2021: A year in review

It has been a really special year for us in 2021, as we celebrate ten fantastic years of partnership with Anaplan, a journey we can all take pride in, and I am so thankful to be surrounded by such an amazing set of people who make Bedford the place it is today.

Our team

It has been an incredible year of growth at Bedford as we have onboarded 43 new team members across our European hubs. We have continued our steady growth in our foundational UKI hub, while doubling down in our DACH, Nordics & Benelux hubs. We have also welcomed our first colleagues to our Spanish hub as we continue to opportunistically explore some of the more emerging markets for Anaplan across Europe. Each region brings its unique and local opportunities, but it is critical that our essence, value and quality remain consistent across Europe and I am proud of the people we have surrounded ourselves with to deliver on our vision of One Bedford. Our reputation is built on the compounding effect of the consistency in our values over many years, our partnership, our humility, our quality, our innovation, our teamwork and our customer focus. These values remain at the heart of every decision we make as a business. Above all else, we are decent and respectful people, we look out for our colleagues, partners & customers.

A special mention to Gary Murphy, Head of Enablement & John Smith, Customer Success Director who both celebrated a decade at Bedford in 2021. Bedford would not be the place it is today without their commitment and character. They are rooted in our story, our success, our DNA and I am extremely fortunate to have role models like this to foster a strong, collaborative, and supportive environment throughout our organisation.

One of my personal goals for Bedford is to ensure it remains a safe and open environment for people to work, an environment where our people can feel supported, challenged, and enabled to develop in their careers. Bedford has given me more friendships than it has colleagues and for that I will be forever grateful, but it certainly commands our attention and focus in fostering this environment as we continue our growth across Europe.

Celebrating 10 years with Anaplan

In 2021, we celebrated our 10th year of partnership with Anaplan. During this time, we have had the privilege to serve over 270 amazing brands and met so many fantastic people who have helped us on our journey. We have lived out many incredible milestones together and we were delighted to celebrate these relationships with the launch of our new branding and website earlier this year, signalling the beginning of something truly special as we look to the next ten years of our partnership. We hope you enjoyed it!

It felt like the right time for us to reflect on our organisational purpose and strategy also, and to set our direction for the next 10 years and beyond, enabling businesses to connect their planning processes to make better, faster, and more agile decisions and accelerate performance. Our vision, mission, brand purpose and values are underpinned by who we are.

We are fortunate to be empowered by a uniquely powerful platform in Anaplan, unrivalled in the Connected Planning space, and 2021 saw further innovation from the product team, including advancements in Management Reporting, PlanIQ, Polaris, Google Cloud, Cloudworks, a new modelling experience and more. The rate of change in the last 18 months, for me, has surpassed anything I’ve seen in my ten years of working with Anaplan. Congratulations to our partners!

A partnership forged through only a handful of relationships over ten years ago, has now flourished into a global network, conceiving not only colleagues, but friendships. Thank you for your partnership. We stand together, we succeed together.

Thank you to Frank Calderoni, CEO of Anaplan who shared some kind words ahead of our 10-year celebration:

“In the decade that Bedford Consulting has worked with Anaplan, they’ve helped deliver successful projects to more than 250 customers. They’ve also been awarded as EMEA Partner of the Year an impressive six times. Bedford is always finding new ways to innovate and improve and is a trusted and experienced extension of the Anaplan team. We are very proud that Bedford is part of Anaplan’s partner ecosystem and wish the company continued success in all its endeavours.”

Looking forward

One thing is for sure, we cannot afford to stand still in our pursuit of excellence at Bedford. We are focused on driving our DNA deeper into our European hubs and will continue to explore opportunistic territories as Anaplan spreads their footprint across Europe. We will continue to expand our team and create opportunities for development within. We will continue to invest in our enablement programmes, ensuring consistency in our quality and values across Europe, and fostering our strategy of ‘One Bedford’. We will continue to invest in our customers, ensuring we are proactive in our pursuit of excellence, in driving value and in helping them to make better, faster, and more agile decisions and accelerate performance. We can certainly look ahead to 2022 with optimism & ambition, surrounded by an amazing team of people.

One thing I am eager to make happen in 2022 however, is to see more of our people in person than was possible during 2021. Although we have engaged together in many virtual social initiatives: coffee roulettes, social interest groups and online events, you can’t quite replace that face-to-face bond and one learning for me will be to take those opportunities when they arise in 2022.

Finally, I would like to wish you all; our team, partners, customers, friends & families, a warm and safe holiday season, a very happy new year and I hope to see more of you all in person in 2022 with a bit of luck!