April 2025 Community Member Spotlight: Alexandru Pavel

becky.leung
becky.leung
in Blog
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We’re celebrating @alexpavel in our latest Community Member Spotlight! For the past eight years, Alexandru has been a steady, helpful presence in the Community — with over 500 comments, and a role as a Certified Master Anaplanner and a Community Boss. He consistently shows up with thoughtful insights and a genuine desire to support other members. Keep reading to learn more about Alexandru’s career path, his helpful Anaplan tips, and the ways he’s helped shape the Community along the way!

About Alexandru

I'm Alexandru Pavel, a Solutions Architect at Keyrus with a strong background in EPM tools and data-driven business processes. My journey in enterprise performance management (EPM) began in 2001, following five years' experience as a programmer analyst working with relational databases.

Over the course of my career, I’ve had the opportunity to live and work in Romania, Italy, and the Netherlands. Each country contributed uniquely to my professional path. 

Romania provided me with a solid educational foundation and valuable early career experience, something I remain deeply grateful for, as it shaped my professional growth. In Italy, I was introduced to the world of consulting and discovered the specialized niche of EPM tools.

In the Netherlands, I began working with Anaplan, a platform that reshaped my perspective on what modern EPM tools can achieve. Since discovering Anaplan in 2017, I've been inspired by its ability to handle large-scale data and support decision-making far beyond traditional Finance functions. At Keyrus, I help organizations design streamlined, integrated solutions that drive efficiency and business agility.

I’m passionate about finding the most effective formulas, optimizing business processes, and delivering clear, scalable data integration strategies.

We asked Alexandru a few questions to get to know him.

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

I'll never forget my first Anaplan project. It was a whirlwind of new experiences. A new country, unfamiliar colleagues, a brand-new EPM tool, a different working language, a business process I wasn't acquainted with, and a fresh approach to projects. It was also my introduction to “User Stories” which made the journey even more fascinating.

Since then, the client has transitioned to a new ERP system and adjusted the data integration flows, yet Anaplan has remained at the core of their business processes. The model is still active, and this year, we are working on developing some new extensions.

Over the years, within our team we developed solutions and functionalities that I'm truly proud of. Here are a few highlights:

  • Designing a multi-step approval process where, depending on specific conditions, not all steps were required for the final approval.
  • Implementing a mechanism to track the current username and timestamp (updated hourly) for user actions within the application, such as creations and approvals.
  • Developing a logging system to record the user who initiated a process, the time it was started, and whether it was successfully completed.
  • Creating a method to identify the element selected by a user in processes that require a target element (e.g., target version).
  • Establishing a set of standardized approaches and best practices, even before PLANUAL or the Best Practices sections existed in the Anaplan ecosystem.

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

The Anaplan Community is full of valuable insights, tips, and tricks shared by users from all backgrounds. Below are a few thoughts and observations that came to mind, which I hope you'll find useful. 

For anyone beginning their Anaplan journey or finding it challenging to grasp how Anaplan works, it's important to go back to the basics: a strong foundation in multidimensional databases and their functionality is crucial when working with any EPM tool. Here are questions to ask yourself:

  • What is a dimension (or list)? A dimension, often referred to as a list in Anaplan, is a structured set of related items used to organize data.
  • What is a hierarchy, and how is it built in Anaplan? A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in a parent-child relationship, where each item can have only one parent. In Anaplan, hierarchies are built using list structures that define these relationships.
  • What do the cell values in an Anaplan module represent? Each cell in a module reflects a data point that results from the intersection of different dimensions (e.g., version, time, product, region). These values can represent inputs or calculations/outputs.
  • Why are additional cells populated when uploading a tabular data source or a CSV file? When importing tabular data, you might notice extra cells being populated (in blue or black). Typically, blue cells represent input data that matches the imported values, while black cells display calculated results based on aggregation methods or formulas defined in the model. This also occurs when changes are made through manual data entry.

Anaplan Engine Tip: If a formula isn’t giving the expected result, don’t worry, it might not be broken!

How Anaplan Works Behind the Scenes:

  • Formulas calculate values only at the base level cells — that means the lowest level elements in your lists.
  • The values you see at higher levels (like totals or summaries) are not directly calculated by the formula. Instead, they’re based on the aggregation method you’ve chosen for that line item.

Remember: "Formula" and "Ratio" are also aggregation methods in Anaplan that can influence higher level results!

Always check:

  • Where your formula is being applied.
  • What aggregation method is set for the line item.

Notes:

  • Base members: Items in a list that do not have any children.
  • Base-level cells: Cells where the intersection of all dimensional lists consists only of base members.

Regarding the "Formula" Aggregation Method: When using "Formula" as an aggregation method in a line item, the LOOKUP function is not supported. However, the SELECT function can still be used in this context.

This can be useful in FP&A use cases where numeric line items may not all require SUM aggregation. Some, such as percentages or prices, need to be recalculated at each level instead. 

Stay Up to Date and Engaged:

Q: What do you enjoy about the Anaplan Community?

It wouldn’t be a true community without the "Platform Discussions" section. I regularly check in and contribute by answering questions shared by other users.

Resources like the PLANUAL and Best Practices are invaluable for avoiding common pitfalls and ensuring smooth development of Anaplan solutions.

All of this is seamlessly integrated with Anaplan’s e-learning platform (Anaplan Academy), which offers both comprehensive courses and micro-lessons, helping users find answers quickly and build their Anaplan expertise in a structured, efficient way.

Q: What's the most memorable trip or vacation you've ever taken, and why was it so special?

I had always imagined Türkiye as a perfect destination to enjoy the sunny and warm part of the year, especially by the sea. It never crossed my mind that it could also offer such a great setting for a ski trip.

But this year, that changed. Back in 2020, we had planned to celebrate our company's 10-year anniversary with a ski trip. Like many things, COVID-19 shattered those plans and expectations. Fast forward five years, with 40 new colleagues on board, we finally decided to make it happen. And, surprisingly, we chose Türkiye as our destination.

We discovered a beautiful ski area in Erciyes, close to the city of Kayseri. With slopes ranging between 2000 and 3000 meters in altitude, the temperatures stayed low, and we were lucky enough to enjoy four full days of sunshine.

The people we met were incredibly warm and welcoming, and their hospitality (along with some amazing food) made the whole experience unforgettable. I was especially impressed by the infrastructure: a well-maintained four-lane mountain road (two in each direction) that takes you straight from the city up to the ski resort at 2,000 meters.

One funny detail still puzzles me: how the ski cards work when reloaded with additional rides. When scanning the card at the lift, it showed the original remaining rides as a large number, and the extra ones in a smaller font. But when the main count hit zero, the additional rides kicked in, and oddly enough, mine started from 18, even though I only added 16. A little gift? A glitch? A miracle? Still a mystery.

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

Check out Alexandru's Community content:

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.

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