The phrase ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’ has never rung as true as it does in the volatile economic and political climate facing organisations today. It’s no longer enough to rely on hard won budgets that quickly become obsolete when the consumer environment changes or the supply chain is interrupted unexpectedly. To effectively compete with nimble start-ups and industry disruptors, businesses must have clear visibility of historic and forecast performance across the enterprise and be able to drive consensus around the initiatives necessary to achieve their targets. So called, ‘connected’ organisations collaborate easily across business functions and from the head office to the shop floor. These connected organisations steer business performance dynamically by linking operational causes with financial effects in near real-time, collaboratively with all the right people from the head office to the front lines of the business, and intelligently by spotting and addressing trends, performing what-if analysis and creating more reliable forecasts.
But previous generations of planning software have fallen short of this vision. Historically, collaboration has been difficult to achieve, crucial data has been scattered across multiple data sources, and planning models have proved inflexible to change, and required too much IT support. As a consequence, spreadsheets proliferate and surround the previous generation of software as organizations seek greater speed, agility and insights. Organizations are finding it harder and harder to plan for the future and manage the uncertainties.
It was this background that inspired the founders of Anaplan to develop a better technology that would enable Connected Planning across the entire enterprise, allow management to analyse performance, understand business drivers, collaborate on knowledge and assess different courses of action which could inspire initiatives that drive the organisation to greater heights of performance.
In this showcase we highlight three major innovations that support these objectives, Anaplan’s Hyperblock® technology, the App Hub, and Anaplan’s latest developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Download the Anaplan Innovation Showcase following the link below: