BY: AUSTIN PITTMAN, ADVISORY SERVICES CONSULTANT AT TWELVE CONSULTING GROUP
Once a Visionary, Now a Leader
Gartner announced last month that Anaplan’s Connected Planning Platform (NYSE: PLAN) has officially become a “Leader” in their published ranking of software tools for S&OP – Sales and Operations Planning – a discipline that marries predicted and actual sales with the activities needed to produce and deliver what was sold to customers. This means that Anaplan’s team has a strong and complete vision for the future in Supply Chain Management and has the ability to execute on that vision. For leaders considering moving to a next-generation cloud planning platform, this is great news. Anaplan is now recognized as a Leader in the key areas of Finance, Sales Performance Management and Supply Chain.
Twelve has long understood Anaplan’s outsized value in Supply Chain & Operations, delivering over 33 projects in Commercial Planning resulting in reduced planning cycles, lowered inventory and warehousing costs and better collaboration across functions and even among strategic partners. Now, we’ve taken it to the next level. We’ve built a specialized team designed to help our customers build more integrated, connected supply chains with Anaplan.
Magic Quadrants Mean Business
Gartner is a company that, among other things, assesses and ranks enterprise software based on their vision and ability to execute in a given category (for example, S&OP). The matrix that results is called a Magic Quadrant. It’s an assessment that leaders across the world trust and utilize to make important buying decisions. Anaplan’s recent movement into a Leader position means that it has both the scale of vision, and the strong ability to execute, to be a great option for enterprise supply chain teams at scale.
Twelve Builds an All-Star Team
Twelve Consulting Group is the most experienced and expert Anaplan Partner in the ecosystem: we’ve completed over 300 projects for nearly 100 clients. What we’ve realized though is that with Anaplan’s broad capabilities, creating specialized teams can deliver uncommon value. To that end, we’ve been hard at work developing a group focused solely on supply chain management and operations. Twelve’s partners tapped Jordan Hardy, a chemical engineer-turned-Anaplan Solution Architect, to build and lead this special group. She is now a Managing Consultant in our Minneapolis Headquarters with a team of experienced Anaplan Consultants and Solution Architects.
How Did We Build the Team? Over the last several years, we’ve experienced dramatically increased demand for Anaplan by supply chain leaders. It’s clear that the platform not only has strong technical and operational capabilities, but is price competitive and has the ability to move beyond supply chain, making it an attractive option. As demand has grown, so has our experience, expertise, and finally, our first function-specific team. Recruitment for our Supply Chain team starts the same as every other Twelve function: rigorous interviews for both culture fit and technical capability. In this case, we also seek diverse backgrounds with supply chain experience from across industries and in differing functional roles to ensure our perspective is both broad and deep. Most importantly, we seek problem solvers and tinkerers. People who stay up late to figure out logistical ‘puzzles’ and who come in early to try to break their own solutions. What Have they Done? Our Supply Chain team has tackled over 30 Anaplan projects, mostly focused on Commercial Planning. They have improved demand forecasts, created advanced Statistical Forecasting models, and enhanced the connections between sales, marketing, demand planning, supply planning, and finance teams. They have reduced inventory costs, reduced warehousing costs, and cut many days off of planning cycle times. Our Supply Chain team has better connected our customers with their key partners and promoted real-time data sharing through technology. And last, but not least, they have allowed industry experts at many of our clients to elevate their own performance: to focus not only on the production of plans and cleansing of data, but to tackle high-level analyses and chase big problems. Why Does this Matter for our Clients? The result for our clients: an innovative, knowledgeable, and proven team of Anaplan experts who also excel in Supply Chain concepts and practice. We’ve taken exceptional people, brought them through Twelve’s rigorous proprietary training program, and thrown them into some of the toughest challenges we can find. Jordan and her team continue to grow, innovate, and deliver excellent results for Twelve’s clients. Jordan’s team would love to help you tackle your own Supply Chain Management challenges – it’s what they do. From demand planning, to supply planning, inventory management, trade promotions, cost organization, to end-to-end S&OP, we are ready to be your partner. To start a conversation, please e-mail us at Jordan@twelvecg.com or fill out a contact form.
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