PlanIQ is a powerful engine embedded in Anaplan that enables business users to run time-series forecasting without requiring them to be skilled in data science or advanced statistics.

The input of PlanIQ forecasting models is data from different sources (like historical trends, third-party data, market signals, and weather patterns).

Today, customers bring their own data to Anaplan and can ingest the data from Anaplan to PlanIQ, and PlanIQ leverages the Amazon Forecast engine alongside Anaplan's augmented capabilities to run the forecasting to a defined target.

We are researching how to empower our end-users to leverage the external data capabilities in PlanIQ without going through multiple steps from building data integration to data preparation.

Why External Data?

The best way to look at the benefits of the external data benefits is by focusing on the values for business outcomes and how the combination of external factors and internal data can give users even more power to control their planning and reduce risks.

While external data benefits can be different for each business line, there are a few key benefits and examples.

1. Actionable insights

Most companies consider only internal data to understand what will happen in the future, although external factors significantly influence business performance. With the aim of external data, businesses can be one step ahead.

Example

OPEX Forecasting: Finance planners and analysts can reduce their operating expenses by gaining actionable insights about external drivers, correlations with their internal data, and quick planning.

2. Improve the accuracy

Reliable external data can positively impact the result of the forecast and potentially improve forecast accuracy.

Example

Supply chain planners can boost the accuracy of their demand forecasting and identify what external/internal factors can significantly impact the revenue and demand projection by leveraging Plan IQ and external data sources.

3. Spend less time on data preparation and data integration

Data preparation still dominates data scientists' and business users' time. According to a Forbes article published recently, "Data preparation accounts for about 80% of data scientists' work". PlanIQ already allows some data preparation out of the box and we plan to expand those capabilities even further.

Please reach out to @AllenM - allen.mohammadi@anaplan.com (Sr. Product Manager AI/ML and Data) if you would like to further discuss external data capabilities within PlanIQ or if you want to join our Early Access Proof of Concept Program.