We're back this month with more from Master Anaplanner Sonal Tripathi, talking about the how the Excel Add-in was helpful in solving two key problems for admins and end users. From saving time to running sanity checks, Sonal's team recognizes some key benefits of the Add-in and is already considering more opportunities in the future.
Tell us about yourself, your current role, and your journey with Anaplan.
My name is Sonal Tripathi and I’m a Senior Anaplan Analyst at Adobe. I’ve been working with Anaplan at Adobe since 2017. I’m currently responsible for maintaining the end-to-end Anaplan landscape, which includes designing and doing demonstrations of new solutions and then providing support for development, deployment, and post-deployment.
How did you learn about the Excel Add-in?
I referred to theAdd-in sectionon Anapedia and downloaded the Excel Add-in. The installation process was easy and intuitive. I also knew I could reach out toSupport@anaplan.comif I needed any help.
I’ve recently started using the Anaplan Add-in for Excel to address some internal audit reports and have seen great improvements to our reporting process. I strongly recommend that everyone leverage this Anaplan feature of Anaplan.
What is the problem you are trying to solve?
I would categorize the problem we’re trying to solve in two buckets—admins and end users.
Admins:As an admin, my team has identified a few use cases where we are/will be using the Excel Add-in:
Using the Excel Add-in, we’ve built an internal audit report that fetches data from the data hub in one Excel tab and data from the spoke model in the second tab. The third tab uses a built-in lookup formula to do data comparison between the two.
This approach simplifies data recon and helps us easily identify data discrepancy across models. With an easy “refresh all worksheets” action, all Excel formulas are updated, saving tons of time compared to the traditional method of extracting data from separate sources.
End users:We are in the process of analyzing how efficiently we can train our users to adopt the Excel Add-in and are planning to test it with the team of end users who approves submissions.
We plan on providing this team with a pre-built, read-only sheet with the connection already established. This team will be able to easily refresh worksheets and access all pending approval changes in Excel based on geography. End users can view submissions in Excel in real time, eliminating tedious manual efforts.
How did you configure your Excel Add-in? Did you need any support from Anaplan along the way?
Using the Excel Add-in is extremely straightforward. It took less than 10 minutes to familiarize myself with it after install. If anyone needs help along the way, Community has helpful documentation.
Here is the process:
That’s all it takes to get started with the Excel Add-in!
What benefits have you seen with the Excel Add-in?
The Excel Add-in saves us a ton of time with data analysis on a regular basis by creating just one Excel report once and simply refreshing it when we need to do data recons.
In one Excel worksheet, we can fetch data from different models, making data recons/analysis easier. We don’t even need to open different models if we want to read data. Once the data is synced to Excel, the analysis can be done with built-in formulas/filters, reducing block time in models whenever filters are applied.
In addition, submitting bulk changes is easier with the Add-in thanks to the new read/write feature.
Have you thought about using the PowerPoint add-in?
Yes, I’ve tested the PowerPoint Add-in. It can be easily used by process owners and project managers to efficiently create presentations. Users can add tables, charts, and text from Anaplan models to their presentations.
我特别喜欢这个功能,允许用户to create charts for the numeric data in modules, which would also be a good use case for project managers during demos.
Do you have any Master Anaplanner tips?
Thanks for taking the time to share with the Community!What questions can we answer for you about the Add-in? Let us know in the comments below.
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