Three tips to optimize your Anaplan models

As I’ve gained experience building models, optimization and scalability come up more and more as hot topics. Customers want a model that can grow with them and still run like a well-oiled machine. So whether you are a new customer or have been with Anaplan for a long time, here are a few tips to ensure that your models are optimized.

Size and scale

The size of a model is one of the first things we think about when ensuring a model is optimized. When checking your own model, keep an eye out for duplicate line items and unnecessary dimensions. There’s a helpful article that recently came out on Anapedia that will walk you through these items—check it out here.

Build

While building a model, it’s easy to get caught up in the details. What helps me keep a lean model is to ask myself the purpose of each module and each line item, and keep the over-arching goal in mind. Removing extra line items, dimensions, lists, and other items that don’t contribute to the end goal will help keep your model lean. One helpful way to identify the purpose of a module or list is to use consistent naming conventions. This will keep you from guessing a module’s purpose throughout the course of the model build and further development.

Performance

The direct result of an optimized model is performance improvement. As you grow your user base and expand Anaplan’s capabilities, performance becomes increasingly important. While size tips and tricks definitely come into play, there is another tip I wanted to share: use list-formatted line items for data instead of text whenever possible. This is a good rule of thumb for both list properties and module lookups, and will help keep back-end processes moving smoothly.

Anaplan Hub 2016 is right around the corner! Learn more tips and tricks from other Anaplan users, and get answers to your most complex planning questions. Explore the conference agenda and register to attend!