Frank Calderoni: The Future of Anaplan is Clear

[YelenaKibasova]

In our latest Ask Me Anything session, Anaplan CEO Frank Calderoni talked about the future of the Anaplan platform and answered your questions in an exclusive week-long event. Frank shared his excitement about the new user experience and mobile interface, platform connectors, and AI and predictive planning capabilities.

**Our live Q&A window is now closed. Please see@frank_calderoni's answers in the comments below.

[Asslam]

Interested to know any update on the Anaplan workflow, definitely this functionality would support the business operation more effectively offering the connected solution.

Hope to hear about new features added to the platform. Certainly, API connector and Predictive planning would be a big hit.

Thanks

[frank_calderoni]

@Asslam,我爱this question, and I appreciate your interest in workflow. There have been a few subsequent questions about workflow and I will answer all of them here. There continues to be high interest and demand from our customers for a robust workflow capability to support their end-to-end planning processes. Our existing workflow capabilities have been in early access and during that time we’ve collected a tremendous amount of valuable feedback. Based on customer feedback and growing interest in process orchestration capabilities in planning, we are taking a fresh look at how to embed these features in the Anaplan platform, starting with capabilities in our new UX across Web and Mobile such as tasks, notifications, commenting and sharing.

[DavidEdwards]

Great video, Frank, and thanks for taking the time to chat with the Community!

I am new to the concepts of AI, especially as it becomes more integrated with connected planning. Do you view Anaplan's business model pivoting even further into AI by allowing companies to leverage custom interfaces to meet their planning needs?

In other words, model builders currently have full flexibility to design solutions for each of their business's use cases. Is that level of company-specific AI design something you envision will be a capability within Anaplan over the coming years?

Curious to hear your thoughts.

Thanks!

[frank_calderoni]

Thanks for reaching out@DavidEdwards. As a part of our AI- and ML-enabled platform strategy, we plan on delivering an intelligent user experience with guidance and recommendations. We are very interested in the potential value of automation capabilities in the platform, as you can see in my response to@davidmccarty's question below on AI possibilities. Also our product roadmap includes a completely redesigned and intuitive modeling experience. You can see the importance of the evolution of our UX to our strategy in my response to the question on the new UX below. Stay tuned!

[DavidEdwards]

Thanks for the reply,@frank_calderoni! That is very exciting that integrating AI will become a large part of Anaplan's roadmap going forward. This will be an incredible learning experience for all of us as machine learning continues to become a more regular piece of our careers and personal lives. Glad to have you at the helm!

[KBeltz]

Hey Frank,

My first question is about Anaplan's workflow. Are there plans to create a workflow in the New User Experience? This is critical for some implemenations.

Cheers,

Kevin Beltz

[frank_calderoni]

谢谢你的问题,@KBeltz. Please see my response above to@Asslamon the topic of workflow.

[kevin.murphy]

嗨,弗兰克,谢谢你的视频。我想知道how Anaplan intends to increase the number of people who know how to use Anaplan in 2020. Outside of the partner network, it currently would be difficult to learn Anaplan on your own if you wanted, what plans do you have to open this opportunity up to more people? Do you ever see Anaplan going more towards the Trailhead model of a public learning management system?

Thank you!

Kevin Murphy

Anavate Partners

[frank_calderoni]

Great question,@kevin.murphy. We are definitely aware of this great need and are always looking for ways to enable our current and future ecosystem of Anaplanners. It is on our radar and we are taking proactive steps to allow for enhanced self-serve education similar to the Trailhead experience.