November 2023 Community Member Spotlight: Julie Ziemer

becky.leung · November 2023

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This month we are shining the spotlight on @jziemer, who has been part of the Anaplan Community for over six years! A Certified Master Anaplanner since 2016, and a recently appointed Community Boss, Julie has been an incredible Community leader. Read more to learn about Julie's Anaplan journey, deep Anaplan knowledge, and impactful Community contributions.

About Julie

We asked Julie about her background and history with Anaplan. Here’s what we learned!

I have been working in the realm of accounting, finance and planning for over three decades. The last nine years of this journey have been focused on developing Anaplan solutions for my Akili clients. These solutions have spanned FP&A, HR, supply chain, and incentive compensation. Akili is a cutting-edge business management and technology consulting firm and, by far, the best place I have worked. There have been many opportunities for moves to different roles and companies over the past nine years, and I continue to choose Akili and my passion of Anaplan model building. I am a Certified Master Anaplanner, an Anaplan Community Boss, have written Community blogs and have served on several Anaplan Live! panels over the years.

We asked Julie a few questions to get to know her.

Please share an Anaplan success story you’re proud of.

There have been so many over the years that it is hard to highlight one, but I would say that moving companies from ridiculously complex Microsoft Excel workbooks to the Anaplan platform are the most rewarding. With these projects, there is ALWAYS a major improvement in efficiency, accuracy, business data consolidation, and security. I also find that the most rewarding projects are the ones where we can get clients deeply involved in the development and coach them on how to effectively use the platform. This is always a two-way learning process that results in the best solution for the client.

Please share something you can teach about Anaplan — any tips and tricks you’d like to highlight?

Follow Planual and stay up to date on it! It is the bible on best practices.
Don’t be afraid to ask the Community for help. There is so much to learn about Anaplan that there is no way to know it all. You may be an expert in a certain area, but like any software, if you don’t have a need to apply a functionality in real life, you can’t expect to be a master. The Community is the best place to leverage other people’s learnings.
With respect to a precise tip on Anaplan functionality, you may or may not know that in addition to the standard bulk copy function in Versions, you can also bulk copy from any list member to another. I may be a little slow, but it took me a while to realize that bulk copy was not limited to native Versions. I use it on many of my clients with a non-native Versions list. This allows for an efficient monthly/quarterly version locking process while still being able to subset for model size efficiency. Go to Settings/Versions/Bulk Copy and use the drop down to select the list with members you want to copy to/from.

What do you enjoy about the Anaplan Community?

The camaraderie. Members are genuinely interested in helping other people and sharing their expertise. “How I Built It” videos are the most helpful in my mind, but we need a lot more out there! I encourage all Community members to share.

What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

“Don’t eat the yellow snow.” Just kidding — that was my grandfather speaking! Actually, I am torn between “Don’t take things personally” (Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements), and “You will add more value if you genuinely do not care about getting personal credit for your work.” I got that advice from a mentor over 20 years ago and it has served me well.

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We hope you enjoyed learning more about Julie in this month’s Community Member Spotlight. Thank you, Julie, for being an outstanding Community contributor and advocate!

Check out Julie's Community articles:

Interested in learning more about our Community Member Spotlight series? Check out this post.

Do you know someone in the Community who you think should be featured in a Community Member Spotlight? We want to hear about it — please nominate them here.