Talking Tech: Anaplan: What's Next for Your Enterprise?
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Let’s Talk Tech.
Accordion’s “Talking Tech” series explores how different CFO Technology solutions can empower finance functions to support organizational strategic initiatives – by implementing business process recommendations, optimizing operations, and capitalizing on value creation opportunities.
Now, let’s take a look at Anaplan in the context of connected planning & the honeycomb effect.
Has your enterprise gone live with Anaplan to solve for a single use case – a process formerly done manually in Excel, or a legacy on-premise point solution? Congratulations!
We truly believe that your journey is just getting started. The power of the Anaplan Platform is in the ability to enable true Connected Planning with real-time visibility and collaboration.
The Anaplan Honeycomb, pictured below, is a familiar way to visualize all of the possibilities of this platform.
Here are some specific ideas to enable world-class EPM at your organization.
Driver-Based Budgeting & Forecasting
Have you considered using business drivers in place of KPIs to model forecasting? Many businesses today find KPIs to be backward-looking and have found the inputs that really “drive” results, such as: the number and price of products, commodity prices, salespeople, and much more. The example above uses Rent as the driver.
Utilize Anaplan for a consultation on deciding what your drivers should be and putting the Anaplan Platform to work for you.
Examples of best practices include:
- Enabling collaboration across business lines, in real time
- Ability to link your plans to concrete business strategies
- Build predictive models using AI
Strategic / Initiative Planning
Businesses should have the ability to connect teams, and tactically plan initiatives with visibility into their forecasted movements. Strategy should be the starting point, and backbone, of all connected plans. Can you easily create and model multiple initiatives with a clear understanding of how each one impacts the bottom line? You can now!
We can help you use Anaplan to understand the forecasted financial impact of several multi-year scenarios with accuracy. You’ll gain the ability to create operational plans that flow into workforce plans, aligning both with strategic goals.
Financial Consolidations and Analytics
Yes, you heard correctly. Anaplan is not well-known for its ability to deliver a Consolidations solution – yet. We have applied decades of expertise in Consolidations to design a powerful solution within the Anaplan Platform. The real-time calculations you already know and love as an Anaplan customer can be used for: consolidations, inter-company eliminations, account reconciliations, journal entries, reporting (IFRS, GAAP), complex ownership structures, FX, and more!
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