April 2024 Community Member Spotlight: Kirill Kuznetsov
This month we are thrilled to feature @KirillKuznetsov as our Community Member Spotlight! Kirill has been active in the Community since 2017, a Certified Master Anaplanner for the last four years, and is currently a Community Boss. You can find Kirill supporting members with answering questions (he has over 570 comments!), as well as contributing new ideas and content over the years. Behind the scenes and within Community, Kirill is frequently sharing incredible feedback and suggestions to help improve our overall Community experience! Learn more about Kirill's Anaplan journey and impressive contributions below.
About Kirill
We asked Kirill about his background and history with Anaplan. Here’s what we learned!
I started my Anaplan journey at DIAGEO as part of the Anaplan Center of Excellence team in the BAU department in 2017. During this time I learned about good corporate culture and honed my proficiency at every level. The first day when I got through my Anaplan 101 course I instantly fell in love with the platform.
Managing over 20 different models, both geo- and process-specific, has provided me a broad perspective of what can be built with Anaplan. With such great examples of use cases and builds, I had the best foundation for growth. By building and supporting live models I gradually developed more experience and knowledge.
Today, I am currently the Leading Anaplan Expert at Planingo. Everyday I learn about a whole variety of industries and their planning processes. I help our clients excel in their potential and performance.
We asked Kirill a few questions to get to know him.
Please share an Anaplan success story you’re proud of.
I recently worked on a project where I helped restore a client's faith in Anaplan as a viable solution. When our company was brought on board to support, the client was losing motivation to use Anaplan due to several issues. Although the dashboards appeared well-designed and the UX was acceptable, the underlying structure was far from ideal. The model was plagued with numerous problems, including:
- Excessive model size, already reaching the workspace limit of 130 GB
- Over 2,000 modules with an average of 20 line items each
- Lack of naming conventions for easy navigation, analysis, and communication
- Overcomplicated list organization
- No clear dataflow
- No ALM
- No documentation
These problems led to slow product development and expansion, as well as numerous bugs, which in turn affected the planning team. My initial goal was to optimize the model according to best practices.
The client planned to copy the model for the next financial year and purchase another 130 GB workspace. I requested an Open Model Analysis, which revealed that the sparsity level could be optimized. Despite being hired to build a new report on top of the existing model, I prioritized addressing these issues first. In addition to completing the report on time, I brought my colleague into the project to manage the technical optimization while I focused on the report. By the time we had to make a model copy for the new financial year cycle, the model size had been reduced to approximately 30 GB, a significant improvement from the original 130 GB.
Please share something you can teach about Anaplan — any tips and tricks you'd like to highlight?
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Anaplan can be tricky, not only for newbies but even veterans. Always remember that the Community is a great place to find the answer if you are stuck!
- Build with shorter formulas, but with more line items. This is very helpful for auditing, transparency, performance, and flexibility. You will always have a chance to optimize them later but at least while you create new module or block — don't underestimate this rule.
- Save yourself time in the future by building attribute modules right after you create a new list. You’ll thank yourself later.
- Use hotkeys such as Shift+Ctrl+Space to switch between data and blueprint view and many others.
What do you enjoy about the Anaplan Community?
I appreciate the respect and the openness of the people here. The Community helps members stay sharp by knowledge and experience-sharing through Anapedia, Planual, Forum, and Groups. I love how everyone is involved in shaping the Anaplan platform through Forums, Idea Exchange, User Research Program, etc. All of these sections of Anaplan Community are obviously nothing without people living and interacting with each other. I am so happy to be able to connect with others in the comments and meet at live events when I have a chance.
What is one important skill that you think everyone should have?
Listen to yourself, to be able to hear the people around you. This means understanding yourself and being open to hearing your inner voice. Only by accepting yourself, your desires and fears, can you hear others.
…..We hope you enjoyed learning more about Kirill in this month’s Community Member Spotlight. Thank you, Kirill, for being an outstanding Community contributor and advocate!
Check out Kirill's Community content:
Want to learn 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.
Comments
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Finally! Been waiting for this spotlight for quite some time. Great to hear your story @KirillKuznetsov and thank you @becky.leung @GingerAnderson for these continued stories. Bravo!
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@KirillKuznetsov - I have a question! What is the name of your bird? They are beautiful!
You absolutely crush it as a community boss, thank you for being such a passionate advocate for the community. I love your point about asking questions. There are always opportunities to learn from each other and curiosity is what keeps us growing as builders. Kudos and thanks!
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Thank you! It's your turn now 😉😅 Can't wait to read your stories!
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The name of this parrot is Ricky. It is my nieces' bird. But I have a dog called Darwin - a black English cocker spaniel.
Thank you for your feedback. It is very important to me!
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