Anaplan Live! Spotlight: Effective Anaplan Demos

DennisL
edited January 2023 in Spotlight Series

In July's Anaplan Live! Spotlight event, we discussed an issue at the heart of achieving Connected Planning: internally presenting Anaplan to new audiences within your company! Watch the video below to see tips and tricks on how to effectively present Anaplan demos, a live demonstration, and an intriguing Q&A session between the presenters.

https://youtu.be/tK5BPNF9yWI

Spotlight presenters include: 

  • Jen ****, Solutions Consulting Manager (@jtwang54)
  • Yelena Keselman, Sr. Solutions Consultant (@yelena_keselman)
  • Chris Weiss, Anaplan Centers of Excellence Leader ( @ChrisWeiss)

If you are having trouble viewing this event on this page click here to watch it on our YouTube channel.

Have comments or questions for the presenters? Leave a comment below!

Comments

  • Really enjoyable session - and thanks for such a great answer to my question @jtwang54 and @yelena_keselman. 

    Great to have more of these short-form sessions that can be more routine and regular than Anaplan Live! or virtual User Groups.

    So true about rethinking about UX versus Classic and more about how to interact with the model.

    Love the robot print you've got on your wall @yelena_keselman !!

  • AMAZING job Jen & Yelena, just re-watched the video and picked up a few more nuggets of wisdom, feeling very lucky to be your co-worker!

    Here's the link to the other video I referenced at the end of the video, which provides a framework and whiteboard to use when talking about Connected Planning to other executives within your company (feel free to substitute "Chief Planning Officer" with the current Executive Sponsor of your Anaplan footprint).

    We hope you find all of these resource useful, feel free to let us know if there's something specific we can add to the discussion to assist you on your Connected Planning journey!

     

  • @jentwang @yelena_keselman and @ChrisWeiss

    Great discussion. Just watched it again and realized that this conversation led to how I prepare my presentations. Thank you - made a huge difference. Some additional things I learned along the way:

    • Reusability is important to me. I like to brand the demonstration with the customer's logo so I configured the images to be formula driven, meaning I can pick the logo by selecting from a dropdown and have it drive all the images.
    • For the introduction page, I went ahead and used Anaplan similarly to PowerPoint and put all the user stories on one page with the links that take me to the appropriate process. Image below
    • I design the application with "annualization" in mind. I don't like to have my forecast years in the past. The only drawback to this is that the import data has to be modified by advancing the year forward too.
    • Hardest part of the demo, candidly, is not the modeling or the design but rather the preparation of the data. Don't underestimate how long that will take.  Bottom up has to be close to the top down for reconciliation which can be difficult if you've narrowed the scope of the data set.

    Again, thank you for taking the time to prepare this video. I suspect this particular video will be relevant for years to come. Well done.

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