Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) back up best practice

Hi All,

I have a question for Anaplanners running ICM. My company uses Anaplan for calculating commissions. We run into the issue of needing to compare the current month to a prior month. Currently I copy the entire model at the end of the commission cycle each month and archive it as a backup so I have a point in time reference for each month. It is really handy to have the entire model to use as reference but it uses a ton of space. In order for the previous model to be useful for research it needs to have data down to the deal level so only storing monthly payout amounts is not enough. Does anyone else have this issue and if so how to you approach it?

Thanks,

James

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JaredDolich

@jamesreed Great use case. One we all face, in all industries.

Some ideas for you:

Create a fake version list and use it to copy your most important values into it. You may not need every detail, just the summaries. You can make this a monthly process. Before you load your next month's actuals, copy your forecasts into the fake version and use it to compare.
Use the native versioning. While I'm not a big fan of native versions this is a great option if you need a quick way to compare versions. You will essentially need to do the same thing as in step 1 though.
Create a separate line item and use DCA to protect it. Instead of creating a fake version list, you can just create a line item and copy the current month's values into the new line item. Protect it with DCA so no one can edit it.

Just some ideas. Hope it helps.

ankit_cheeni

Ah!

This post brings back so many good and bad memories at the same time 🙂

While archiving a copy of the model seems like the best solution since you literally have everything from the last month and god knows what you might need, the problem it presents, well, are just not worth it.

@JaredDolich has listed out all the possible solutions. Using versioning is cleaner when your modules follow DISCO and have calculations that you want to version present in one module only. Else you will have subsidiary views for some LIs that don't use Version list, fake or native. Nothing wrong with that though.

If you only have to look back at previous month, adding a line item as Jared mentioned should work just fine. If you want to present the data on the DBs, then you can add a DCA or another LI that refers to your versioning LI and use that on the UX. If it is for internal use (exporting and comparing), setting up the LI should be just fine.

jamesreed

@ankit_cheeni @JaredDolich

Thank you so much for the replies on this topic. Right, now I'm thinking that option 3. Create a separate line item and use DCA to protect it is the best option for my use case.

What I'm struggling with is where to draw the line on how much data to save each month. This is really two parts. (1) Which data to save and (2) How long to save data. My team would love to have everything. By that I mean take an entire copy of the model each month and save it off for reference so that at the end of the year we have an archived point in time for each month. This approach makes is super easy to drill down and research any issues. This is also the capability they had in the previous Excel ICM model.

To solve the (1) Which data to save issue I'm thinking a good compromise would be to save year to date payout and attainment data each month so we could easily pinpoint the dollar amount of the difference. Payout data alone is tells us there is an issue and which measure is affected but it is really not enough data to find the source of the issue. Adding attainment data would at least tell us the credit amount delta and the affected measure(s). This solution would take more work to tie the dollar amount to the difference though.

To solve (2) How long to save data I could really use some opinions here on what y'all think is best practice. I really want to be able to build a sustainable process where I can save off a rolling time period and avoid any manual processes. I'm thinking creating a rolling 12 month time period for to start would be a good option. Then I could review and reduce this time period as needed as time goes by.

@ankit_cheeni I'm wondering what issues you ran into outside of the space issue. Could you expand on the downside of copying the entire model each month?

JaredDolich

@jamesreed

Each customer will have their own requirements but one thing you can consider is to only copy / save off the editable values. That will allow you to recreate the final values. Bulk copy can now be used as an action which may help you in this regard.

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