I recently joined Anaplan from one of its larger software customers. I was a 2-year veteran of the Anaplan software when I came on board, having led the implementation of Anaplan at the customer.
In the 2 years with my prior company, I worked with a highly productive, self-sufficient team. I helped champion the development of an unofficial Center of Excellence (COE) organization that served as the focal point for all things Anaplan. All model building, internal support, and process design was focused within our small COE team.
We did, however, hire a Partner to implement one of our (more technical) use cases. It was at a time when our team was over-subscribed, and the growing interest in Anaplan had bubbled over, requiring that we bring in additional help to deliver on the simultaneous use cases that were being implemented.
Enter: Anaplan Partner
We had not worked with a Partner before, and had never been in a situation where we were trusting someone else to build on our behalf. We were accustomed to using our internal COE team, and with several use cases under our belts, we knew how to work well together.
We expected working with another team was going to be a learning experience.
And it sure was.
These are the Lessons (We) Learned about Working with a Partner.