There is only one way to go: Forward.

The world is constantly changing, things that we could barely imagine a few years ago have now become part of our daily routines.  We take for granted how we use our smartphones, the cloud, and electric cars and many other technological breakthroughs.   For example, 10 years ago it would have been hard to believe for some sceptics, that a smartphone could provide enough computing power to run their spreadsheets or provide a wireless connection fast enough to watch video streaming.

However, getting used to game-changing innovations takes time to us, as consumers and as professionals. As simple as it is, sometimes we forget that adopting innovation is a process that takes time.

Having that said, within this blog, I would like to follow a chain of facts that individually are easy to agree with (I hope) and collectively will guide us to the big picture on why business planning goes towards to “connected business planning” platforms, in the same way as the phone industry moved from the basic handset to smartphones.

1. We live in the age of Information and Big Data

All around us, and every day there are more and more automated processes that control our lives.  Faster internet networks, systems with layers of databases, cloud environments, social media networks etc. all with the capacity to collect massive amounts of data.  In fact, more data has been created within the past few years than within the entire history of the human race¹.

From a corporate point of view, to cope with the increasing volumes of “Big data”, businesses are moving from monolithic technology stacks, designed for “one size fits all”, towards a wider set of different solutions, specifically tailored to host different types of data and to meet the ever growing requirements of each department within a company.

2. Big Data needs of a Big Ecosystem of applications to handle it

The Supply Chain environment is no exception to adding to the increasing volumes of data within an organisation. Examples of where data is collected:

Customer Data:  We have a really good idea of who are customers really are.  All their information is stored within CRM tools.  An order can be revised, managed and placed by mining the purchase data stored within an Order Management Systems.

Inventory and Distribution: We can be aware of the businesses storage capacity or the time needed to restock the warehouse, all by using Warehouse Management Solutions.  And we can see the effectiveness and efficiency of the distribution network, enabling our business to know exactly where the materials and goods are long the distribution journey, all within the data collected and held by the Transportation Management System.

3. More Tools means more siloed data. Does this ring a bell?

As a result of all the Big data created, and the need to have it available to keep a business competitive, companies are storing more data within every platform.  This is leading to the increased need to add new systems to the IT landscape.

The diversity, amount and quality of the data stored across the systems and the different architectures used, means sharing and consolidating information across platforms is becoming increasingly harder to do, more time consuming and prone to errors.

The challenge now lies with overcoming the data isolation across tools, ensuring enterprise-wide data consistency and visibility to boost collaboration and transparency.  To reach the next level of operational effectiveness and providing analysts and management a layer that spans through the entire organisation, a system needs to provide a set of robust and reliable data on which the organisation can rely to run insightful analysis and make the best possible decisions.

As Ben Kepes (technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser) recently said, “Software may be eating the world, but APIs are giving it teeth”⁴. This statement emphasises the need for improving data integration within an organisation, by using flexible and multi-purpose Integration Platforms as a Service (IPaaS) solutions. 

Companies using IPaaS and applications compatible with them, are realising an average ROI 300%+ ² by:

• Increasing revenue as a result of unlocking new opportunities for additional revenue streams and innovation.
• Millions in savings on infrastructure costs and management as a result of their transition to the cloud.
• Shortening development timelines by 70%, leading to an increase in IT staff productivity and savings.

Indeed, the figures and benefits mentioned above are extremely interesting, especially when today there are companies still slowing down their innovation and time to market by drowning in their disjointed data lakes and software applications. But the latest trends and benefits to be unlocked go beyond just that.

4. Data stream is the blood of our system. Let’s pump it through.

As Ben Kepes (technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser) recently said, “Software may be eating the world, but APIs are giving it teeth”⁴. This statement emphasises the need for improving data integration within an organisation, by using flexible and multi-purpose Integration Platforms as a Service (IPaaS) solutions. 

Companies using IPaaS and applications compatible with them, are realising an average ROI 300%+ ² by:

• Increasing revenue as a result of unlocking new opportunities for additional revenue streams and innovation.
• Millions in savings on infrastructure costs and management as a result of their transition to the cloud.
• Shortening development timelines by 70%, leading to an increase in IT staff productivity and savings.

Indeed, the figures and benefits mentioned above are extremely interesting, especially when today there are companies still slowing down their innovation and time to market by drowning in their disjointed data lakes and software applications. But the latest trends and benefits to be unlocked go beyond just that.

5. Next step: Connecting apps within the same platform

In order to achieve top performance within an organisation, it is important not only to boost the connectivity across tools, but to start using “time-proof” and “multifunctional” solutions.

What does this mean? Instead of continuously adding new stand-alone point solutions to our IT landscape, it’s possible to find platforms that allow you to host different business processes within the same platform, and in the event that new business opportunities arise, they can be modelled within the same platform instead of bringing in a new technology.

These solutions differ from the old “one size fits all” solutions as they can easily meet the particularities of each business process.  This gives each of them the level of detail and granularity, workflow, inputs and reports they need while ensuring the highest levels of access, security, confidentiality and auditability , that each use case specifically requires.

You are then left with one scalable tool with shared centralised data, master data and users repositories with different access permissions instead of a messy spaghetti framework of dozens of solutions.

Supply Chain is a good example of how, over the past few year, different standalone solutions have driven companies towards siloed data and processes: disconnecting important parts of the organisation such as production, procurement, inventory, distribution or demand planning. 

Supply Chain 4.0 is achieved through the correct tools that can provide end-to-end visibility, increased agility and collaboration in near-real time across the all these business areas and processes.

Welcome to the age of Connected Planning

At Olivehorse Consulting we pride ourselves in being the only UK partner focused entirely on supply chain planning and management, whether utilising our partner Anaplan technologies and their solutions.

Our depth of supply chain management application expertise and unrelenting focus on business value enables us to address the most complex supply chain issues in some of the world’s fastest moving supply chains.

Anaplan is a 100% cloud-based platform that features a powerful 64-bit calculation engine, strong multi-layered security capabilities and a broad set of data integration options.

Anaplan offers a wide range of options when it comes to data integration: from its own UI for data import / export to built-in connectors in all the major Data Integration Platforms:

• Interfaces for manual data import / export
• Anaplan Connect
• Anaplan Hyperconnect (Informatica)
• Mulesoft built-in connector
• Dell Boomi built-in connector
• SnapLogic built-in connector

Based on what we have discussed so far, you can hopefully see the business benefits of Anaplan’s high connectivity. And, thanks to its outstanding technical capabilities, the Anaplan platform can host and connect with all kinds of operational plans across the organisation, creating one version of the truth.

In this way, Anaplan eliminates the information boundaries between teams and processes, unleashing an outstanding ROI above 530%³ by achieving productivity gains, cost savings and rising demand through a better sense of market requirements.

Conclusion:

Maybe some of the statements above such as, “Anaplan platform that can host and connect all kinds of operational plans across the organisation, creating one version of the truth” could sound a bit too bold for you, since not long ago companies required different solutions to host processes such as Inventory Planning, Financial Planning, Budgeting or Incentive Compensation Management.

But then again, think of the Innovation Adoption Curve discussed at the very beginning of the blog and specially of Henry Ford’s famous quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”.  If we would have been asked 10 years ago, probably we would have asked for more point solutions to cover every specific area of our company, assuming that a “one-size fits all” platform was just simply impossible. Wouldn’t we?

More? If you recognise any of the discussed topics above within your organisation, or you are interested in understanding how Connected Planning would look like for your business, please get in touch. 

Webinars? Olivehorse is hosting a series of free live webinars on different Anaplan use cases. To register for more information, Click here.

Customised Taster session? Or you might be thinking “this all makes sense however; I would like to know how Anaplan can help me and my business to overcome our particular problems”. Then please email our Anaplan team and who would be delighted to give you a customised demo session!  Contact us. 

References

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/09/30/big-data-20-mind-boggling-facts-everyone-must-read/
2. https://boomi.com/content/report/the-total-economic-impact-of-the-dell-boomi-platform/
3. https://www.anaplan.com/papers/forrester-total-economic-impact-anaplan-study/
4. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2955668/apis-might-power-the-software-economy-but-the-c-suite-has-its-concerns.html