Voice drives agility with Anaplan

Bjørn Unnerud, CFO “It’s made it possible for our business controlling team to respond to business needs when they arise compared to when we needed 2-3 days of work in Excel.” We had been looking for a new planning tool to replace the old system, that we had used for 15 years, which was not flexible and did not adapt to today’s requirements for speed.

We had received very good references about Anaplan from colleagues and others in the industry. The choice therefore fell on Anaplan because the platform fulfilled our requirements:

• Responsive and fast (calculations and uploads)
• Possibility of customisation (not modification), easy to adapt the business model and planning needs.
• The supplier’s innovation and strategic roadmap
• Opportunity to start small, come up with solutions quickly
• Competitive price and ongoing opportunity to scale licenses

We chose Bedford Consulting as their consultants are highly skilled on the Anaplan platform with broad experience from different industries and disciplines and good expertise in planning processes and are pleasant down to earth people.

The situation the world is in, has increased the need to quickly make changes and to see the potential effects of the operational decisions. We use Anaplan for scenario planning, and stress testing our plans and forecasts. This gives us valuable information that we use to create contingency plans for different potential outcomes.

Anaplan has made us very adaptable, given the flexibility, speed, and ability to simulate outcomes. It’s made it possible for our business controlling team to respond to business needs when they arise compared to when we needed 2-3 days of work in Excel.

Voice started with Anaplan for traditional Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A). We want to ensure that the company’s strategic targets are reflected in our sales and operational planning, balancing short and long-term goals. Additionally, we use it to balance supply and demand by sharing information throughout the organisation. Since we started our planning journey in 2017, we’ve increased agility and transparency by connecting people and plans.

The budget process now only takes a couple of weeks instead of up to five months. This is often something that finance departments want to achieve. To become more accurate, have a better plan management structure and more time to support the company and take the role as a business partner.

It’s definitely one of the best planning platforms out there in terms of versatility, linking the plans together in one system.