Announcing the 2022 Center of Excellence Leader of the Year!
Congratulations to Anaplan’s 2022 Center of Excellence Leader of the Year, Hayli Hay from Autodesk!
Hayli is Autodesk’s Center of Excellence (CoE) Leader who oversees the success of 34+ models across multiple finance and sales organizations ensuring that the CoE is strategically aligned with ever-changing business objectives. Hayli leads efficient, collaborative, and communicative engagements across 825 unique users and 12 model builders and project managers. She is celebrated for standardizing and maturing key CoE components — the intake process for enhancements and new models, team structure and resource management, strategically aligned roadmaps that visualize the CoE’s influence, post-implementation knowledge transfer and documentation, piloting a Citizen Developer program, and solidifying a partnership with Anaplan’s Customer Success team to refresh their technical footprint. Hayli is a passionate evangelist of Anaplan during reference calls, customer connects, CoE meet-ups, and enables partner success with her stories of what works and what doesn’t. You can read more about how Autodesk is using Anaplan here.
Winning CoE Leader of the year is a huge accomplishment! Hayli (@hayh) was chosen as this year’s winner because of her leadership as a Connected Planning evangelist, taking Anaplan to new departments in her organization and building a fantastic team of model builders that achieve the Connected Planning and forecasting vision. We look to celebrate CoE leaders who have established strong CoE operations, have daily oversight of the Anaplan team, and have created governance and processes that optimize the model ecosystem. Hayli does all that and more!
“Through Hayli’s leadership and forward-thinking approach, Autodesk has built a best-in-class COE that consistently delivers on Autodesk’s business objectives. Hayli does not take past success for granted; she is always looking for ways to improve her COE to continue to provide delightful end user experience and value to the business. As a result, she has been able to scale the Autodesk COE to launch multiple initiatives and meet growing demand for Anaplan solutions. If I am asked to set up an Anaplan COE, I would start with Hayli Hay as the COE lead — every time.”
- Vaibhav Dhingra (@VaibhavD), Principal Business Partner, Customer Success, Anaplan
We asked Hayli 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?
I am a subject matter agnostic leader who has the ability to create high-performing teams of subject matter experts. Hiring the right people, supporting them in learning Anaplan, and giving them opportunities to try different solutions with a safe space to fail and iterate is very important. Acknowledging people for their work, ensuring they are seen and heard, and have impactful meaningful things to work on helps keep motivation high.
As a CoE Leader, in your opinion, what are some of the benefits to having a CoE within an organization?
Having a unified CoE provides a place for the model builders to learn best practices, create standards and templates, and share technical solutions they have implemented. This in turn has a dramatic influence on the ability to scale in a way that makes additional models and connectivity aligned and easy.
What are some of the specific opportunities that being a CoE leader has brought to you?
At Autodesk, we are fortunate to have autonomy in how we create and expand the CoE. I am currently piloting a Citizen Developer program that will give business model owners some freedom in customization within the guardrails and safety net of a robust CoE.
What's one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to develop a CoE?
Give your organization a beat to get experience with Anaplan. Then, be intentional and craft a CoE that best fits within your org. There is a great template to leverage on the Community to get you thinking about a structure.
What are some of the resources within the Anaplan Community that you have found the most valuable?
In addition to the CoE template I mentioned above, the model builders on my team reference the Community posts a lot. I encourage them to spend time writing articles, responding to posts, and being thought leaders. It’s rare to have such a large team of model builders; they can be a big asset to someone in another company that only has one or two model builders. It’s neat to see such a vibrant sharing of information.
Lightning round: your favorite movie, food, and book.
Big Lebowski. Sashimi (well if I’m being honest, I eat mostly GoMacro bars). I’m not a big reader (but if you asked my favorite podcast that’s a different story!) but I’m currently working my way through Endurance, which is the story of Earnest Shackleton, and wow, what a leader!
Hayli was recognized this week at Anaplan Live! in San Jose. A huge congratulations and thank you to Hayli!
Do you have questions for Hayli on what it’s like creating and running a Center of Excellence? Leave a comment!
Comments
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Congratulations Hayli and her Autodesk CoE on all the successes!
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Congratulations, Hayli!
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