[MUSIC] Mark-- Simon, thank you so much for being here today as chief planning officer, connected planning, business units, pressures, performance. There's so much going on in enterprise, what's changed in the last three years that make this the opportunity to connect plans across the enterprise? Simon-- Yeah, I think that's a great question. So I think what we've seen is there's a lot of volatility in the marketplace. Change, I think, is a great word that you use. There's a lot of change in the marketplace. So, if people haven't already been impacted by change, they're going to be impacted by change. Now, what that means is that the company has to become way more agile. They have to put their decision making time down to zero. So the time from analysis to actually making a decision, they need to reduce that. And the reason is because there's increased competition, there's increased volatility. Industries are being upended, every single day you think about people talk about the Amazon effect, for example. So, there are a lot of industries being changed and there's a lot of change happening. What that's done is it's driven a need for companies to say, "How can we react to this change?" Or actually more appropriately, "How can we be more proactive to potential changes we think are coming along?" And Anaplan as a platform is the one that's bringing it together. So, that's really what's driven that need, is the volatility that's now kind of reached fever pitch. If you think about just this year in 2019, think about the things that are going up, down and sideways as I like to describe them, which is Brexit, the whole Mexico tariffs issue, the China tariffs issue. There are people who are having to model different scenarios depending on the different outcomes of those three things. And those three things won't be the only things this year. There will be other things coming along, so that really is what's driving the need for that agility. Mark-- What are the steps that organizations and individuals should do to enable Connected Planning, and chart this course towards a chief planning officer? Simon-- Number one, is obviously buy into the fact that you need Connected Planning, and everyone needs connected planning. Of course, that's our opinion, but as we're seeing, our customers are telling us they need Connected Planning. So, recognize the fact that you want to do this, the connection across the organization. Now, it's a big elephant, or whatever analogy you want to give, across the organization. You can't just do it in one bite. You obviously, as the analogy goes, you have to do it one bite at a time. So, where do you start? You start, I think step number two is, start where you think you've got the most pain. At least that's where a lot of people start-- is, "...what is the place I have the most pain?" "What is the place that's really going to move the needle for me?" So, look at your strategic objectives and say, okay if we want to grow revenue by 20%, clearly, that's where I'm going to probably start. If you want to improve culture, clearly, that's where you're going to start. If you need to improve margins, clearly, if that's the thing that moves the needle, that's where you're going to start. So, figure out where you're going to start, and then look at what planning processes are connected. So, step number two is, find out where to start. Then step number three is, okay, once you've taken your journey-- the first step of many to Connected Planning, then look at what are the adjacent-- this is what a lot of people do-- look at the adjacent use cases. What's upstream, downstream, one or two degrees of separation, whichever way you want to think about it, that feed and are fed by the initial use case. And this is really where people start connecting these honeycombs, as we've called it, together. You start looking at what's the upstream and downstream. And suddenly you start bringing in this whole picture of connected planning and this sort of honeycomb effect, as we like to call it. And that's where you start your journey of Connected Planning. So it's really those three different steps that I would say, that's how you start on your journey to Connected Planning. The other thing I would say, we talked about earlier, is setting up the Center of Excellence and a central hub where all your data and metadata can go. So that all your model builders and business functions and use cases can feed off that central hub. And that central hub is updated by all your transaction systems. So, you've got a full living, breathing, agile system that you can just continue to build upon and continue to build your honeycomb journey, as it were. Mark-- Let's talk about planning experience. Organizations have been doing planning, but not necessarily always know what a great planning experience is. What should organization's expect in planning? Simon-- I think number one, they should try and follow best practice. And obviously we've been doing it with hundreds of customers now, in various different use cases, in various different industries. So understanding best practice, I think, is the first thing. They should definitely expect to keep the end user in mind. So a lot of people, they'll do some very sophisticated models. And yet when they deploy out to the edge of the organization that I talked about, they forget about the end user and their requirements and making their job easier and be able to give them the ability to have greater insights into the data. So we always recommend that you keep in mind what the end user will be using it for and how you can make their life better. So, these are the kind of best practice,making sure that you deploy in the right way to the end user and the people who are actually going to use it. Those are probably two of the main things that I would suggest. Mark-- Tell me about the rise of the chief planning officer. You're obviously one of them. It seems to be this new opportunity that organizations now have. What should an organization think about a chief planning officer and the role and responsibility of it? Simon-- So it was interesting, funny story, when we first decided that we would put the stake in the ground and I would be chief planning officer, and I would go out into the world and talk to other executives about the proposition of having a chief planning officer. I think a number of things really come to mind in terms of what people need to do from that standpoint. The first is, just see the need to have a chief planning officer, and see the need to have a much more strategic, agile way of looking at decision making. So I think that's probably one of the most important things, is you start from there. And see the need that, if you think about if you buy into the whole message of Connected Planning and the concept of Connected Planning, actually, connecting those different people with plans and technologies is something that is really greater than the sum of its parts. And that's kind of what we're seeing with our customers. And of course, a lot of our customers are early on their journey to fully Connected Planning, and will we ever realize the entire dream--who knows? It's a very big beast to capture, but I think that some of the things they really need to think about. Is okay, we think planning and decision making is strategic, who's going to be the champion of that? And more importantly, who's going to be the person that is the person that governs the processes and makes sure that we have a robust planning and decision making process in place? And that everyone is singing, as you will, from the same song sheet?
