Meet Certified Master Anaplanner Kyle Sakowski
Meet Kyle Sakowski — Certified Master Anaplanner and Director at Everest Reinsurance Company in New York. Kyle’s Anaplan experience started when he was an intern, when his boss tasked him with learning all he could about the platform. This led to an incredible learning journey, a full-time role, and successful career as a Certified Master Anaplanner!
We asked Kyle to share with the Anaplan Community more about his background, the benefits of having a Certified Master Anaplanner in an organization, and the opportunities he’s had in his career.
“One of the greatest things about having a Master Anaplanner within an organization is the understanding between development and customer needs. You learn how a company operates, which makes having a Master Anaplanner even that much more valuable.” – Kyle Sakowski
Tune in to hear more about Kyle’s thoughts on the Certified Master Anaplanner program and benefits it has brought him. (Transcript also available below.)
If you have a story to share about your Anaplan journey, we would love to connect. Share in the comments below or contact us at CommunityContent@anaplan.com.
Transcript:
Interviewer: Tell us about yourself and your role.
Kyle: How's it going everyone! My name is Kyle Sakowski — I am a Master Anaplanner and currently a Director of our Anaplan Center of Excellence. Every day, I'm waking up, I handle our enhancements and defects and also do any type of planning for any future rollouts and integrations.
Interviewer: Share with us your Master Anaplanner journey.
Kyle: My Anaplan career has been pretty interesting. Right out of college, I landed a job where we were debating on going between a competitor and Anaplan. Sure enough — we decided to go with Anaplan. I was an intern and I was sitting there with not too much responsibility and my boss just said, “see what you can pick up with Anaplan.” My boss ended up leaving and my other boss came in and said, “Hey Kyle, you gotta prove yourself!” and Anaplan was the one thing that I was able to pick up fast, learn quickly, and then sure enough I was able to turn that position into a full-time role, become a full-time model builder and eventually land within the Master Anaplanner community within that first year and a half of development.
Interviewer: What are some of the benefits to having Master Anaplanners engaged in their organization?
Kyle: One of the greatest things about having a Master Anaplanner within an organization is the understanding between development and customer needs. I love being relied on, I love being depended on and one thing that's awesome is, is not only do you know Anaplan, but you learn how a company operates, which makes I think having a Master Anaplanner even that much more valuable.
Interviewer: How has the Master Anaplanner Community impacted your Anaplan journey?
Kyle: The benefit of being a Master Anaplanner in Community and knowing the inner workings of how the company operates — It benefits not only you and saving time on how you build, it also helps out with future planning and planning ahead. Because again, you don't want to get stuck behind the eight ball of starting to build something out and then realizing 10 days later that this isn't going to work because you built another model differently, you're missing a dimension, you're missing some sort of time. I believe actually being involved in understanding what KPIs and what key drivers the company operates on — it saves you valuable time and valuable effort in how you're going to build out each system.
Interviewer: What are some opportunities being a Master Anaplanner has brought you?
Kyle: As many of you guys know being in the Master Anaplanner Community opens up several opportunities. This could be from job offers on LinkedIn on the daily, which has occurred to me as well as being offered some tremendous opportunities at Fortune 500 companies that you can never imagine getting the opportunity from. There’s been some family conversations where my dad still couldn't believe I was offered some roles. I kid you not, the community itself has been tremendous and the doors that it's opened are only becoming greater. The more that Anaplan's taking over — in my opinion — it's been just nothing, nothing less of exceptional and I give Anaplan all the credit in the world for having such an amazing community because without that, I don't believe I'd be where I am today.
Comments
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Awesome. Glad your company chose Anaplan!
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@sakowski27 What a phenomenal story on how starting as a model builder and developing yourself through involvement with the Anaplan Platform and Certified Master Anaplanner Program helped shape your career! Thank you so much for sharing your story! 💡
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@sakowski27 Wonderful!
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