Meet Certified Master Anaplanner Dmitry Sorokin

Meet Dmitry Sorokin — Certified Solution Architect, Certified Master Anaplanner, and Senior Model Engineer at lululemon in British Columbia. Dmitry focuses on supply chain planning, demand forecasting, allocation, and replenishment. He enjoys setting up best practices in model building to improve model performance and user experience, and collaborating with the data engineering team to improve the speed, reliability, and availability of the lululemon models.

We asked Dmitry to share with the Anaplan Community more about his background, the benefits of having a Certified Master Anaplanner in an organization, and the opportunities he’s had in his career.

Tune in to hear more about Dmitry’s thoughts on the Certified Master Anaplanner program and the benefits it has brought him. (Transcript also available below.)

If you have a story to share about your Anaplan journey, we would love to connect. Share in the comments below or contact us at CommunityContent@anaplan.com.

Transcript:

Interviewer: Tell us about yourself and your role.

Dmitry: My name is Dmitry and I help organizations to improve their decision-making by building models in Anaplan. For example, I currently work as a model engineer and I build revenue forecasting and expense forecasting models, as well as headcount planning models and inventory management models. As a part of my role, I occasionally have to interview developers who would like to join our team, and I especially like to work on improving performance on existing models.

Interviewer: Share with us your Certified Master Anaplanner journey.

Dmitry: My journey with Anaplan started when I was a part of the financial planning and analysis department, building reporting and revenue forecasting tools as well as a headcount planning model. Then I moved to the technology department of a retail company to help build the assortment planning and inventory management system using Anaplan.

Interviewer: What are some of the benefits of having Certified Master Anaplanners engaged in their organization?

Dmitry: Having a Certified Master Anaplanner to be engaged in the deployment and management of the platform will help to manage the complexities that some of the projects may come with. Anaplan can integrate with multiple data sources as well as downstream reporting tools which may have their own deployment schedule. And it's important to manage the effort and synchronize the activities around that.

Interviewer: How has the Certified Master Anaplanner Community impacted your Anaplan journey?

Dmitry: I believe that some of the important parts of the platform is the Anaplan Community, where developers or users of the Anaplan platform could ask their questions and receive potential solutions. For me, this part of the platform was very beneficial and it allowed me to learn so much from other people and other use cases where I wasn't engaged directly, but by going through their questions and answers, it helped me to build that skill and use it when I'm ready.

Interviewer: What are some opportunities being a Certified Master Anaplanner has brought you?

Dmitry: A few years ago, when I just learned about the platform and started developing on the platform, I asked myself, do I want to go through all the stages of the training? The path to getting certified requires extra learning… and that helps me to stay valuable within the team. Second, becoming certified allows you to stand out and showcase your understanding and knowledge of the platform.