CoE Connect - Newsletter January 2023

Welcome to the first edition of our monthly newsletter CoE Connect! 

CoE Connect is a monthly newsletter that aims to keep readers informed about developments and events within the Center of Excellence (CoE) Program. The newsletter will be shared on the 15th of every month and will provide updates on CoE-related news, inform about upcoming events, and spotlight CoE leaders and their Anaplan CoE journey. 

CoE Spotlight: Meet Mohamad Hadi, our CoE celebrity for January. As Sr. Manager - Sales Transformation Lead at Philips, Mohamad will share his journey to becoming a CoE lead, what he enjoys most about the role, and how he utilizes resources within the community. Learn more in the CoE Spotlight section of our newsletter.

Introduction – Mariam Azeez: I want to start off by introducing myself as your Principal Engagement Manager – Customer Center of Excellence. I am so excited to work with you and get to know you throughout this upcoming year! In my role, I will be working alongside our CoE leaders on their Connected Planning journey leveraging the learnings and skills I developed leading several large-scale global transformation initiatives at a fortune 500 Anaplan customer. 

• We are thrilled to unveil our revamped Community website, featuring an intuitive layout for easier navigation and access to information for our Centers of Excellence. Our subscription options have also been enhanced, allowing you to stay updated on specific content areas via the homepage, email, or notifications. Don't miss out — subscribe by clicking the bell icon within the categories in the CoE section.
• Join your peers in the CoE private forum to connect and collaborate with your fellow CoE leaders as they share their expertise, best practices, challenges faced, and lessons learned. Email me at mariam.azeez@anaplan.com to request access.
• In 2023, there will be continued peer-to-peer networking sessions where a small group of CoE leaders come together to share their learnings. If you are interested in joining these sessions, please let me know of your interest via email.

Q: Tell us about yourself and your current role?

Mohamad: I am Mohamad Hadi, currently working as Sr. Manager - Sales Transformation Lead at Philips. I am based in Atlanta.

Q: Share with us your career path within the Anaplan ecosystem from your first experiences to today.

Mohamad: Sure. I worked in Financial Planning at NCR Corporation for 5 years, leading Anaplan CoE, which enabled end-to-end Connected Planning Platform for global financial forecasting and annual planning. I am currently working at Philips in sales transformation, where I lead the transformation journey to enable efficiencies and eliminate silos across sales planning and sales incentives.

Q: As a CoE Leader, in your opinion, what are some of the benefits of having a CoE within an organization?

Mohamad: Having a CoE within an organization allows for greater ability for an organization to get the most value out of Anaplan. It enables efficiencies across an organization and opens opportunities to streamline processes in one connected platform.

Q: How has your journey been leading Anaplan CoE?

Mohamad: It has been rewarding. There have been stressful times and stressful projects, but when you are able to achieve and provide the value your stakeholders look for, over and over, it's exciting and rewarding for everyone on the CoE team.

Q: What are some of the most valuable skills you have learned along that journey?

Mohamad: I have learned that digital transformation is real with Anaplan. It's important to be agile and not to bite off more than you can chew. Iterative building, striving for MVP (not perfection!) and enabling continuous improvements through an agile journey in Anaplan are some of the most valuable skills I have learned.

Q: As a CoE Leader, what are some benefits to having that connection with Anaplan Business Partners and Customer Success?

Mohamad: Our customer success team has been outstanding; they've kept us up to date on the latest and greatest in the Anaplan World. They engage with us monthly and are key contacts to us when we want to explore leveraging new functionalities, resource needs/vendor partnerships, or even their help engaging us with the Customer Success Anaplan subject-matter experts to help with model optimization ideas.

Q: What are some of the resources within the Anaplan Community that you as a CoE leader see as being the most valuable?

Mohamad: The Community has been key to our teams' success and individuals' goals throughout the years. The learning resources available for our junior/upcoming Anaplan model builders and even seniors, have enabled them to learn and adopt the Anaplan Way and fast-tracked their ability to building complex use cases in our models. The Community platform discussions are also helpful when debugging an issue!

Q: In your opinion, what is the value of being an active member of the Anaplan Community/ecosystem?

Mohamad: Resourcefulness and broad network. We have learned more on what and how others are doing things and has opened the door for us to think outside of the box, learn new ways of building, take advantage of others lessons learned and explore new functionalities that others have adopted.

Q: What are some resources that you wish existed within the Anaplan Community?

Mohamad: I wish there were more opportunities for local engagement within the Anaplan community. When we first got introduced to the Anaplan world, the Community within the area/state was brought together every other quarter to events Anaplan organized. The events increased the level of engagement across companies/value streams which allowed us to establish partnerships with vendors and gave us ideas where else we could use Anaplan when sitting in on few company spotlight use cases. It's almost like a mini-Anaplan Live local!

Thank you, and Happy New Year!

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the newsletter and look forward to engaging and helping you achieve your Connected Planning vision. If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at mariam.azeez@anaplan.com.