June 2024 Community Member Spotlight: Rob Marshall
This month we are thrilled to feature @rob_marshall as our Community Member Spotlight! Rob is our first-ever Anaplan employee member spotlight, and we wanted to highlight all the incredible contributions he has made over the years. Additionally, he’s part of our Community Boss Employees program, which we just launched last week.
Rob has been with Anaplan for nearly 10 years, is an employee Certified Master Anaplanner, and one of our most active users of all time since the Anaplan Community launched. Some fun stats to share: Rob has 220+ discussions, written 2,200+ comments, and has 250+ accepted answers in Community.
Learn more about Rob's Anaplan background and impressive contributions below!
About Rob
We asked Rob about his background and history with Anaplan. Here’s what we learned!
My name is Rob Marshall and I have been here at Anaplan for almost a full 10 years (start date was July 7, 2014) and I work in the Operational Excellence Group (OEG). Our main role is to define modeling best practices and educate the ecosystem on the most performant ways to build models. We accomplish this by writing articles for Community, answering questions on Community, as well as speaking at customer events like Anaplan Connect and ACE. Additionally, we help our customers, partners, and internal folks optimize poorly performing models.
We asked Rob a few questions to get to know him.
Share one project you’ve worked on at Anaplan that you’re particularly proud of.
I would say two projects, the first being co-author of The Planual. The second is MAPS (Model Analysis Proactive Solution). It started being an internal project but it has grown into much more than we thought. Mark Warren and I created a model called MAPS where we bring in data from our logs and we can see how a model has been built, from a structural standpoint. We have incorporated logic and analyze the data against the Planual which our Customer Success Business Partners can share with customers.
What are the most innovative ways you’ve seen Anaplan being used in your time here?
In our T&Q app, we created a binary list to figure out if an account matches a Territory Rule. Since the binary list goes from 0 to all 1’s, it has an inherent weighting as part of it. We put a top level on it and changed our summary to Last Non Blank so now the most granular rule will always be chosen.
What is a fun fact that nobody knows about you?
I almost quit working at Anaplan six months into my tenure because I couldn’t figure out the difference between a LOOKUP and a SUM and when to use them.
What's one thing on your bucket list that you hope to accomplish in the next year?
Bucket list — having both of our girls graduate from high school and moving them into their college dorms. Now that my wife and I are empty nesters, we have no idea what we are going to do with our time as we are no longer Ubering our girls to club soccer games or tournaments.
…..We hope you enjoyed learning more about Rob in this month’s Community Member Spotlight. Thank you, Rob, for being an outstanding Community contributor and advocate!
We asked Rob to share his favorite articles he’s written, or co-wrote in Community. They include:
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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My youngest child leaves for Indiana University this Fall. Scared out of my mind to think about living in this house with both my daughters away.
No one at Anaplan better to have the spotlight than @rob_marshall - glad the time has finally come to recognize Rob's contributions to the platform and to the Community. Congratulations, Rob.
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Thanks bud…We have a junior at Texas and our "baby" will be going to Wake Forest next year…Not sure what we are going to do to fill the time.
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Congratulations, Rob !!! Thanks for all your solutions and contributions.
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@rob_marshall If you still have trouble remembering the difference between a SUM and a LOOKUP, you can read the very succinct description by this guy:
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I love that the first employee spotlight was @rob_marshall! No one deserves it more! Thank you for all your hard work and dedication over the years! I personally have learned a tremendous amount from you - both through your published work and our 1:1 interactions. My Anaplan career has forever been changed by your help. Much appreciation to you! Congratulations!
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I took Rob's Model Optimization course at CPX 2019 and came away with a far more enlightened understanding of what a well-architected model looked like and how it performed (much of which still informs my approach to model building today). Thanks, @rob_marshall, for your commitment to operational excellence, willingness to dive into any conversation, and generosity with your time to assist builders, no matter where we are on our Anaplan journeys!
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