Author: Daniel Badura is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Solution Architect at Dr. Oetker.
A consistent, transparent planning approach offers many benefits, but applying it across an international organization is no small task. Markets differ in priorities and business practices: customer preferences and buying habits, product ranges, available channels, and the role of promotions and partnerships. Some focus on rapid growth, while others prioritize margins and market share.
Establishing a baseline
Rolling out a single integrated Anaplan model to an ever increasing number of country organizations requires balancing local needs with collective standards. Anaplan is highly flexible, but that flexibility can lead to scope creep. Model architecture can become very complex when designed to accommodate every request. Yet mature business processes often already contain enough rules and exceptions at the lowest common denominator. Depending on local autonomy and differences in day-to-day operations, even selecting a few representative countries as a starting point can be difficult. In many cases, the headquarters country becomes the initial baseline.
Expansion and compromises
Once a “standard” process has been identified, implemented in Anaplan, and come into contact with the real world, the next step is to onboard additional local organizations. This usually happens in waves, potentially over several years.
With each new country, change management comes first. Before any Anaplan configuration begins, central process owners should run workshops with the local teams. The central team presents the standard planning process, while the local team provides feedback on where the template does not fit its business practices. If their planning approach is already aligned with the international standard, onboarding can happen quickly and without much friction. If their way of working is very different, the search for common ground and compromises begins.
This typically leads to several iterations to determine how the local team can adapt to the central structure, and where the central structure itself needs to be adapted. The key questions are which requirements are essential, how they can be covered with existing capabilities, and which workarounds are feasible.
Considerations
When discussions turn to adding new functionality to existing Anaplan models, costs and benefits must be assessed carefully. What would happen if the template were not adapted? How many other organizations would benefit from the additional functionality? How much would complexity and maintenance effort increase?
In complex models, flexibility often comes at the expense of stability and maintainability. A calculation rule added for one country could produce incorrect results in another. Many IT organizations also define guidelines for international architectures, for example about supporting or not supporting automated interfaces to local software solutions.
Dedicated self-service options can increase flexibility without adding unnecessary complexity. AnaplanXL, for example, can allow savvy users to transform, combine, and analyze data according to their own needs. Connectors to tools such as Power BI can serve a similar purpose. Anaplan Analyst may also help close some gaps by querying data that is not directly available in the UX.
Conclusion
It is impossible to satisfy every requirement, but finding the right balance between local needs and collective standards is an important task, and one that is never finished. The two main challenges are defining a standard process and extending it where justified. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but by focusing on essentials and following best practices, the flexibility of Anaplan can be leveraged where it matters most.
