integrated business planning anaplan

Anaplan transforms the way you see, plan, and run your business so you can move forward with confidence in a complex and changing world

The future of integrated business planning: Building supply chain resilience

Tom McDonough , Director, Supply Chain Solution Marketing, Anaplan

Kiran Sandain , Sr. Director, SCM Solutions Product Management, Anaplan

Ray Curbelo , Sr. Director, Strategic Growth, Anaplan

Supply chain and procurement professionals have faced unprecedented volatility in recent years. We’ve learned a lot from our customers during this time of disruption, and in this session, Anaplan’s Supply Chain and Procurement domain leadership will share how those insights are driving platform innovations to help you future-proof your business. This session provides a preview of the entire Supply Chain track.

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The next mile in planning: do you know what (and who) it takes to get the work done, transformation is a journey – not a destination: the vision for modern finance, the future of building business resilience: make confident finance and workforce decisions, the rise of the agile finance organization: how a leading financial services company pivots and responds to changing market conditions, anaplan live 2023, join us in beautiful san diego june 5-7, 2023, mark your calendar now for our annual anaplan customer experience sign up today to receive more details and special offers..

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Transform your business performance management with PwC via integrated Anaplan solutions

Leveraging The New Equation

As a global collaborator of Anaplan, we bring transformational knowledge and the power of enterprise business planning to our clients.

With Anaplan we connect your people, plans and data. Our multidisciplinary advisory team with knowledge in customer, finance, workforce and operational transformation, brings a thorough and integrated approach to your business performance management. By considering both business and technical aspects, our team can help to improve the dynamic, collaborative and intelligent nature of your business performance management experience.

What does connected insights and performance management mean in today’s business landscape?

With Anaplan, PwC can help enable your organization to run virtually any performance management and insight generation process by connecting data, people and plans in every part of a business.

“We view the collaboration with PwC as an opportunity to help deliver business value to our customers. By teaming with PwC, we’re setting the stage for these organizations to achieve transformative value. We’re confident that with its strategy and digital knowledge in helping deliver valuable and high impact solutions, PwC will deliver successful outcomes for our customers.” Carla Moradi, SVP GPAO, Anaplan

Find the solution that best suits your business needs

Explore our solutions that help you solve your most pressing business challenges and further increase the capabilities of your existing Anaplan implementation.

Customer transformation

Finance transformation, workforce transformation, operations transformation.

Account segmentation and capacity planning

Reimagination of industry leading segmentation process by (1) leveraging historical data to make informed decisions to standardize and balance segmentation selections globally, (2) building workflows that span countries, geographies, regional and worldwide teams, and (3) increasing business intelligence by synchronizing data between all process areas and creating persona based KPI dashboards to inform strategic planning decisions.

Territory and quota planning and management (TQM)

Best in class territory and quota management by (1) building advanced territory model applications to create balanced territories that inform sales planning decisions, (2) automating translation rules from Finance to Sales to initiate the quota deployment process, and (3) using system-assisted quota deployment across all levels of a sales hierarchy to reduce the number of adjustments planners need to make each cycle.

Streamlined incentive compensation management (ICM)

Industry leading ICM by covering key capabilities ranging from payee administration, plan design and release, source data transformation and loading, sales crediting / commission calculations, payroll and downstream reporting / analytics.

Pre deal and post deal analytics

Integrated process to help commercial and analytics teams assess deals by leveraging advanced analytics and modeling to create a 360-degree view of the customer and deal and monitor contract performance on-demand to help identify under-performing accounts and intervene during the contract before its too late to course correct.

Enterprise integrated business planning

Cross-functional, cross-disciplinary enterprise performance management that enables agile and connected “Plan, Do, Check and Act”, across sales, marketing, supply chain operations, business units, R&D, infrastructure, HR and other back office functions, through shared drivers and smart insights integration, delivering financial results, speed and efficiency.

Integration with advanced finance analytics

Take advantage of the best of both worlds, where a hyperscale cloud computing platform of your choice is integrated into Anaplan to further expand data transformation, AI/ML forecasting, scenario analysis, natural language processing and generation, insights visualization, and storage.

Savings tracking analytics reporting tool

Integrated enterprise-wide cost savings initiatives set-up, tracking, monitoring, benchmarking (PwC Benchmark and Saratoga), analytics and reporting that helps drive visibility and accountability and also links savings plans, forecasts and results into business-as-usual annual, quarterly and monthly enterprise performance management cycles, in order to support enterprise wide cost transformation initiatives such as Fit for Growth .

Gross-to-net top line modeling, analytics and forecasting solution

Plug, tailor and play solution that harmonizes, enhances and integrates gross-to-net processes from forecasting and advanced pricing to revenue recognition and financial close, increasing insights through real-time calculations and scenario modeling, enhancing accuracy through advanced modeling (AI/ML, statistical models) and accelerating close and process speed through automation and data integration.

Enterprise wide environmental, social and governance (ESG)

End-to-end collaborative planning, tracking and reporting solution that helps establish greenhouse gas and emission targets, links internal and external data sources, accumulates environmental impacts from operations, tracks results to targets and objectives, generates insights and actions based on scenario modeling and facilitates compliance reporting.

Value added strategic workforce planning

Aligning an organization's business strategy with its workforce strategy, considering both short-term and long-term business goals and the underlying workforce and talent implications. Assess existing skills and capabilities, determine future skill and capability needs, evaluate gaps and develop plans to help address the gaps. Assess costs of build / buy / borrow investments, evaluate succession risks and mitigations, analyze workforce trends, model market scenarios and plan for changes proactively. Establish bi-directional integrations with HR systems and workflows to enable downstream processes.

Integrated headcount and labor cost planning

Enabling integrated views of budgets, headcount and labor costs trends and comparisons of period over period outputs. Perform real-time variance analysis across periods of actuals to forecast and annual budgets. Establish a single source of truth for financial and workforce data (e.g., salaries, location, function, role, level, cost center) that enables dimensionalized views across department, function, region, or other breakouts, while retaining centralized standards and governance. Establish bi-directional integration with HR systems and workflows to enable downstream processes.

Agile compensation planning

Set up bonus and incentive programs, create personalized compensation plans for individual employees, design and manage rewards structures, help facilitate annual year end comp planning processes, enable better compensation budget management. Model and simulate different compensation scenarios (e.g., overnight roll ups, market or workforce changes). Establish bi-directional integrations with HR systems and workflows to enable downstream processes.

Sales force effectiveness planning

Defining sales roles to enable alignment with customer segment requirements; finding the optimal way to deploy the sales force, helping confirm you have the right salespeople, with the right skills, in the right roles with our customized job architecture and career frameworks. We assess the most effective roles for current and potential talent, help set competitive pay levels and support that talent by identifying critical skills needed for success. We help design the KPIs and premium systems in line with strategic and financial targets and determine the right rewards to engage and motivate your sales force. Establish bi-directional integrations with HR systems and workflows to enable downstream processes.

Diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) planning

Assess current representation and historical trends of women and diverse populations, facilitate setting and tracking of diverse representation goals across various dimensions, assess impacts of location and workforce strategy on diverse representation and develop future projections of diverse representation for future scenarios. Establish bi-directional integrations with HR systems and workflows to enable downstream processes.

Enhanced demand planning and forecasting

Effective statistical algorithms and enriched predictions upon moment's notice with most up to date information whenever market volatility strikes. The business users benefit from the insights into both unconstrained forecast — indicating the market opportunity / base case sales scenario and also constrained forecast — which accounts for the bottlenecks and limitations of organizations' supply chain.

Dynamic supply planning

Dynamic supply planning solutions facilitate agile point in time decision-making by providing E2E visibility and real time insights into the supply chain. The organization can plan their production, capacity and sourcing activities dynamically, root cause any potential execution issues and perform what-if analysis to find the most effective resolution.

Inventory and supply network optimization and transformation

The platform is transformative in helping businesses meet global demand quickly and profitably. Advanced integrated solution algorithms take into account multiple variables and constraints in order to reduce inventory holding / transportation / production costs while improving customer service level.

Strategic and tactical sales and operations planning (S&OP)

S&OP solution facilitates the strategic and tactical levels of supply and demand planning by supporting the monthly integrated business management process. Integrated business planning helps the business leaders to focus on key supply chain drivers, analyze scenarios, translate them into financials and reach consensus integrated business plans across various functions.

Enhanced supplier collaboration

Enhanced collaboration between the businesses and their suppliers by sharing real- time information (lead times, material availability and pricing etc) and enabling joint planning and delivery activities. Some of the business benefits include increased process efficiency for sourcing and procurement teams, full spend visibility and savings from joint value creation.

PwC has worked with companies around the world on their business planning and enterprise performance management transformations via PwC differentiated, integrated Anaplan solutions.

Here are a few examples of how we’ve helped..

Global sales performance management solution

Challenges:

• General lack of central governance across geographies and business units, due to internal investments and acquisitions that were not integrated well
• Proliferation of disconnected offline tools, due to insufficient planning capabilities and process standardization
• Consistently late delivery of sales letters, due to lengthy sales planning processes and inefficiencies

Transformation:

Across segmentation, territory planning, sales force sizing, comp plan creation, account assignment and quota deployment, PwC led design and deployment of a holistic solution that entailed the following:

• Global standard process, across all geographies and business units
• Simplified compensation metrics structure, reducing metric library by 50% and setting the foundation for efficient automation
• User enabled and empowered territory planning, enabling balanced territory planning process, using account and market attributes
• Streamlined go-to-market and compensation driver framework, driving efficiency, while maintaining focus on strategic initiatives
• Linkage to finance, incentive compensation management system, and other critical systems further easing the upstream and downstream dependency bottlenecks
• A single central platform for all business units in target geographies, driving speed, transparency and end to end automation and reducing the annual sales planning cycle time by one full month
• Improved precision and accuracy through mitigated risk of human mistakes from enabling error trapping logic, improved data integrity by higher quality data feeds, and enhanced tactical coverage modeling using custom rule-based profiles
• Enhanced user experience by bringing peripheral users into tool that otherwise would be disconnected through manual processes and improved system performance by core platform reconstruction
• Precision in territory modeling and quota deployment against finance targets

Integrated performance management and enterprise business planning solution

• Manually intensive planning processes, due to disjointed systems and data
• Lack of confidence in providing external guidance, based on correct business driver assumptions
• Inability to drive business accountability into monthly results and monitor interim results for early warning signs and actions.
• Competitive market pressure on margin and consistent need to manage costs
• A new strategic direction to help enable product and business unit based segment reporting

Across finance, sales, supply chain operations, HR and R&D, the company and PwC designed and deployed a holistic enterprise performance management solution made up of Anaplan and other best of breed applications:

• Expanded ERP, consolidation and planning integration architecture, optimizing and automating data flow, granularity and frequency
• Dynamic, visualized, self-serve product based segment reporting, incorporating both historical and forward looking financial data
• Integration of S&OP, demand and other operational drivers into average sales price forecasting, P&L forecasting and cash liquidity forecasting
• Workforce data lineage across R&D planning, headcount planning, operating expense planning
• Master data management solution, synchronizing financial master data across general ledger, financial consolidation and planning applications
• Constant currency reporting, for both historical and forward looking financials
• Harmonized corporate cost allocations, between historical and forward looking financials

A real time, dynamic, collaborative, cross functional enterprise performance management solution suite

• Timely visibility into financial results and insights at the right level of details, resulting in enhanced business accountability, driving the right business discussions and actions, and thereby improving business managers’ ability to proactively manage and deliver their quarterly earnings targets
• Reduced monthly financial close and planning cycle time

Enterprise transformation and cost savings management solution

• Lengthy, manually intensive efforts, just to gather basic data and report on the savings plans and results
• Recurring disputes and confusion on versions of cost baseline, savings plans and savings results; difficulties in tracking costs-to-achieve
• Inability to monitor savings leakages and determine the state of the overall cost reduction program, in order to make informed and prioritized decisions on savings initiative proposals

Across Transformation Management Office (“TMO”, made up of a number of cost savings workstreams), HR and finance, the company and PwC designed and deployed a savings setting, tracking, monitoring, analytics and reporting solution:

• Automated on-line review and workflow, for savings target and cost-to-achieve proposals
• Standardized TMO action plan templates, to capture detailed near term savings action plans and costs-to-achieve from the TMO initiative owners
• Recurring data integration and systematic mechanism, to assess detailed actions against the actual historical general ledger and HR data
• Single source of truth for aggregating the cost baseline, multi year quarterly savings plan, detail short-term action plans and actual savings results, and costs incurred, by TMO workstreams
• Workforce data review and validation processes to help establish consistent governance and standards of workforce data
• Human resources information system and applicant tracking system configuration to enable the capture of required workforce data elements in a systematic and standardized way
• Online, self-serve, dynamic reports, that accumulates longer term plan, short term actions, actual results and gaps, including drill down capabilities
• Data outputs for integration into annual, quarterly and monthly enterprise performance management cycle
• Fundamental shift in TMO discussion from data quality and reconciliation to savings process and addressing savings gaps
• Enhanced auditability for external disclosure and reporting
• Ability to make initial and revisit ROI based decisions on individual savings initiatives
• Reduced overhead for supporting E2E TMO value chain reporting processes
• Reduction in monthly TMO reporting cycle time

Gross to net forecasting and accrual management

• Lengthy, manually intensive efforts, just to gather basic data and create accruals and forecasts
• Extended close timelines with limited data and analytics capabilities, with limited transparency, to determine a reliable net sales number
• Inconsistent and manual controls supporting the end-to-end forecasting and accrual process

With finance, accounting, the controllership and technology, the company and PwC designed and deployed an accrual management solution:

• Automation of key datasets from multiple internal source datasets at a granular level to drive transparency
• Automation of outbound journal entry postings to ERP
• Recurring data integration and systematic mechanism, to assess source data against the actual historical general ledger
• Single source of truth, for developing accruals and true-ups across multiple channels as well as supporting mid-range and long-range forecasting
• Embedded controls to support SOX compliance within the solution
• Developed scenario based forecasting with flexibility to adjust and compare forecasts
• Embedded advanced forecasting techniques by leveraging statistical modeling throughout the forecast process
• Harmonized accrual models across multiple channels and therapeutic areas
• Online, self-serve, dynamic reports, that leverages transactional data and modeling results to provide real-time updates based on current period modeling and analytics
• Enhanced GTN process by providing greater transparency and insights into plan vs. actuals and other standardized reporting and analytics
• Increased data quality and integrity, including aligning on a set of controls to maintain traceability and SOX compliance
• Automated and integrated GTN solution across accruals and forecasting to support close acceleration
• Increased forecasting and accruals accuracy through improved data quality and integrated modeling
• Ability to model assumptions at enhanced level of granularity to help facilitate improved transparency and insights into plan vs. actual
• Increased time spent on analytics across the gross-to-net forecasting process
• Accelerated close timelines by reducing manual work and leveraging automation

Sales and operations planning (S&OP)

• Lack of digital capabilities to model strategic supply chain options and its financial outcomes which drive profitable growth
• Gap between strategy and operations due to lack of collaborative sales and operations planning solution to drive strategic modeling and reconciliation processes

Across sales and operations planning, the company and PwC designed and deployed a holistic business planning solution that entailed the following:

• Demand planning and bottom-up integration - defined statistical forecast at consumer and wholesaler level to improve forecast accuracy; incorporated business knowledge around stock-out, supplier cap, marketing, and performed what-if analysis on volumes to gauge multiple scenarios and its impact; calculated impact of out-of-stock and method to allocate volumes to customer groups
• Supply planning - performed replenishment planning based on calculated needs, automatic calculation of safety stock check and what-if simulation on inventory parameters; evaluated forecasted inventory level and inventory transfers between warehouses
• Supply chain integration - performed Logistics and Inventory budgeting for efficient operations planning; assessed the impact of supply shortages through simulations; identified slow moving/obsolete inventory
• Integrated S&OP planning and financial planning with strong system capability enabling financial impact driven decision making
• Optimized S&OP process like bottom-up demand review and financial reconciliation reviews
• Fully integrated business planning processes connected with financial planning
• Migration of SC planning from legacy planning solution to Anaplan and integration with bottom-up financial flow
• Development of integrated bottom-up planning platform in Anaplan

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Pricing & Sales Transformation, Partner, PwC US

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What Is Anaplan? Benefits, Use Cases, and Best Practices

Business units operating on their own separate islands put your entire enterprise behind the operational and strategic eight-ball. However, trying to unify all of those business units – each with distinct complexities and objectives – into cohesive plans and models can feel like herding a gang of feral felines. And that’s never fun.

That’s why an enterprise planning platform like Anaplan can be such a boon for your organization. And as you might’ve guessed, we’re big fans of Anaplan here at Embark, so we want to take a few minutes to walk you through the platform and what it has to offer organizations.

Anaplan Basics

For decades, finance, supply chain, sales, and HR teams managed their businesses in each of their own point solutions, creating organizational silos. At first, such a splintered approach made the familiarity of spreadsheets feel like a natural, obvious answer to unifying organizational planning needs and workflows. However, as teams always discover at one point or another, the static, rigid nature of spreadsheets ultimately made enterprise-wide modeling and collaboration virtually impossible.

Thus, in an environment where efficiency and collaboration are two of the biggest assets a business can possess, traditional solutions like spreadsheets breed a lack of cross-functional transparency across planning and business performance. And that, as you know, is a recipe for missed opportunities and strategic blunders if there ever was one, especially as business accelerates.

Introducing Anaplan

Thankfully, a new approach emerged to break down those silos and connect planning on an enterprise scale – Anaplan .

Anaplan is a cloud-based planning software platform built specifically for connected, adaptive, collaborative planning and performance management across the entire enterprise. It provides a robust modeling engine to bring financial planning, sales planning, supply chain planning, HR planning, and more into a single integrated platform. As a result, you get a connected planning honeycomb effect that integrates all of your business units, maximizing insight and transparency for better decision-making.

Therefore, rather than having distinct tools and innumerable spreadsheets scattered across operational badlands, Anaplan consolidates it all into a centralized hub for end-to-end planning and performance visibility. As a result, you’re left with fertile planning ground without the chronic disconnects between isolated planning processes that have plagued businesses in recent years.

Strategic Agility Through Connected Planning

The result is vastly improved speed, agility, and intelligence across the organization, giving leadership an unprecedented enterprise-wide view into how plans and performance tie together between business units. Now, strategic scenario modeling and forecasting can be far more insightful thanks to real-time analytics and reporting capabilities.

Ultimately, the Anaplan platform unlocks the enterprise agility required to navigate today's dynamic, hypercompetitive environment. By connecting previously isolated planning functions, it provides complete visibility into how all the pieces fit together so companies can finally sense and respond to market changes proactively rather than reactively. And, yes, it really is as game-changing as we just made it sound.

Anaplan's Key Features and Benefits

But enough of the high-level talk. Let’s take a closer look at exactly what Anaplan brings to the planning and modeling table.

Connected Planning Across Business Units

One of Anaplan's fundamental capabilities is connecting previously isolated planning activities across business units. Again, rather than finance, sales, HR, supply chain, and other groups planning in their own bubbles, Anaplan brings everything together into a single source of truth.

This drives unprecedented, enterprise-wide transparency into how plans and actual performance flow between business units. As a result, leadership can see directly how the many corporate pieces fit together between departments.

Specifically, Anaplan uses a flexible, customizable data model rather than rigid tables, allowing it to connect and model processes from across planning domains, letting it incorporate both financial and operational data to enable integrated business planning.

As a quick example, supply chain leaders can now understand how production plans integrate with sales performance, forecasts, and financial budgets, all in real time. Likewise, a CFO now has clear insight into how new HR programs and headcount changes feed into financial planning. Both of these nuanced examples, while extremely powerful, can easily get lost in the mix without the right tools to unlock those insights.

Anaplan Integration Capabilities

Further, Anaplan's robust integration framework helps a company establish seamless connections with various other systems and platforms, enhancing its functionality and data accuracy. For instance, the platform supports integration with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and other systems through APIs and ETL processes.

We won’t get deep into the technical weeds for now. However, we still want to emphasize how Anaplan provides robust and flexible integration options with existing systems. These integrations let business data flow either in real-time or in scheduled batches, ensuring all planning and analysis use the latest available data sets from the right data sources, eliminating the need for manual data imports.

Customizability and Extensibility

Anaplan's platform is also highly customizable and extensible to meet the unique needs of different organizations. It offers a model-building environment that allows users to design, build, and deploy custom planning and performance management applications.

The extensible architecture supports the development of custom apps, letting organizations extend the platform's capabilities to other areas of business. Moreover, the Anaplan App Hub provides a marketplace for pre-built apps and models that you can customize to suit specific organizational needs. 

Real-Time Planning and Reporting With Anaplan

As we’ve already mentioned a number of times, Anaplan also provides real-time planning, modeling, and reporting capabilities. So, as soon as you enter or update data in the system, outputs and reports reflect those changes immediately.

This ability drives rapid insights and scenario analysis based on real-time data. Teams can collaboratively model different versions of plans and forecasts, instantly seeing the enterprise-wide impacts. Moreover, the in-memory calculation engine enables large-scale models with hundreds of thousands of data elements, all updating on the fly.

In practice, this means sales teams can adjust quotas and forecasts and immediately view bottom-line profitability implications. The CFO can model different budget scenarios and quickly understand downstream effects. And since Anaplan offers out-of-the-box dashboards and reports, role-based insights and KPI monitoring are never a heavy lift

Enhanced Workflow and Collaboration in Anaplan

On the workflow front, the Anaplan platform also fosters collaboration across business units. Different teams can jointly update plans and forecasts in – you guessed it – real time and in a single system.

This ability aligns the organization around shared metrics and plans. Everyone works from a single source of truth rather than through disjointed processes and static handoffs. Built-in workflow and approvals enforce oversight and compliance without slowing planning cycles. Granular user access controls enable decentralizing planning to business users across the enterprise as needed.

For example, traditionally, sales would deliver a forecast to finance through email or in a spreadsheet. Now, FP&A teams can model joint assumptions collaboratively in Anaplan while the platform’s integration capabilities connect easily to complementary systems like ERPs and CRMs.

Anaplan's Security Features

To state the obvious, security is essential in today's hyper-connected business environment. That’s why Anaplan provides such robust security features, ensuring data privacy and compliance with regulatory requirements.

In fact, the platform employs industry-leading practices like encryption in transit and at rest, multi-factor authentication, and regular security audits. Additionally, Anaplan follows a stringent data governance framework and adheres to international security standards such as ISO 27001 , SOC 2 , and GDPR , ensuring a secure environment for business-critical data.

Auditability and Control Features of Anaplan

Anaplan also provides full auditability and control capabilities. Every input, change, and access to the system is logged and traceable. This supports compliance initiatives and provides an audit trail for how companies use and manipulate plans and data, also allowing for the granular control of user access and permissions. For instance, financial controllers can restrict certain users from adjusting forecasts or budgets without approval workflows. 

Anaplan's Compliance with Regulatory and Industry Standards

Expanding on the previous sections, Anaplan also features a strong focus on compliance with various regulatory and industry standards. The platform's built-in audit trails, role-based access control, and data encryption help companies adhere to compliance requirements across different regions and industries.

By maintaining compliance with relevant standards and requirements – Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), GDPR, and HIPAA, to name just a few – Anaplan ensures organizations remain compliant in their planning and performance management processes.

What Is Anaplan Used For? Use Cases and Applications

Now, let’s roll up our sleeves a bit more and take a look at the practical, everyday Anaplan use cases that probably prompted you to read these insights in the first place – connected planning at its finest.

Anaplan for Financial Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting

Financial planning and analysis is at the center of what the Anaplan platform is all about, providing a centralized solution to model and connect operations planning directly to FP&A.

Driver-based modeling builds budgets from the bottom-up based on metrics like sales headcount or production volume. What-if scenario modeling assesses the financial impact of different operational assumptions and plans. SImilarly, Anaplan enables continuous rolling forecasts rather than static annual budgeting to improve agility.

Further, built-in financial intelligence streamlines detailed planning activities and dynamic allocations. As such, machine learning improves forecast accuracy over time based on historical data. Dashboards provide real-time visibility into financial KPIs across the enterprise.

Anaplan for Sales Planning and Quota Modeling

Anaplan gives sales teams an automated platform for territory, account, and quota planning. Bottom-up forecast modeling starts with individual sales rep-level forecasts, which roll up into an integrated view.

Analysis and segmentation can model sales productivity, pipeline trends, product performance, and more. This provides insights so teams can optimize quotas, sales capacity, incentives, and other investments. And, of course, the direct integration with financial plans improves planning and budgeting.

Anaplan for Supply Chain Planning

Anaplan models the entire supply chain, including procurement, production, inventory, logistics, fulfillment, and more. Also, the platform’s demand forecasting integration aligns supply plans with sales, while scenario modeling optimizes supply plans based on financial impact analysis.

Continuing on the supply chain front, inventory optimization lets companies align stock levels, logistics, and fulfillment costs with expected demand, and constraints analysis identifies bottlenecks. As with the other use cases, actual costs flow into financial plans for total visibility and, thus, help both model and mitigate supply chain risks that would otherwise continue to flourish in the shadows.

Anaplan for Workforce Planning 

Anaplan lets HR teams model talent needs, costs, risks, and investments holistically. Workforce plans can project hiring needs, compensation costs, and talent gaps and, as always, integrate directly into financial plans for total cost visibility.

In addition, what-if workforce scenarios help HR optimize talent investments, mitigate risks, and improve agility. Ultimately, Anaplan provides a single platform to manage workforce planning across regions, business units, and functions. AI-driven insights enhance workforce planning over time. And that’s tough to put a price on in such a volatile labor market.

Anaplan for Modeling Various Operational Processes

Lastly, Anaplan connects and optimizes many other operational processes as well:

• Marketing campaign ROI analysis and budgeting
• R&D portfolio optimization and resource allocation
• New product demand modeling and launch planning
• IT investment planning and portfolio management
• Capital projects planning and ROI analysis

The bottom line is this – Anaplan helps you unleash your inner connected planning beast. The platform integrates all these processes so you can analyze downstream financial impact analysis for holistic planning and optimization. And that’s worth its weight in strategic gold.

Best Practices for Implementing Anaplan

Of course, even the best tools on the market still aren’t magic. It takes experience, expertise, and a whole lotta buy-in to make the most of an investment, Anaplan included. So, on that note, we also have some implementation tips to help you make the most of the platform.

Taking a Phased, Agile Approach

When implementing Anaplan, it’s best to take an iterative, phased approach rather than trying to deploy an extensive system all at once. Focus first on getting a minimum viable product (MVP) live, one that provides basic connected planning for a few key processes. You know – the proverbial low-hanging fruit for some quick but impactful wins.

This MVP approach allows organizations to realize immediate value while allowing time to optimize processes and data inputs. Such quick wins build momentum and free resources to incrementally expand the Anaplan model over subsequent phases. And remember, you’ll probably continue to identify use cases, so a walk-before-you-run approach will help you maximize your ROI.

Relying on Skilled Consultants

Anaplan’s own training and resources, while nothing to scoff at, might not be adequate to stand your team up and really get you up and running with connected planning. Thus, organizations benefit greatly by partnering with experts during the implementation phase, not to mention ongoing optimization.

Experienced Anaplan specialists ensure companies follow best practices from the start, streamlining deployment while transferring knowledge to internal teams. Similarly, this ongoing expertise also helps optimize and enhance the model after the initial launch.

Since most enterprises lack the internal expertise to truly optimize Anaplan – and most purpose-built technology solutions, for that matter – consultants fill this gap and then some. Well, assuming you choose the right specialists .

Improving Processes Alongside Technology

Anaplan implementations don’t take place in a vacuum. They’re most successful when a company invests equal focus on improving planning processes as well as leveraging the technology’s capabilities. Too often, teams focus just on configuring Anaplan without addressing underlying process constraints.

To ensure you start on the right foot, an Anaplan implementation should involve:

• Mapping out current business processes.
• Identifying disconnects between departments.
• Envisioning an optimized cross-functional planning methodology.

This approach makes certain the tool drives desired process improvements rather than automating a dysfunctional status quo. Ideally, Anaplan will drive process change and improvement, not just fancy technology, propelling a broader optimization initiative that focuses on people, processes, and technology in equal parts.

The biggest takeaway here – genuine transformation is a three-legged stool. If any of the legs – people, processes, or technology – are too short or insufficient, that stool isn’t going to stand.

Prioritizing Data Integrity

Finally, no planning tool can provide valuable insights without clean, accurate, and timely data inputs, even with the most advanced systems. Garbage in, garbage out . To that point, Anaplan relies on properly structured data from source systems, ideally integrated via APIs and ETL processes.

That makes data governance and management critical for Anaplan success, including:

• Establishing common data definitions across units
• Enforcing data entry standards
• Monitoring data quality
• Fixing issues at the source where possible
• Making master data management and data governance priorities

Embark, You, and the Power of Connected Planning

Anaplan brings an entirely new approach to enterprise planning. By connecting previously isolated planning processes across business units, companies can eliminate those age-old silos for the first time, gaining an unprecedented level of transparency into how all the pieces interlink.

From a broader perspective, the platform powers a transformation in planning and informed decision-making, driving agility and holistic insights with its real-time modeling and scenario analysis capabilities. The result – forward-looking business intelligence for better decision-making and, most importantly, superior results.

Sounds pretty great, right? Well, it is. So let us know when you’re ready to sit down with our Anaplan specialists to discover what this platform can do for your business. We promise it’ll be one of the best decisions you ever make for your organization.

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Anaplan Competitor Analysis

Before we get into the specifics of Anaplan, let’s understand competitor analysis. Competitor analysis is a strategic research method companies use to identify, evaluate, and understand their current and potential competitors within the market. It’s an essential business strategy component and instrumental in understanding the industry landscape.

The process usually involves the following steps:

• Identifying Key Competitors : The first step is to identify your competitors. These may be direct competitors (those who offer the same or similar products or services as you) or indirect competitors (those who provide different products or services but compete for the same consumer dollar).
• Analyzing Competitors’ Strategies and Objectives : Once competitors are identified, the next step is to understand their business strategies and objectives. This may involve analyzing their marketing materials, financial performance, customer reviews, or any public information available about the company.
• Assessing Competitors’ Strengths and Weaknesses : This step involves evaluating the identified competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Strengths include unique products or services, strong brand recognition, and superior customer service. Weaknesses include poor product quality, weak customer service, or high prices.
• Understanding Competitors’ Products/Services : Understanding what your competitors offer and how your products or services compare is essential. This could involve examining features, quality, pricing, customer service, and marketing strategies.
• Observing Competitors’ Reaction Patterns : Some companies react more aggressively than others when faced with competition. Understanding these patterns lets you predict how these companies might respond to your business strategies.
• Drawing Conclusions and Formulating Strategy : The final step is to take all the information gathered from the analysis, draw meaningful conclusions, and use those to formulate or adjust your business strategies.

The main goal of a competitor analysis is to understand the competitive landscape, spot opportunities and threats, and position your company most advantageously. It helps to inform strategic decisions, from product development to marketing and sales efforts. 

Anaplan business overview

Anaplan is a cloud-based planning and performance management platform designed to connect data, people, and plans across business functions. Founded in 2006, Anaplan aims to empower organizations to make dynamic and collaborative planning decisions quickly and to adapt to changing business conditions with agility. Here’s an overview of Anaplan’s business:

Core Offerings:

• Connected Planning:  Anaplan’s platform enables integrated business planning across various departments, including finance, sales, supply chain, HR, and operations, facilitating real-time collaboration and decision-making.
• Scenario Modeling:  The platform allows businesses to create and compare multiple what-if scenarios, helping leaders make informed decisions amidst uncertainty.
• Data Integration:  Anaplan ensures seamless data integration from various sources, enabling a unified view of business information for comprehensive planning and analysis.

Key Features:

• Flexible Modeling:  Anaplan’s hyperblock technology allows users to build complex models with multidimensional planning and forecasting capabilities without traditional programming.
• User-Friendly Interface:  The platform is designed to be accessible to business users without extensive technical expertise, promoting broader adoption within organizations.
• Real-Time Updates:  Changes made in one part of the plan are instantly reflected across all connected plans, ensuring consistency and accuracy in data and forecasts.

Target Market:

• Enterprise and Midsize Businesses:  Anaplan targets various industries, including finance, retail, manufacturing, technology, and more, appealing to large and midsize businesses seeking sophisticated planning solutions.
• Cross-Functional Teams:  The platform is designed for various functional teams, such as finance, sales, HR, and supply chain management, facilitating cross-functional collaboration and planning.

Competitive Advantage:

• Anaplan’s primary competitive advantage lies in its connected planning approach, which breaks down siloes within organizations, allowing for more integrated and collaborative planning processes. Its cloud-based nature ensures scalability, flexibility, and accessibility, which are critical for dynamic business environments.

Growth and Expansion:

• Anaplan has grown significantly since its inception, expanding its global footprint and continuously enhancing its platform with new features and capabilities to meet evolving business needs. The company’s commitment to innovation and customer success has helped it build a strong reputation in the enterprise planning space.

Overall, Anaplan’s platform is designed to provide businesses the agility to plan, execute, and analyze in a fast-paced and complex business environment. This makes it a valuable tool for organizations looking to enhance their strategic planning and performance management capabilities.

Now, let’s do a competitor analysis of Anaplan.

Here is the competitor analysis of Anaplan

Anaplan is a cloud-based planning and performance management platform specializing in various business functions, including finance, sales, supply chain, and HR. It faces competition from several companies offering similar or overlapping capabilities. Key competitors include:

Oracle competes with Anaplan in the enterprise planning and performance management space by leveraging its extensive suite of applications, deep integration capabilities, and strong foothold in the enterprise software market. Here’s how Oracle positions itself against Anaplan:

Comprehensive Suite of Solutions:

• Broad Product Portfolio:  Oracle offers a wide range of enterprise software solutions, including Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Cloud, Oracle ERP Cloud, and Oracle Analytics, providing an integrated ecosystem of applications. This broad suite allows for deep integration across business processes, which can be a significant advantage for organizations looking for a comprehensive solution from a single vendor.

Deep Enterprise Integration:

• Integration with Oracle Systems:  For organizations already using Oracle applications such as Oracle ERP, Oracle SCM, or Oracle HCM, Oracle’s EPM solutions offer seamless integration, ensuring consistency and efficiency across all systems. This deep integration can be a key differentiator for businesses heavily invested in the Oracle ecosystem.

Advanced Analytics and Reporting:

• Robust Analytics and Reporting:  Oracle’s solutions are known for their powerful analytics, reporting, and business intelligence capabilities integrated across the Oracle Cloud platform. This can provide organizations with advanced insights and decision-making tools, enhancing the strategic value of their planning processes.

Global Scale and Reliability:

• Enterprise Scale and Support:  Oracle has a long-standing reputation for supporting large-scale enterprise operations, offering robust security, reliability, and global support. This makes Oracle a trusted partner for large organizations with complex planning and performance management needs.

Industry-Specific Solutions:

• Vertical Market Solutions:  Oracle offers solutions tailored to specific industries, leveraging its extensive experience across sectors to provide more relevant and effective planning tools. This industry specialization can be particularly appealing to organizations with unique sector-specific requirements.

Technology and Infrastructure:

• Strong Cloud Infrastructure:  Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) leverages its own cloud Infrastructure to offer high performance, security, and reliability for its cloud applications, including EPM solutions. This infrastructure can be a significant advantage for organizations looking for enterprise-grade cloud services.

Investment in Innovation:

• Continuous Innovation:  Oracle invests heavily in research and development, continuously adding new features, capabilities, and technologies (like AI and machine learning) to its platforms. This commitment to innovation can assure customers of a forward-looking approach to their planning and performance management needs.

By focusing on these areas, Oracle positions itself as a competitive option against Anaplan, particularly for large enterprises or organizations deeply embedded in the Oracle ecosystem looking for a comprehensive suite of integrated applications. Oracle’s emphasis on deep enterprise integration, advanced analytics, and industry-specific solutions make it a compelling choice for many businesses.

SAP competes with Anaplan in the enterprise planning and performance management space by leveraging its extensive experience in enterprise resource planning (ERP) and its comprehensive suite of business applications. Here’s how SAP positions itself against Anaplan:

Extensive Enterprise Resource Planning Experience:

• Integrated ERP Solutions:  SAP’s strong foundation in ERP solutions provides a holistic approach to business planning and execution, allowing for seamless integration of planning processes with core business operations. This deep integration is beneficial for organizations looking for comprehensive solutions that cover not just planning but also execution.

Comprehensive Suite of Applications:

• SAP S/4HANA and SAP Analytics Cloud:  SAP offers many applications, including SAP S/4HANA for ERP and SAP Analytics Cloud for planning, analytics, and business intelligence. These solutions work together to provide a unified business planning and analysis platform, offering capabilities that compete directly with Anaplan’s planning and performance management features.

Advanced Analytics and Business Intelligence:

• Business Intelligence and Analytics:  SAP’s strong emphasis on analytics and business intelligence, particularly through SAP Analytics Cloud, provides organizations with advanced tools for data analysis, predictive analytics, and decision-making support, enhancing the strategic planning process.
• Vertical Expertise:  SAP has a long history of developing industry-specific solutions tailored to the unique needs of various sectors. This expertise allows SAP to offer planning and performance management solutions that are closely aligned with different industries’ specific challenges and requirements.

Global Presence and Scalability:

• Scalability and Global Support:  With a significant global presence and a large customer base, SAP offers scalable solutions that can support the needs of large multinational corporations and small and medium-sized enterprises. SAP’s extensive partner network and global support infrastructure provide additional implementation and ongoing support resources.

Integration Capabilities:

• Seamless Data Integration:  SAP’s solutions are designed for deep integration with SAP and non-SAP systems, facilitating smooth data flow across different business functions and applications. This integration capability is crucial for organizations that rely on diverse IT landscapes.

Commitment to Innovation:

• Investment in New Technologies:  SAP continuously invests in new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT), to enhance its planning and performance management solutions. This focus on innovation ensures that SAP’s offerings remain competitive and aligned with emerging business trends.

By leveraging these strengths, SAP provides a competitive alternative to Anaplan, particularly for organizations that value integrated ERP solutions, advanced analytics capabilities, and industry-specific expertise. SAP’s comprehensive application suite and commitment to innovation make it a strong contender in the enterprise planning and performance management space.

IBM competes with Anaplan in enterprise performance management (EPM) and planning by leveraging its extensive technology portfolio, deep data analytics and artificial intelligence expertise, and long-standing reputation in the enterprise software market. Here’s how IBM positions itself against Anaplan:

Advanced Analytics and AI Integration:

• Cognitive Capabilities:  IBM infuses its planning solutions, particularly IBM Planning Analytics, with advanced analytics and AI capabilities, leveraging its Watson technology. This integration enables sophisticated data analysis, predictive insights, and decision support, offering a level of intelligence that can enhance the planning process.
• Data-Driven Insights:  IBM’s strong emphasis on data analytics allows businesses to leverage vast amounts of data for more informed planning and decision-making. This particularly appeals to organizations looking to integrate their planning processes with deep analytical insights.

Comprehensive Planning Solutions:

• IBM Planning Analytics:  This solution offers robust planning, budgeting, forecasting, and analysis capabilities across various business functions, including finance, sales, operations, and HR. Its flexibility and scalability make it suitable for both large enterprises and mid-sized businesses.
• Versatile Modeling:  IBM Planning Analytics, powered by TM1, is known for its multidimensional modeling capabilities, allowing enterprises to build complex models that can reflect the nuances of their operations and financial structures. This versatility can be particularly valuable for organizations with intricate planning needs.

Integration with IBM Ecosystem:

• Ecosystem Synergy:  Businesses already invested in IBM’s ecosystem, including its cloud services, data management, and security solutions, may find added value in choosing IBM Planning Analytics due to potential synergies and easier integration with existing IBM technologies.

Global Presence and Industry Expertise:

• Industry-Specific Solutions:  IBM has a long history of providing industry-specific solutions, leveraging its global presence and expertise across sectors. This experience allows IBM to offer tailored planning solutions that meet different industries’ unique challenges and requirements.
• Strong Support and Consulting Services:  IBM’s global reach provides comprehensive support and consulting services, ensuring customers can access expert advice and assistance in implementing and optimizing their planning solutions.
• Continuous Innovation:  IBM is committed to constant innovation, regularly updating its offerings with the latest technologies and capabilities. This ensures that its planning solutions remain competitive and aligned with current and future business needs.

By focusing on these areas, IBM provides a compelling alternative to Anaplan for organizations that value deep analytics and AI capabilities, comprehensive and versatile planning solutions, and the backing of a global technology leader with extensive industry expertise. In particular, IBM’s Planning Analytics platform stands out for its powerful modeling, analytics, and AI integration, making it suitable for complex and data-driven planning processes.

Workday competes with Anaplan in the enterprise planning and performance management space by leveraging its unified finance and HR cloud platform, advanced analytics, and machine learning capabilities. Here’s how Workday positions itself against Anaplan:

Unified Cloud Platform:

• Integrated Finance and HR Systems:  Workday offers a comprehensive suite of applications that include financial management, human capital management (HCM), and planning, all on a single cloud platform. This unified approach allows for seamless data flow and collaboration between finance, HR, and planning functions, benefiting organizations looking to integrate these areas closely.

User-Friendly and Collaborative Planning:

• Workday Adaptive Planning:  This solution provides cloud-based business planning and modeling tools that enable organizations to plan, forecast, budget, and report on their financial and workforce performance. Its intuitive interface and collaborative features make it accessible to many users, not just financial analysts or IT professionals.

Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning:

• Data Analysis and Insights:  Workday incorporates advanced analytics and machine learning into its platform, offering predictive insights and scenario planning capabilities. These features help organizations to make more informed decisions by analyzing historical data and forecasting future outcomes.

Seamless Integration:

• Integration with Workday Applications:  For customers already using Workday’s finance or HCM solutions, integrating with Workday Adaptive Planning can provide added efficiencies and a more cohesive user experience. Workday also offers integration capabilities with external systems to ensure data consistency across the organization.

Focus on Medium to Large Enterprises:

• Target Market:  Workday primarily targets medium to large enterprises, including many Fortune 500 companies. Its solutions are designed to scale with the needs of large organizations, providing the robustness and security required by these businesses.
• Vertical Market Expertise:  Workday offers solutions tailored to specific industries, providing best practices and functionalities that address the unique challenges of sectors such as healthcare, education, financial services, and more.

Continuous Innovation and Customer Service:

• Innovation and Customer Support:  Workday is known for its commitment to innovation and customer service. The company regularly updates its platform with new features and capabilities and provides vital customer support to ensure the success of its clients.

By leveraging these strengths, Workday provides a competitive alternative to Anaplan, particularly for organizations looking for a comprehensive and unified platform that integrates planning with core financial and HR processes. Workday’s focus on usability, collaboration, and integrated analytics makes it a strong contender in the enterprise planning and performance management market.

Microsoft competes with Anaplan in the enterprise planning and performance management space primarily through its Power Platform, which includes Power BI for analytics, the integration capabilities of Microsoft Azure, and the extensive use of Microsoft Excel as a planning tool. Here’s how Microsoft positions itself against Anaplan:

Comprehensive Data Analytics and Business Intelligence:

• Power BI:  Microsoft Power BI is a powerful analytics and business intelligence platform that enables organizations to visualize data, share insights, and make informed decisions. Its deep integration with other Microsoft products enhances its planning and performance management utility.
• Advanced Analytics:  With Azure Machine Learning and AI capabilities, Microsoft offers advanced analytics that can complement planning processes, providing predictive insights and data-driven decision support.

Seamless Integration with Microsoft Ecosystem:

• Office 365 and Dynamics 365 Integration:  Microsoft’s solutions are tightly integrated with its Office 365 suite, including Excel, which is widely used for financial modeling and planning. Dynamics 365 also offers ERP and CRM solutions integrating with Power BI for comprehensive planning and performance management.
• Azure Integration Services:  Microsoft Azure provides a set of cloud services for application integration, data integration, and workflow automation, facilitating the creation of integrated planning solutions that can scale across the enterprise.

Familiarity and Accessibility:

• Excel:  Excel’s widespread use and familiarity among finance professionals make it a go-to tool for planning and analysis. Microsoft has enhanced Excel with new features like Power Query and Power Pivot, extending its capabilities for more sophisticated planning and analysis.
• Accessibility and User Adoption:  The ubiquity of Microsoft products in enterprises and the familiarity of the Microsoft interface can lead to higher user adoption rates and reduced training requirements.

Scalability and Security:

• Azure’s Global Infrastructure:  Leveraging Azure, Microsoft offers scalable and secure cloud services that support deploying enterprise planning solutions, ensuring data security and compliance with global standards.
• Enterprise Focus:  Microsoft’s solutions are designed to meet the needs of large enterprises, offering the reliability, security, and support required by these organizations.

Flexibility and Customization:

• Custom Solutions with Power Platform:  The Power Platform, including Power Apps and Power Automate, enables businesses to build custom applications and workflows tailored to their specific planning and performance management needs, offering flexibility that packaged solutions may not provide.

By leveraging these areas, Microsoft provides a competitive set of tools and platforms that can be used for enterprise planning and performance management, particularly appealing to organizations already deeply embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem or those looking for a solution that integrates closely with familiar tools like Excel and Power BI.

Check out the competitor analysis of global businesses

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Integrated Planning Across the Automotive Value Chain

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Anaplan-Deloitte solutions for planning across the automotive value chain

Deloitte’s Integrated Planning solutions enable automotive organizations to manage disconnected finance, supply chain and commercial planning processes. Leveraging Anaplan’s AI-supported platform, Deloitte aligns disconnected planning processes to accelerate transformation across the automotive value chain and provide a single source of truth to finance and business stakeholders. Our team delivers process optimization, agile methodology, and technology expertise, enabling business to make informed decisions in fast-changing circumstances, plan for uncertainty and quickly pivot to maximize market advantages and commercial opportunities.

Business Solutions for the Automotive Value Chain

Changing consumer preference due to new mobility solutions. Supply chain disruption. Technology advancements. New EV manufacturers and other market entrants. All of these factors (and more) are transforming how business stakeholders across the automotive value chain drive revenue, boost margins, manage their workforce and respond to regulatory requirements. To set the foundation for sustainable success, OEMs, suppliers, dealers and aftermarket companies must shift the way they think, plan and act.

However, many processes rely on siloed technologies and offline Excel models, leading to data inconsistency, a lack of transparency and misalignment across planning cycles. Deloitte helps automotive organizations to integrate planning and forecasting across the enterprise – from finance, supply chain, product development, operations and commercial – to ensure long-term technology roadmaps, engineering platforms, supply chains and business strategies are aligned with corporate resources and customer demand.

Solution features

Integrated Planning extends outside a single organization to connect OEMs, suppliers and dealers across the value chain.

• Integrated view across value chain
• Business-owned, scalable solution
• Trusted partnership since first project
• Simplified commercial construct

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April 11, 2023

Why Indonesia is Asia’s bright spot in a time of global uncertainty

Indonesia is one of the largest economies in the APAC region and has faced numerous challenges in recent years, from the Covid-19 pandemic to geopolitical tensions and rising inflation. However, despite the turbulent times, the country has demonstrated resilience and continued to grow. In fact, the Indonesian government has projected the national economic growth in 2023 to be 5.3% which is higher than the global economy’s outlook that is projected to grow by 1.7% in 2023 and 2.7% in 2024. 

There are various factors that have contributed to Indonesia’s resilience. Its large population, abundant natural resources, favorable demographic trends, and diversified economy with significant contributions from agriculture, manufacturing, and services sectors, have helped to provide a source of income and support for the economy. Furthermore, the government has also made significant investments in infrastructure from building toll roads to airports and ports, which has helped to improve the country’s competitiveness.

Digital transformation as a strategic imperative

The positive outlook has in many ways driven organizations in Indonesia to transform the way they operate. From a business perspective, we are now seeing organizations in Indonesia ramping up their digital transformation journeys to remain competitive, improve efficiency and respond to changing market demands and technological advancements.

Going beyond post-pandemic recovery, businesses today see digital transformation as a strategic imperative. The majority are looking at investing in technology that can transform their business to be more agile so that they can ride the wave of opportunities that the rising economy has to offer. To do so, businesses must be able to first recognize what is coming their way and ensure that they are ready to take advantage of the opportunity as it comes through.

Case in point, Alfamart . As Indonesia’s leading convenience store chain, the company understands that modern enterprises need versatile planning, forecasting, and modeling capabilities that span processes no matter where they sit in the organization. This simply wasn’t possible with legacy systems, so Alfamart leveraged Anaplan solutions including financial planning and analysis, store planning, and sales forecasting, to run a complex, data-driven, and detailed planning ecosystem to manage its 17,000+ stores and 100,000+ staff from across the country.

By connecting data from across its organizational functions, Alfamart’s management has gained visibility into what’s happening, why it’s happening, and where the business is headed. These advanced insights have enabled Alfamart to run real-time reports and evaluate scenarios that drive better decisions and outcomes.

Similarly, other organizations that we have worked with including Kapal Api , Danareksa , Clipan, Pertamina, and Kementerian Badan Usaha Milik Negara (The Ministry of State-Owned Enterprise) have also invested in transforming their planning process so that they can better respond to today’s dynamic market conditions, accelerate processes and drive greater value.

Changing the mindset to supercharge transformation

As organizations today look to supercharge their digital transformation journeys, it’s important to always start with the mindset first. In my conversations with prospects and customers, for example, there is still a reluctance to adopt technology because of the misconception that it will take over our jobs. While it’s true that technology may automate some tasks, it is unlikely to completely replace the human skills that are valued in many industries, such as creativity, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence. Technology also creates new opportunities in areas like software development, data analysis, cyber security, and others.

A change in mindset is necessary to embrace and successfully implement new digital technologies and processes, and this includes having clear communication and education about the benefits of digital transformation. Beyond that, investing in digital skills development is also equally important. We all know that the demand for tech talent has been growing rapidly, outpacing the supply of qualified professionals, especially in specific technical roles. With the shortage of tech talent, organizations need to continuously upskill their workforce to ensure that they have the skills and knowledge necessary to perform their jobs in a digital-first environment.  

While 2023 is expected to be a year of global instability and uncertainty, the future is bright for organizations in Indonesia, especially those that can take advantage of the opportunities that the country presents. As the business planning and decision-making platform leader, Anaplan is committed to helping organizations in Indonesia to grow amidst uncertainty by streamlining their operations and improving integrated planning across departments. If there is one thing that the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us is the importance of being able to access accurate information in order to change course quickly, and this can only be done when an organization’s data, people, and plans are connected.