Anaplan: Accelerate Decision Making with Connected Planning

Organizations these days are constantly on the lookout for solutions that would help them bridge the gap between the data collection and the decision-making process. This is where ERPs come in. While on-premise ERPs are still in use, SaaS ERPs are way forward. The only difference being that they can be accessed anywhere and anytime because of their presence in a cloud infrastructure. They are available at lower costs; enforce greater control, are much more accessible, and easy to set up. It’s only a matter of time that on-premise ERPs are rendered obsolete. The SaaS software is helping organizations of varied sizes achieve their desired goals by helping them in making better business decisions with changing market scenarios. Anaplan is one such provider who enables collaborative decision-making to drive the business performance across many organizations.

Anaplan had humble beginnings. Founded in 2006 by Michael Gould working out of York, England the company was set up to solve the issues pertaining to planning tools, collaboration problems, distributed data sources, inflexible modeling, and calculations. Its patented technology is built to be flexible and endlessly scalable. Their cloud platform is designed to connect data, people, and plans.

They put the power back in the hands of customers by doing this simple trick. With what they call “connected planning”, they are redefining the ways in which decision making happens in modern times. They cater to the company’s requirement of financial planning, budgeting analysis, demand and supply chain planning; sales compensation and territory management; and other enterprise-wide planning needs.

When it comes to resource planning, there is an endless loop that needs to be followed to sew together different processes. ERP is a necessity to make this happen fast. Corporate agility is something that Anaplan aims to provide by availing over 150 apps from their App Hub to their customers. The apps in the App Hub will help you with many processes including sales performance optimization, budgeting, forecasting and customer support operations. These apps are accessible through a browser on any device and let you organize your data by simple clicks. No coding knowledge is required!

The company emphasizes the need for connected planning in an age that still persists to stay with traditional planning. A detailed plan that is not continuously monitored is at risk, as change is something that always happens in the market. Hence, there is a need for connected planning in such a situation.  All the processes of sales, supply chain, finance, and marketing are disparate processes but eventually, the success depends on all of them working collectively and efficiently. Anaplan is leading the way in this space through its cloud platform.

Today, Anaplan is taking a bite out of a market that is dominated by giants such as SAP, Salesforce, Workday, and Oracle. The company has seen exponential growth in this decade, collaborating with major companies like Deloitte and Accenture among many others. It has come a long way from the stone barn it operated out of in York, England with a splendid office now located in San Francisco. It has over 20 offices located all over the world with a thousand plus employees on its payroll and an ever-increasing number of customers. It now plans to hit the thousand mark –customer-wise, and it will soon!

A Leader Par Excellence

Frank Calderoni, CEO and President of Anaplan

Mr. Calderoni is a true veteran of the industry with over 30 years in experience in various leadership positions. He spent much of his career at IBM, where he spent 21 years.

At Red Hat Inc, he was the Executive Vice president of Operations and also the Chief Financial Officer from June 2015 to January 2017.

Also, he spent a big part of his professional career at Cisco. To start off, he was the Vice President of Worldwide Sales Finance from May 2004 to June 2007 at Cisco. He served as the Senior Vice President of Customer Solutions Finance from June 2007 to February 2008. Then, he served as the Executive Vice President and CFO at Cisco Systems Inc for seven years.

Mr. Calderoni joined Cisco in 2004 from QLogic where he was the SVP and CFO. Before that, he was the SVP of Finance and Administration and CFO for SanDisk Corporation. He presides on the boards of Adobe Systems Inc., and Palo Alto Networks Inc.

Testaments of excellence

• Anaplan was named as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for 2018 Corporate Planning and Analysis.
• Anaplan was ranked #144 in Deloitte Technology Fast 500 winner for its innovation in technology, entrepreneurship, and growth.
• It was ranked #1 on Entrepreneur 360 list in 2017 and was lauded for its business growth, impact, and leadership.
• Forrester named Anaplan as a leader in the Forester Wave Enterprise performance management for Q4 in 2016

“Anaplan connects your people, plans, and data in every area of your business.”

“The Anaplan platform helps you be dynamic, collaborative and intelligent—just what you need to drive your business forward.”

“Our aim is to make the world better by connecting organizations and people so business leaders can make better-informed decisions.”