Lessons learned in 2024: Trust the process
Author: Taryn Townsend is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Senior Manager at Deloitte Consulting.
It is always an honor for me to be able to share perspectives with you, the Anaplan Community, as I strive to learn and grow as a part of this ecosystem. As 2024 draws to a close to give way to crafting New Year’s resolutions and setting goals for 2025, it’s a great time to reflect over the experiences of the year. We have adopted new feature functionality, learned updated model building best practices from platform experts, and collectively evolved in our understanding of connected planning! But, of course, there have been challenges along the way, leading to a lesson learned I would love to share with you.
One of my team leads often says “a fancy system on top of a broken process is just an expensive broken process.” He’s not wrong! And a familiar baseline principle we try to hold top of mind for a successful implementation is that technology alone will not drive the business changes that typically led to the desire to seek a planning platform in the first place. The tool might help or be an energizing first step but the triumvirate of people, process and technology in harmony is the guide to success. Keeping this edict in mind can become challenging however, as more system features become available that start to blur the sides of the triangle. After all, for example, if we enable Workflow in Anaplan… doesn’t that replace the process work? Two birds, one stone!
This leads to my story from a previous implementation experience. A client team had enabled Anaplan for their FP&A use case. The model had been live for a few planning cycles, but the client was not realizing the synergies and value that they had hoped to see. Handoffs were not happening correctly, cycle times were being missed, and end users were started to leverage off-line workarounds more and more. They were considering options included transitioning to a different solution when Workflow went live. “Perfect timing!” they thought. Flows were overlaid task by task on top of the existing solution. A few more forecast cycles passed before I was engaged with my team to try and understand what this client needed to succeed. We started hearing some common themes: “The solution is ok, but…” and “I really wish the system could do…” and “It’s almost there but to make it work for me, I have to do…”
In breaking down the problem statement, it became clear, there was not a gap in Anaplan’s capabilities… a robust core process was not defined. We were missing the procedural structure for the platform to be able to grow from. While the push for forward progress typically repels a pause to prioritize and preform a process review and re-alignment, those were our next steps. This work generated our action plan showing us that there was not a need to change platforms or even a call for a full model retrofit! We could prioritize enhancements that were not only welcomed but could be firmly grounded in our mutually aligned and socialized process flow. The technology alone couldn’t magically solve the underlying issues users were concerned about. Only through ensuring we were building a solution on top of a solid foundational strategy were we able to achieve our connected planning goals together.
The research scientist in me will always seek to learn the next-generation solutions and how they might be leveraged for my clients. That’s the exciting part of working in a field driven by innovation! But experiences like this remind me that while it can be advantageous to chase the leading edge, heavy importance must remain placed on the fundamentals if your application is meant to stand the test of time. This will become more and more important as we bolster our solutions with advancements like PlanIQ, ADO, and then the next set of platform enhancements waiting for us on the horizon. We can’t forget: a fancy system on top of a broken process is just an expensive broken process.
So, if you are evaluating your goals for 2025, consider setting yourself up for success and adding a reminder to prioritize the process to your list! I have absolutely added it to mine.
What were your big lessons this year? Leave a comment!
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Comments
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Well said @Taryn thank you for candor and willingness to share a real experience. I believe there is a spectrum, or tug of war if you prefer, between an original, underlying process and the process the planners will ultimately adopt. So when we say, trust the process, I would just add that we need to define success as well. This empowers planners to change their minds as you begin to present a solution.
I would also include the data analysis and integration as well as the synchronization between the data hub and destination applications, as part of the process. It's not very likely that planners will have familiarity with the underlying data structures, yet this typically amounts to >50% of the effort to bring about the solution.
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a fancy system on top of a broken process is just an expensive broken process.Very true!
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