SAP vs Anaplan Resourcing
by Jon Pause
Resources help architect and build your system. Resources are required to train your in-house experts. Those in-house resources are needed to support the system after go live. The cost of staffing to implement, train, and support your tool may easily be the largest cost associated with your software.
This is why resourcing should be a core consideration when selecting a planning tool.
In the SAP landscape, projects often require a number of key stakeholders, such as:
A specialized HANA expert for integration.
A specialized frontend expert to build your interfaces.
A specialized logic expert for BPC logic.
A specialized BADI resource for complex logic.
The likelihood that your subject matter expert (SME) is versed in one of these skills is extremely low. Taking stock of these realities, most projects end up spending 50%+ of your budget on logic and integration and 50%+ of your project is effectively a black box to your frontend SME.
Compounding matters, resources don’t always overlap between specializations. This leaves your team in a scenario in which you have to manage more handoffs, more translations and more iterations of the critical components involved. It’s not seamless, to say the least. Anyone who has implemented BPC has seen plenty of friction along the way.
Combined, these workflow obstacles increase the total cost of the project. They also tie down valuable labor, as deadlines get pushed out and more disruptions are discovered.
It doesn’t have to be this way, of course.
Anaplan gets it right
With Anaplan’s superior training platform, frontend resources can take on as much as 90% of the project work. Anaplanners are empowered to take larger ownership of their projects. SMEs and consultants are freed up to focus more on refining business process and less time connecting to data.
Customers who may have past allegiance to Excel have found the Anaplan learning curve to be very manageable. Case in point: At CPX I was amazed that several of our customers had a certified Master Anaplanner on staff. this a testament to Anaplan’s training platform and overall focus on platform customer usability.
SAP Shops
I do know some professionals in SAP shops who are still skeptical. I’ve had friends from SAP customers approach me and pose the question: “How do you expect us to take on the Anaplan platform when our team is trained on SAP skillsets?”
Simple. SAP isn’t going anywhere. Anaplan is not an ERP system.
SAP has a major role to play running your ERP. And there will still need to be a technical solution that extracts and manipulates data warehouses to provide a single source of truth for your organization. Anaplan can simply plug in to that warehouse and pick up robust planning functionality from there.
This is what your SAP team can expect by moving to Anaplan:
Empowered business analysts less dependent on IT resources to deploy solutions.
More plans being connected.
More user groups supported.
Better solutions that improve end-user experience.
A new ability to integrate divergent data sets faster.
Faster data insights to help correct core data issues.
IT becomes the hero by being part of the Anaplan team, swooping in and saving the day after a decade of underwhelming results. If I were doing S.W.O.T., I would throw this under opportunity, not threat.
A closer look at Anaplan’s value proposition
The Anaplan platform offers more opportunity and less cost in a number of ways:
Empowered front end users with a focus on business process provide more successful, more integrated projects.
Less for specialized resources means less handoffs, fewer hands on keyboard, and less money out the door.
Anaplan training enables you to bring more expertise in house, which lowers your dependence on external resources while trimming demands on your IT department.
Anaplan is also a hedge against a deteriorating resource base, as consultants worldwide are moving toward Anaplan. Quality resources will be harder to find and more expensive to hire.
Get your team involved in figuring out how their life could be better in the Honeycomb!
About the Author
Jon has been working on advancing connected planning for over 15 years. Previously a solution architect in the SAP EPM space, Jon brought both industry insights and delivery experience to the Anaplan platform.
He is a connected planning specialist who has demonstrated the ability to adapt software tools to multiple industries, technology platforms, and business needs. Using a combination of technical knowhow, creativity in adapting cutting edge software capabilities, and the understanding that business process is a key ingredient to success Jon consistently delivers “value‐add” projects for his clients.