Community Roundtable: Get to Know Your Customers Day
Happy National Get to Know Your Customers Day! In the spirit of today, we’d like to share what a few of our customers have been up to.
The Community Roundtable is back with the fifth installment in the series, and this time we’re focusing on our customers. We've asked four customers to share with us what they’re currently working on with Anaplan and why they chose the planning field:
- Amy Xu (Master Anaplanner), Senior Data Analyst, Rogers Media
- Andrew Tye (Master Anaplanner), Head of Finance Transformation Projects, Thomas Cook
- Tiffany Rice, Finance Analytics Manager of Corporate Planning Solutions Strategy, Cerner
- Wendy Wen (Master Anaplanner), Anaplan Implementation Manager and Business Analytics, GCP Applied Technologies
Are you ready to get to know these all-star Anaplanners and find out what exciting things they are working on? Keep reading to find out:
Amy Xu: “I’ve been working on revenue planning and sales management with Anaplan. Revenue planning, for example, requires consolidating data from multiple sources, sophisticated calculations with huge data set, manual manipulations on all levels of details, and collaborations among different groups/users. And we do forecasts every quarter and budget every year. Since we implemented Anaplan, these planning cycles became more efficient and effective. One of the big wins of using Anaplan is that senior leadership can plan and compare different scenarios efficiently. As data integration comes along, we are enhancing our models to plan better!”
Andrew Tye: “Within Thomas Cook Anaplan is being used for a wide variety of use cases from the traditional finance, such as period close system reconciliation, all the way to automated holiday pricing changes. Several of our models are connected with the finance and product teams working collaboratively to drive out aligned forecasts all the way from expected sales levels to how that impacts the forecasted financial statements.
We have a variety of standalone use cases where the previous process had data and information in a variety of locations where producing and consolidating information was incredibly time-consuming, these are owned by the relevant business areas helping them to drive out understanding rather than just producing reports.
As well as our core use cases that are interacted with on a frequent basis, we also use Anaplan for ad hoc analysis, especially when large amounts of data from multiple sources are involved. Rather than spend time crunching it in Excel or waiting for other teams to find the time, it’s easier and quicker to use Anaplan as a test bed before moving it back to our data teams.
We’re constantly looking at what can go into Anaplan, which is everything, but what will bring most value particularly if an input or output already exists with Anaplan–it makes modeling a lot easier when half the job is already done! We have saved significant time pulling together data and tables because all the key processes exist within Anaplan.”
Tiffany Rice: “To me, planning is an exciting field where you have the ability to advance data analytics and reporting which shapes business decisions to drive optimal results. You can play an important role in ensuring the success of your company. On my team, we’re using Anaplan as the platform to help us drive those advancements. Our primary utilization thus far has been within the financial planning and forecasting area, moving away from Excel-based processes to create more collaboration and visibility across our finance organization. As we evolve in our Anaplan journey, it is my goal to create a more comprehensive planning ecosystem drawing together ancillary areas where linkages to FP&A data have not been fully leveraged in the past.”
Wendy Wen: “I got to know the Anaplan ecosystem when I was in sales strategy and planning at Hewlett Packard back to 2013. I love Anaplan’s real-time, scalable modeling and calculation engine with multi-dimensional planning capabilities. I have an extensive background in finance, financial systems, and sales operation functions with Fortune 100 companies over the past 20 years. Currently, I’m the Anaplan Implementation Manager leading the Connected Planning platform build at GCP. I enjoy Anaplan model building by utilizing my functional and project management experiences. I want to be part of the cutting edge of the digital transformation wave."
A big thank you to the Anaplan customers involved in this post. Do you have something to add to the conversation? Join the discussion in the comments below and share how you are using Anaplan right now or why you chose the planning field.
Interested in being featured in the next Community roundtable post? Drop us a line at community@anaplan.com and let us know what’s on your mind.
More Community Roundtables
- Community Roundtable: Monthly Budget
- Community Roundtable: State of Connected Planning, Part 1
- Community Roundtable: State of Connected Planning, Part 2
- International Women’s Day Roundtable: Career Advice from The Women of Anaplan