Make your supply chain allocations more efficient with Anaplan Optimizer

Cloud computing platform Anaplan helps organisations collaborate efficiently in all business areas. A connected planning approach is a concept that connects people, data, and plans in real time. By implementing this software, businesses have access to dynamic, collaborative and intelligent plans that help them make confident business decisions and cater to current business planning needs.

Using Anaplan Supply Chain to adapt to the new dynamics of planning

New technologies and constant changes in supply chain management have led to businesses being able to provide end-to-end supply chain management solutions. Although matching supply and demand may seem like a simple art to understand, it is one of the most challenging problems to solve. This is especially true today when there are challenges involving globalised supply chains, end-to-end visibility, and volatility in the marketplace. It is therefore necessary for organisations to have their finger on the pulse, so they can capture data on the constantly changing conditions in the supply chain and plan, monitor, and respond to them efficiently. Organizations are always on the lookout for new and efficient ways to collaborate between different silos within the organization and other partners within the organization's network for improved visibility and more agile decision making.

Connecting Planning: Developing the ability to make value-based decisions

By enabling faster, more intelligent, and more collaborative planning, Anaplan enables businesses to weave through the complexity of combining data, people, and plans' - Anaplan.

Embracing the Anaplan cloud platform improves mobile collaboration opportunities and enables advanced data analytics, which transform the operating model and business strategies of supply chains. We enable end-to-end visibility by making information more readily available and incorporating robust features such as the Central Data Repository and Collaborative Workflow. The platform's Data Synchronisation feature, which dynamically synchronizes Data between connected plans, enables collaboration between silos and connects your supply chain plans to financial, sales, and marketing plans. Through such features, organisations are able to adapt to changing priorities and align their supply chain strategies with the overall objectives of the business, creating response strategies that are both demand-driven and profitable for their businesses.

Using Anaplan for Supply Chain, leaders can get a holistic view of their supply chain network through scalable modeling and calculations in real-time, accompanied by the ability to develop specific applications covering most of the other functions they need. As a result, we can recognize and manage demand and enable a dynamic, collaborative sales and operations process. Additionally, the platform provides an app hub that contains more than 200 prebuilt applications, including those related to Product planning, Demand management, Supply management, and S&OP. In this way, the business can establish a solid foundation for connected planning by integrating all these applications.

A few key features

• Platform for business planning and modelling in the cloud

• Provides users with the ability to build multidimensional models

• Deliver top-down or bottom-up planning based on dynamics scenarios

• An accurate, scalable, real-time modeling engine backed by a calculation engine

• Financialize your plans in an instant

• A constraint-based approach to planning and optimization

• Monitoring, dashboarding & alerting

Anaplan alignment with digital transformation

Top priorities for chief executives include his or her transformation to a digital mindset, since the value generated by an organization largely depends on the solutions and ideas implemented. Building an ecosystem with Anaplan will enable you to achieve digital transformation within your organization;

• Make the most of the interconnectedness of all functional areas within the organization

• Monitor, control, plan, and optimize supply chain operations remotely and in real-time by using dashboards and a supply-chain control tower

• The ability to build models to any level of granularity with any number of dimensions will help you gain visibility previously unavailable, including layering in time (daily/weekly/monthly), hierarchies, and relationships.

• Data flows that are scheduled to allow organisational operators to respond to demand in real time, including product and consumer data

Supply Chain Planning ‘Hot Picks’ from Polestar

Connected Planning

Through a single, cloud-based platform, all relevant information from across the organization can be incorporated into dynamic, collaborative, and intelligent decision-making.

An online cloud platform

As legacy systems and even some more recent platforms struggle to keep up with the increasing amount of data flowing through them, it's vital to consider the processing power necessary to manage automated technologies. Companies can use Anaplan to connect & manage vital processes and ensure they are aligned across their organization with a single platform. By using Anaplan, an organization can get one view of reality.

Hyperblock™ technology

Invented Anaplan Hyperblock technology, a real-time, multi-dimensional engine, is the key to collaborating on decisions in real-time. With Hyperblock technology, dependencies can be tracked at the line item level, so that updates or changes can be made in real time to models of all sizes, from one to one trillion cells.

Workflow

Tool for collaborative planning - enables business process owners to associate steps with a plan, identify individuals or groups to assist with the steps, and set parameters to guide them along the way. Features include notifications, task reminders, and user specific task boards.

Aiming for optimization

The 'Anaplan Solver' Gurobi engine handles up to 100 variables. Mathematical modeling and algorithmic problem-solving methods to select the best solutions for business issues from billions of possible solutions.

Adding to Excel

Excel can be used to access configured views in Anaplan. The flat numbers are input as an ad-hoc analysis (send to users without Anaplan).

Conclusion:

It may be too bold for you to read some of the statements above such as "Anaplan platform that hosts and connects all kinds of operational plans across the organization, creating a single version of the truth". Companies used different solutions in the past to manage processes such as Inventory Planning, Financial Planning, Budgeting, and Incentive Compensation Management.

On the other hand, remember that the Innovation Adoption Curve discussed at the very beginning of the blog is also a constant reminder of Henry Ford's famous assertion: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.". 10 years ago, we probably would have asked for point solutions to cover all specific areas of our company, as we assumed that a "one-size-fits-all" platform was just not feasible. Isn't that true?

How much more? If your organization identifies any of the discussed topics above, or you're interested in learning more about how Connected Planning would look for your business, please get in touch.

Polestar Solutions Enables Enterprises In Their Digital Transformation Journey By Offering Consulting & Implementation Related To Data, Analytics & Cloud Infrastructure.