success?
Michael: They provide great support with process and function of the Anaplan platform. I have found working with our business partner has also allowed better understanding of what other users are doing with the platform and how they are using it to affect change. I believe a good relationship with the Anaplan business partner is vital to get the most out of the platform (and to keep getting it).
Q: What are some of the resources within the Anaplan Community that you as a CoE leader saw as being the most valuable?
Michael: The most valuable resource is the business partner as they can help direct you to the right area. We also Anaplan use user groups, Anapedia, and attend regular Anaplan events to see what new and what functionality is out there. Staying ahead of what functionality is being added is vital to us as it helps is direct the attention of our stakeholders and what they want to achieve by using the platform.
Q: What are some resources that you wish existed within the Anaplan Community?
Michael: When I think about how we have the moved the needle of change the most is when we have spoken to other users and seen what they have done. It’s always eye opening to see how other people fix the same issues as we’ve had. If I could pick one area I would say — have some kind of way for people to show and tell about their great implementations so others could learn from this (without necessarily seeing every line item of how they have done it).
Q: In your opinion, what is the value of being an active member of the Anaplan Community/ecosystem?
Michael: In general, I believe that knowing how something works is never good enough. I want myself and my team to be able to solve for issues and requests both creatively and efficiently. That kind of knowledge only comes from seeing and feeling how others have solved issues. I believe the forum is a great aid here, as without it, it could be very hard to solve some more complex questions.
Thank you Michael, for sharing your CoE journey with us! HSBC is lucky to have you!
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter and look forward to engaging and helping you achieve your Connected Planning vision. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment.
-
CoE Connect - Newsletter August 2023
Welcome to the August edition of CoE Connect, your monthly destination for news and insights from the Center of Excellence Program! We aim for this newsletter to both inform and motivate, and we're always eager to hear your feedback or suggestions for what's to come. Thank you for being an essential member of our CoE community — let's continue to grow and help out our fellow CoE Leaders!
CoE Spotlight: Introducing Rachel Larue, Anaplan Solutions Architect at Dexcom and a leader of their Center of Excellence. Read more about Rachel's career journey in the CoE Spotlight section of this newsletter.
* Interested in learning more about sustainability? Mark your calendar for a virtual event on Sustainability Planning: An Exploration of Use Cases on August 29. There is growing demand for companies to operate more sustainably, and it is important for all professionals to be familiar with what sustainability means as ideally, sustainability is a key part of all business functions and decision making. Building off the Anaplan Community ESG Group’s first session, we will explore a set of potential Sustainable Planning Use Cases that may or may not be implemented in Anaplan. This will serve as an open forum to brainstorm key logistical elements, functionality, and challenges to each, taking a first step into what the use cases could look like. Learn more and RSVP here.
* Certified Master Anaplanner and CoE Leader Philipp Erkinger shares his lessons learned from implementing Polaris as one of the early-adopting customers. Read Philipp's article here.
We recently had the chance to chat with Rachel Larue, an Anaplan Center of Excellence (CoE) Lead. As a CoE leader, Rachel ensures optimal use of Anaplan's ecosystem, facilitating the Connected Planning vision through deep knowledge and strategic partnerships. Read more about Rachel's experiences and achievements below!
Q: Hi Rachel! Please introduce yourself, your current role, and where you're based!
Rachel: Hello! I’ve recently transitioned into a new role with the San Diego-based medical device manufacturer, Dexcom. I’m fully remote in the Denver area, functioning heavily as a Solution Architect for this stretch of our roadmap, and I will assist through deployment to build out/reinforce our new CoE. I’m enjoying leaning back into the technical side of things, but also appreciate the balance of strategic thinking when I’m wearing my CoE Leader hat.
Q: Can you share more about your career path and how you became the CoE leader/part of the CoE team?
Rachel: To step back and speak to my Anaplan career more broadly, I became a model builder in late 2018 when I joined DaVita’s CoE. There I grew steadily through a Sr. Builder Role, then Solution Architect + co-lead of our CoE. As I progressed through my builder path, with no formal project managers I filled more of that role project to project. I managed my personal portfolio and stakeholders, and with a proven track record there the transition into SA/CoE Lead was a much smaller gap to bridge. I think leaning into the micro-level project and stakeholder management is the best way to test the waters as a builder, and highly recommend leveraging this in your organization if possible.
Q: In your opinion, what are some of the benefits of having a CoE within an organization?
Rachel: If you have ANY use case growth on your roadmap, not simply live model maintenance, you’re going to need SOME form of CoE. No two are the same, but a CoE communicates a single source of truth for all things Anaplan in your organization. End users, super users, model owners, internal AND Anaplan help desk support will all have a default contact for any issues or inquiries. Even if you plan to have a heavily federated (de-centralized) builder team, you want at least one CENTRAL technical expert to advise and mentor other builders.
To put all of that more simply, some of the main benefits are a Central Authority for overseeing projects, builders, documentation and best practices—as well as talent sourcing. Allowing all to be federated, you will start to have models and documents that vary too much for an end user to easily navigate in any universal way throughout your Anaplan ecosystem—and your builders won’t have it easy, either.
Q: How do you manage your talent mix as a CoE leader? Do you hire externally or up-skill talent from within the organization? What are the benefits of your approach?
Rachel: This is a hot and ever-evolving topic even in the last few years. My tenure has mostly included up-skilling talent from inside the org, or identifying external candidates that may take to Anaplan well. Both have meant little to no Anaplan expertise coming in, but I’ve seen math and engineering backgrounds jump to advanced building methods in less than nine months. I think this decision should be driven most by your CoE structure and strategy, as well as your roadmap. I’d recommend a start date 3-6 months ahead of any project you want to staff a builder on heavily, and use those months for the Jr. Builder to support standard maintenance and simpler bug fixes, plus shadowing your other builders. Anaplan experience requires much less lead time, but consider the breadth of your use cases and how niche your organization is, and be sure to pad the start date accordingly. The main benefit of training internally is customizing training content and being able to show live examples that relate to the universal Anaplan training. Additionally, you’re getting to set expectations for how your CoE functions and utilizes different roles — which can very greatly across organizations as mentioned above. No two CoEs are the same, right?
Q: What are some of the benefits of having a connection with Anaplan Business Partners and Customer Success as a CoE leader?
Rachel: Your Anaplan team are your eyes and ears on the inside. CoE Leaders should leverage their time to hear about upcoming releases before they’re posted on community, especially those 6+ months out. Additionally, this is a great place to share anything getting you stuck — technical or business. I’ve had great experiences voicing my challenges, and getting partnered with another customer will to network and help me through it, or an internal Anaplan employee to advise me and get us past our technical limitations. Never hesitate to leverage this relationship to keep your CoE going —or even to get some extra thought partners around how to just get started.
Q: What resources within the Anaplan Community do you find most valuable as a CoE leader?
Rachel: The User Groups are the best asset I have come across. Some have hosted free-form or scripted live video forums, or even local meetups. These have allowed me to find common ground with other community members, and have given me much wider insight to how and where Anaplan is being used today. I think the community is a place to share ideas and roadblocks, and challenge ourselves to consider new puzzles or new solutions to our previous problems, and feed it all back into the community. With a small talent pool, we only benefit when knowledge is shared more widely.
Thank you Rachel, for sharing your CoE journey with us! Rachel was also profiled in a Community blog video interview last year — check it out!
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter and look forward to engaging and helping you achieve your Connected Planning vision. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment.
-
CoE Connect - Newsletter July 2023
Welcome to the July edition of CoE Connect, your monthly destination for news and insights from the Center of Excellence Program! We aim for this newsletter to enlighten and motivate, and we're always eager to hear your feedback or suggestions for what's to come. We're grateful to have you as an essential member of our CoE community—let's keep fostering our bond and advancing together!
CoE Spotlight: Introducing Guillaume Chaffaut - Connected Planning Solution Architect at Cartier and a leader of Center of Excellence. Read more about Guillaume’s fascinating journey in the CoE spotlight section of this newsletter.
Mark Your Calendar for an Exciting Event in Chicago on August 16, 2pm! Join us for a fun and informative afternoon with your fellow Anaplaners from Chicagoland to explore several important topics within the Anaplan community today. Stay for the happy hour immediately following and the chance to network with local thought leaders, Anaplan model builders/architects, and an industry leading partner that will impact your personal and business goals. RSVP here.
Dive deep into the world of Anaplan models with our Certified Master Anaplanner and CoE Leader, Stacey Gibbens.Perfect for those new to Anaplan or taking on a new model, Stacey's comprehensive guide will assist you in unveiling your models' functionality, executing effective optimization strategies, and using the current functionality as a springboard for innovative solutions that will captivate your customers. Stay tuned for more insights that can revolutionize your understanding of Anaplan models.
In a recent interview I got a chance to explore Guillaume Chaffaut’s journey as an Anaplan Center of Excellence (CoE) Lead. As a CoE leader, Guillaume ensures optimal use of Anaplan's ecosystem, facilitating the connected planning vision through deep internal knowledge and strategic partnerships. Join us as we uncover Guillaume's experiences and draw invaluable insights from his achievements.
Mariam: Hello, Guillaume! Could you please introduce yourself, your current role, and where you're based?
Guillaume: Hello Mariam! Currently, I'm working as a Solution Architect for Cartier based in Fribourg, Switzerland. I serve as the primary technical point of contact for all matters related to Anaplan within the organization.
Mariam: That's quite a critical role, Guillaume. As you've journeyed with Anaplan, what have been some of the most valuable skills you've learned?
Guillaume: Well, one skill that stands out to me is listening. It's paramount to understand business requirements properly before proposing any technical solution. Moreover, to craft a beneficial user experience, it's vital to master the business team's logic, ensuring their daily work flows smoothly.
Mariam: Listening is indeed an invaluable skill. Now, moving to organizational structure, could you explain some benefits of having a CoE within an organization?
Guillaume: Certainly. Over the past few years, our number of use cases have grown significantly, necessitating additional projects. As a response, we built a team that would technically own the majority of the models and provide advice to other model builders. This CoE has an in-depth understanding of Anaplan's ecosystem within Cartier, enabling us to implement a connected planning vision across all projects. We do leverage external implementation partners to scale.
Mariam: So, do you believe a CoE leader needs to be an Anaplan technical expert?
Guillaume: A CoE leader doesn't necessarily need to be an Anaplan expert but a solid overall technical understanding and functional knowledge are a must. Part of the leader's role involves socializing "Anaplan" with teams unfamiliar with it, so it's crucial to quickly understand their business requirements and potential technical limitations.
Mariam: That makes sense. And how do you prioritize between new projects, enhancements, and bug fixes?
Guillaume: When setting priorities, we look at two main indicators: criticality and return on investment. Fixing critical bugs, particularly in business-critical models, is paramount. New projects and enhancements, although important, aren't usually as critical. We prioritize these by looking at their potential beneficial impact on the company.
Mariam: A clear and structured approach, indeed. Thank you Guillaume, for joining us today and sharing your CoE journey with us.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter and look forward to engaging and helping you achieve your Connected Planning vision. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at mariam.azeez@anaplan.com.
-
Announcing the 2023 Center of Excellence Leader of the Year!
Congratulations to Anaplan’s 2023 Center of Excellence Leader of the Year, Anne-Charlotte Vidal, Head of Anaplan Center of Excellence at Moët Hennessy!
Anne-Charlotte has been an integral part of the Center of Excellence journey since its inception. Her leadership and vision have steered the Transversal CoE team, spanning EMEA, US, and APAC, towards remarkable growth. Under her guidance and the sponsorship by leader Sidney Grunberg (IT Director, Finance HR Legal), the user base expanded from 400 to 1100, and the number of use cases doubled to a total of eleven large business cases. Anne-Charlotte's relentless focus on strong ROI and her ability to define the value of projects from the outset has significantly contributed to the success of Anaplan's expansion into finance, supply, marketing, and wine-making operations with worldwide deployments. Her exceptional knack — with the help and investment of the entire team — identifying unique use cases that add value to the organization, coupled with her commitment to cross-functional alignment and expansion, has made a lasting impact. Her talent for selling the value of Anaplan internally and leading a self-sufficient, cross-functional, and effectively governed CoE has been nothing short of remarkable. Anne-Charlotte's willingness to share her story with other customers in the Anaplan ecosystem showcases her collaborative spirit and dedication to the community.
This is one of the most prestigious awards in the Anaplan talent ecosystem, and it celebrates the outstanding accomplishments and dedication of our top Anaplan professionals. We are proud to acknowledge that Anne stood out among the best of the best in a highly competitive process, showcasing her exceptional abilities and unwavering dedication.
“Since she joined Moët Hennessy Center of Excellence four years ago, Anne-Charlotte has greatly participated in the constant improvement, creation of value, and the support of the growth of Moët Hennessy. Through her application, both within this “Maison” [brand] and in governance with the LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) group, she has been able to provide a framework and structure its organization in different areas: a self-sufficient team, gathering business and IT experts, governance, and managing a community of users. All this with the strong involvement of her management and her team. In the LVMH group, if another "Maison" wishes to create a CoE, I put them in direct contact with Anne-Charlotte, as she is one of the leaders in our CoE roundtable with other customers.”
Adrien Teffaine, Senior Customer Success Business Partner at Anaplan
We asked Anne-Charlotte to share more about her experience and role! Here’s what she had to say:
What are some of the most valuable skills you have learned along your journey to becoming a CoE Leader?
Anne: Some of the most valuable skills I learned are: curiosity about Anaplan technology, organization and management, leadership, teamwork, the ability to work in a matrix organization (breaking down silos), communication, and legal and compliance.
As a CoE Leader, in your opinion, what are some of the benefits to having a CoE within an organization?
Anne: Benefits include design authority in term of Anaplan architecture, Anaplan model building and integration, internal community management from sponsors to users, internal expertise and tech watch (POC; new features early access programs; …), and application delivery and run management.
What are some of the specific opportunities that being a CoE leader has brought to you?
Anne: The opportunities being a CoE Leader has brought me includes meeting new people at Anaplan (Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Product Officer, and Product Managers) and in many other companies to get feedbacks and benchmarks (other LVMH Maisons and other industries).
What's one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to develop a CoE?
Anne: It takes a lot of energy to connect people — do not hesitate to break down silos!
What are some of the resources within the Anaplan Community that you have found the most valuable?
Anne: The resources I’ve found valuable are posts related to new releases and also to formula usages.
Lightning round: your favorite movie or show, food, and book.
Anne:
Movie: French movies with French actors like Pierre Niney and Romain Duris (Boîte Noire, L’arnacoeur)
Foods: Hamburgers, Indian food, and dark chocolate
Book: Thrillers with the French author Franck Thilliez
-
Anne-Charlotte was recognized this week at the Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) event in San Diego. A huge congratulations and thank you to Anne-Charlotte!
-
True Connected planning : Formulas between models
As an anaplan coe and model builder, i d like to increase models interoperability and achieve the true connected planning ambition.
To achieve that i need the ability to call into formulas line items from other models.
This cannot be achieved currently and every model builder who practise import actions (who doesnt ?) To "connect models" know that they are unstable, archaic and a source of continuous incidents and headaches to maintain.
-
Bulk Copy for Production Lists
Need ability to be able to create a bulk copy action for the production lists.
-
CoE Connect - Newsletter June 2023
Welcome to the June edition of CoE Connect, your monthly destination for news and insights from the Center of Excellence Program! We aim for this newsletter to enlighten and motivate, and we're always eager to hear your feedback or suggestions for what's to come. We're grateful to have you as an essential member of our CoE community—let's keep fostering our bond and advancing together!
CoE Spotlight: Introducing Will Lederer, Product Director at Okta, an Anaplan Solutions Architect, and leader of the Center of Excellence. He has worked in the planning software space for over 20 years, with more than 10 years of experience using Anaplan. He has been involved with Anaplan as both a customer and consultant, and has been a part of numerous implementations, re-implementations, integrations, enhancements, and more! Will says, "At heart, I’m still a developer and like nothing more than diving into a model to solve a problem!" Don't miss this inspiring story, as it offers valuable insights into building a successful CoE and leveraging Anaplan's capabilities.
* Exciting News from the Anaplan Community! Join us in celebrating the extraordinary achievement of Anne-Charlotte Vidal, Head of Anaplan Center of Excellence at Moët Hennessy, our winner for the 2023 Center of Excellence Leader of the Year award! This is one of the most prestigious awards in the Anaplan talent ecosystem, and it celebrates the outstanding accomplishments and dedication of our top Anaplan professionals. We are proud to acknowledge that Anne-Charlotte stood out among the best of the best in a highly competitive process, showcasing her exceptional abilities and unwavering dedication. To learn more about Anne-Charlotte's Anaplan Journey click here
* In June 2023, ACE (Anaplan Community Experience) brought together our diverse Anaplan community for an energizing three-day event in San Diego. In partnership with Anaplan Connect, there were engaging keynotes, insightful breakout sessions, and many networking opportunities - and guess what? ACE breakout sessions are now accessible for you to view. To access the recordings click here
In this engaging interview, we had the privilege of delving into the inspiring journey of Will Lederer, a seasoned Anaplan CoE Lead at Okta. He shared candid insights into Okta's Anaplan journey, how the need for a Centre of Excellence (CoE) came into being, and the key steps taken to evolve it over time.
Mariam: Tell us about yourself? Your current role - where you are based.
Will:I am Business Technology Product Director at Okta. I am based in Maryland, US.
Mariam: You've been on quite a journey with Anaplan. Could you share some insights on how Okta started their Anaplan journey?
Will: Absolutely! Okta's journey began back in 2012 with around 40-50 FP&A users. Initially, the use case was typical budgeting and forecasting for monthly and quarterly close. We manually updated actual balance sheets, income statements, headcounts, and revenue. Sales Ops capacity planning was later added to support GTM directly. But the major use cases were in financials and workforce and expense planning.
Mariam: Interesting. How has Anaplan evolved at Okta since then?
Will: As Okta grew and went public, reporting requirements became more "demanding." We transitioned towards automation and integration, eliminating many manual processes and syncing with upstream data sources, particularly regarding workforce. We expanded the hub data model and added use cases, including GTM planning, revenue planning, budget planning, and consolidation models for reporting. Our models now conform to Anaplan best practices, all interconnected and aligning with the data source. We experienced tremendous growth during the pandemic, and with the Auth0 acquisition, we added 40% to our company and more than doubled our FP&A team to around 1000 licenses.
Mariam: That's quite an expansion! At what point did Okta realize the need for a CoE and how was it established?
Will: At first, we had two model builders maintaining the current model and transitioning to the 2.0 version. We partnered with Anaplan Professional Services and third-party partners for the build. During the implementation phase, I joined as a Solutions Architect, and we realized the need for a CoE to ensure we consistently hit the mark every period while adapting to business changes. This was the beginning of moving from development and implementation to operations.
Mariam: And how has the CoE evolved at Okta since its establishment?
Will: When I joined, we were a team of three. We frequently met to manage production fixes, requests for enhancements, and gaps in original use cases. We added Anaplan Professional Services for net new builds and established a liaison position within FP&A. This liaison is also a model builder, does much of the provisioning and administration, and is part of our core CoE. We also added a Solution Architect and another model builder to match our CoE capacity with the demand.
Mariam: Could you tell us a bit about how you enable end-users and manage adoption?
Will: Depending on the enhancement, we work directly with the requestor or the liaison. The user requirements are discovered, the solution is decided, we peer review the solution then test in a sandbox ,conduct UAT and launch it. We use a 'Train the trainer' approach, we go over it with the appropriate business person which in our case is mostly someone from FP&A team, who then communicates it to the whole group.
Mariam: Your CoE seems to have a big focus on scalability. How do you manage this?
Will: Anticipating business requirements is key. With the Auth0 acquisition, we had to rapidly scale. We moved heavy utilization to Hypermodels and Hypercare. One of the challenges is balancing business and IT priorities, but we align on tech or finance priorities and implement enhancements that add the most value.
Mariam: What do you consider as the biggest strength of your CoE?
Will: I'd say our biggest strength is our team. Communication, trust, and partnership are crucial in what we do.
Mariam: How has the fact that your CoE reports to IT helped your CoE?
Will: We're quicker to adopt new features of Anaplan, establish procedures, and maintain rigor in development, testing, and implementation. It also helps in things like documentation that finance is not necessarily focused on.
Mariam: Lastly, what advice would you give other CoE leaders?
Will: Take advantage of Anaplan community resources. Engage with your partners in every way, by owning the delivery of Anaplan to the business.
You can watch the full video interview here.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter and look forward to engaging and helping you achieve your Connected Planning vision. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at mariam.azeez@anaplan.com.
-
Center of Excellence showcase: Navigating the Anaplan landscape for sustainable success
Join Will Lederer, Solutions Architect: FP&A, Business Technology Director from Okta, for a session and discussion on how to make your Center of Excellence as effective as possible. Will’s presentation highlights the following: embracing new features, sustainability, scalability, data governance and strengthening business partnership.
Speakers:
* Will Lederer, Solutions Architect: FP&A, Business Technology Director, Okta
* Mariam Azeez, Principal Engagement Manager, Customer Centers of Excellence at Anaplan
Recorded: June 6, 2023 at the Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) event in San Diego, CA
https://play.vidyard.com/fhQNCXiZ1MKhw2p9bJiN1G?
-
CoE Connect - Newsletter May 2023
Welcome to CoE Connect, your monthly destination for news and insights from the Center of Excellence Program! We hope this newsletter proves both informative and inspiring, and we always welcome your thoughts and ideas for future editions. Thank you for being an integral part of the CoE community—let's stay connected and grow together!
CoE Spotlight: Explore the captivating journey of the Center of Excellence (CoE) at Groupon, led by Dragana Kangrga. In this special edition, we're enhancing the experience by not only spotlighting Dragana but also diving deep into Groupon's remarkable transformation.
We're thrilled to provide an update on the CoE Leader of the Year Award nominations! We have received an impressive list of nominations, showcasing the outstanding achievements of CoE leaders within the Anaplan ecosystem. Stay tuned for the results in next month’s newsletter as we continue to recognize and celebrate the exemplary dedication and hard work of our CoE community members. Good luck to all exceptional leaders!
The Anaplan Community Experience (ACE) is back and in person in San Diego June 5-7! ACE will be joining together with Anaplan Connect in San Diego, to offer an incredible experience for Anaplan community members and users. Featuring inspiring keynotes and multiple breakout sessions focused on Your Anaplan Journey, a deeper look into Modeling & Data Management, networking sessions with Anaplan experts and fellow Community members, plus a special session on launching a successful CoE! Learn more here. I am looking forward to meeting many of you in-person at the event!
In a recent interview, I had the privilege of exploring Groupon's Anaplan CoE with Dragana Kangrga, the Senior Finance Manager and Anaplan CoE leader at Groupon. Dragana shared valuable insights on the Groupon CoE team's structure and their innovative approach to hiring and onboarding talent. Join us as we delve into Dragana's experiences and draw valuable insights from her success in leading Groupon's CoE team.
Mariam: Can you walk us through the inception of Groupon's Anaplan CoE journey and how it has evolved over time?
Dragana: The Anaplan CoE journey at Groupon started with a group of individuals from various functional areas, each managing their own specific Anaplan use cases. Over time, a natural progression occurred, resulting in one person emerging as the expert in the model and taking on the role of CoE leader. As the number of use cases expanded, more skilled model builders joined the team. Presently, Groupon's CoE team comprises three model builders, with me as the CoE leader and solution architect.
Mariam: Can you share the background of the talent in Groupon's CoE team? Do they come from a technical or business background, or is it a mix of both?
Dragana: The primary use case for Groupon covers financial reporting and planning, incentive compensation management, as well as support for tax and consolidations. The CoE team at Groupon is composed of individuals with a background in financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and a strong technical aptitude, including prior experience in digital transformation.
Mariam: How does the CoE team ensure self-sufficiency and flexibility when it comes to building and maintaining models?
Dragana: As our use cases expanded, we adopted a structure with three versatile model builders who take on multiple roles without being restricted to specific positions like UX designer or Model Builder. This approach enables the CoE team to be fully self-sufficient and capable of building and maintaining models in-house. For more complex use cases, we collaborate with external consultants to ensure success.
Mariam: Can you share your approach to hiring and onboarding talent in the CoE team?
Dragana: During 2018 and 2019, we faced challenges in finding candidates with Anaplan model-building experience. As a result, we opted to hire individuals with a finance background and a natural affinity for systems, training them to become model builders. When hiring talent, we prioritize "transformation experience" which encompasses IT, FP&A, data integration, and planning model or forecasting tool development. The ideal candidates have exposure to these areas and demonstrate enthusiasm for working within them. To facilitate the development of Anaplan model-building skills, we have designed an onboarding program for new recruits. This training process is also utilized for individuals from various functional areas within Groupon who express interest in Anaplan model building.
Mariam: Can you provide an overview of the talent onboarding program schedule and the learning outcomes?
Dragana:
Mariam: Can you please walk us through Groupon's project prioritization, workload management, and project intake process?
Dragana: Groupon's project prioritization, workload management, and project intake process involve several key steps. The CoE team conducts quarterly meetings with directors and other leadership stakeholders to discuss the roadmap and gather input. A long-term roadmap is established through leadership buy-in and communicated during these meetings. The CoE team evaluates each project's impact (value-add) and readiness (well-defined requirements), prioritizing them accordingly. Short-term bug fixes, enhancements, and projects can be submitted via email, and the CoE team promptly assesses these and provides feedback. Forecasted workload is considered when determining project priorities and their respective timelines, while strict governance principles are applied to all projects. Projects are considered for implementation only if they originate from director-level or higher, ensuring successful execution. Leadership involvement in the project intake process guarantees that the project is a priority for the entire team, necessary resources are allocated, and subject matter experts are available to contribute their expertise.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter and look forward to engaging and helping you achieve your Connected Planning vision. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at mariam.azeez@anaplan.com.
-
Increase the limit of list item beyond 999 999 999
As a anaplan coe lead, i need to enable more complex and scalable use cases into anaplan and integrate seemlessly with high volumes system working with event or log based architectures.
To cover these, one limiting factor is the hard limit over the 1billion minus one on lists.
I d like to have this limit raised to higher number to keep up with the scalable enterprise level promise.
-
Impact of saved views in Connected Planning
As companies are growing, their use of the workspace is also growing resulting in multiple models. From an user standpoint, it is complicated to audit every saved view, as you can only see those that are being used in the model where they are being imported.
As such, could we have a new tab in imports not only to see the imports that are coming in, but also those that are going out?
-
Asana is looking for a Product Owner Planning Systems
Come work for a great Enterprise Technology team, implement and support FP&A, Workforce and Territory & Quota planning. For more information about the role go to:
https://asana.com/jobs/apply/4972731
-
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 and the connected business drivers in today’s most common point solutions. But the best part is that when fully deployed to the organization, Anaplan ensures the right people are planning with the right data, at the right time, and within the right connected process environment. Meaning, planners are driving business instead of running around endlessly piecing data together from different parts of the business.
Retail Planning History
I think it’s important to start with how technology was used to enable planning activities over the last 40 or so years because these solutions framed the retail planning landscape that we see today.
Before 1990 – Ledger Paper
Because technology was so limited and data storage so expensive, the Retail Inventory Method (RIM) was the dominant method for inventory valuation and for inventory balancing. RIM does not use units but rather estimates the cost of goods sold by tracking the cumulative markup on new receipts. The method for merchandise planning and store planning was to use ledger paper and electric erasers. I can still remember the holes my eraser created from reworking my plans over and over.
The most important observation from this time period is that the demand for planning automation was so high that even a one-person solution was considered value-add. I should note that VisiCalc (1979), SuperCalc (1983), Lotus-123 (1983), Quattro Pro (1988), and Excel (1987) showed up in most of the retailers by 1990, but it was for DOS, slow, limited memory, and usually for one PC that everyone on the floor had to share. Mainframes had a role but mostly for transactional systems like item setup, allocation, purchase orders, and replenishment.
1990 to 2010 – The Rise of Spreadsheets and On-Premise Point Solutions
The race was on to innovate using whatever technology was in Gartner’s upper right-hand quadrant. As technology evolved, we continually rebuilt our planning applications in the seemingly never-ending chase to get us one step closer to our Connected Planning vision.
By 2000, spreadsheets were so pervasive that on-premise point solutions were able to make a good case for their offerings to consolidate and enforce consistency through best practices. But it didn’t take long for retailers to realize that integrating these proprietary systems together was harder and more financially burdensome than trying to integrate all those spreadsheets. Sadly, most retailers continued to use their spreadsheets.
2010 to Present
Internet and computing speeds are fast enough to support software-as-a-service (SaaS). The new generation of cloud vendors were able to learn from prior generation solutions to build platforms that were very functionally rich and flexible, while also taking advantage of the latest advancements in technology to maximize speed and scalability.
Anaplan’s founder, Michael Gould, had been involved in the development of three prior generations of planning tools. Anaplan also benefited from not having to worry about compatibility with legacy applications, as they had a fresh start.
As one might expect, retailers were slow to adopt SaaS because many had already made significant investments in point solutions and point-to-point integrations. The pathway to a connected planning environment would require a practical and financially achievable roadmap.
Meanwhile, it was obvious to retail planning solution providers that SaaS was the future, and they quickly invested in their technology roadmap to point towards that aim. The problem for most of them, however, is that their applications were meant for on-premise, mostly client/server platforms, and the transition to cloud was, and still is, very challenging.
Native cloud solutions are inherently better optimized for Connected Planning because they use open source technologies, provide rich data integration methods, outsource scalable and secure data centers, rely heavily on in-memory storage, and best of all, leverage and connect their customers and partners to help improve their offerings.
2020 Retail Planning and Analysis Processes
Retailers have known for a very long time what they want from a planning ecosystem. Everything in this retail wheel of functionality should relate to a common data source, but because of today’s mishmash of spreadsheets, point-to-point solutions, and unsupportable integration points, this diagram, for most, tends to resemble a wheel of idealism, an unobtainable library of enabled and connected processes.
Value Drivers
A common realization became evident as retailers’ solutions evolved from ledger paper to a kludgy and expensive integration of point solutions. That is, if the vision of a Connected Planning environment was the goal then there would have to be a financially rationalized strategic roadmap that takes them from their current state of investments to the envisioned state. In addition, the roadmap must also realize an ongoing return on investment.
To accomplish this task, many retailers used value drivers, or capabilities, that must be present in the solution as the complexity of the solutions increased. The value drivers are then mapped to KPIs which in turn are mapped to measurable financial drivers to rationalize capital investment.
To work within the boundaries of an organization’s human resources, appetite for scope, and budget allocation, a strategic roadmap can be implemented at a pace that optimizes these three competing levers. Implementations start with one to five use cases, typically framed in a long-term roadmap, to articulate the organization's long-term vision.
Illustrative example of a typical roadmap
Once a foundation is set and the benefits are documented, more advanced applications can be built and connected to each other. After that, other departments and divisions will take an interest and eventually a critical mass is reached where there is a Connected Planning environment established. Applications are integrated into a common data hub, ideally governed by an Anaplan Center of Excellence to support adherence to standards, knowledge sharing, and data governance.
Why Anaplan?
Anaplan connects and enables planning activities together in a single platform, a dream that started with retail planners before 1990 and born from frustration with having to erase their merchandise plans dozens of times in order to achieve turnover out three decimal points. Anaplan further adopts the advantages of future solutions by taking the ease of use and flexibility of spreadsheets and layering on the benefits of point solutions like security, scalability, and auditability.
Anaplan can accommodate a spectrum of applications, from simple to fully integrated and automated. This is Anaplan’s distinct advantage to connect all the planning activities in one platform.
Anaplan relieves the pressure on IT because the application development is designed to be built by business users. In addition to the development benefits and the financial benefits that come from connected planning, Anaplan also provides four distinct features.
Addressing Change Management
You might be asking, with all this change, how does Anaplan ensure user adoption? We all know that retail processes are fundamentally the same at their core, but we also know that no retailer implements them the same way or connects them similarly. Even within organizations that have multiple sales channels (retail, wholesale, eCommerce) and regions (Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific) there are usually inconsistent processes. Anaplan squarely addresses this need by connecting applications front-to-back, meaning they start with the user story and build out a solution around it. There are no pre-conceived solutions.
A great, flexible platform can miss the mark if proper diligence is not put in during the planning and execution of the application. Given the speed and flexibility of the platform, Anaplan implementations typically follow an Agile/SCRUM methodology, called the Anaplan Way. Anaplan also provides a blueprint for developing an Anaplan Center of Excellence in the organization with the intended vision to ensure user-adoption remains high, data quality is maintained, and applications are connected optimally.
But for many, the best part of Anaplan’s ecosystem is their Community exchange. There you can ask any question about the platform and usually, within 5 or 10 minutes you’ll get an answer, usually more than one, from people all around the world. In addition to being able to collaborate with other Anaplanners you will also find a vast library of documentation, best-practices, blog articles, and newsworthy events.
Summary
Post 1990, retailers finally could grow beyond the one-store format after the technology caught up and allowed them to automate routine tasks. Their vision of connecting all the functional areas of the company: human resources, merchandising, finance, accounting, operations, supply chain, marketing, and design was always well understood, but technology could only take them so far.
Over the years, retailers made massive investments in technology, and benefits were gained. However, with the introduction of eCommerce mega-retailers, traditional companies need to plan more effectivity and respond to insight through improved visibility across the organization if they want to compete.
With the adoption of SaaS platforms like Anaplan, the timeless vision of Connected Planning is possible. Implementation of a Connected Planning ecosystem doesn’t have to be rapid but rather, resolute, measured, and focused.
On a personal note, I’ve worked with many retail planning systems over the years. With the introduction of Anaplan, a SaaS provider, I have an optimistic outlook for what I’ve always believed to be the ideal retail planning configuration.
Jared Dolich is a Principal Consultant at Columbus Consulting. He is a Certified Master Anaplanner, Community Boss, and retail planning enthusiast. Jared’s passion for retail trace back to his high school days when he sold cinnamon toothpicks to his classmates and when he learned firsthand the concept of inventory management, cost of goods sold, and how to make a tidy profit. After being introduced to retail planning solutions as a buyer at Target Stores, he’s been on a personal journey ever since to help retail practitioners reach their potential by using software solutions that effectively enable their processes. Jared provides retailers, wholesalers, and eCommerce planners the rigor, training, and positive thinking needed to help them fully optimize their Anaplan platform. Prior to joining Columbus Consulting, a consultancy focused on the retail industry, Jared was a retail IT executive for Target, Tuesday Morning, Payless, and Ascena.
Contributors
Tom Phelps, Columbus Consulting Partner
Mark McNeela, Columbus Consulting Principal Consultant
Ameneh McCullough, Manager of the Master Anaplanner Program at Anaplan