The era of chasing topline growth at any cost has ended; profitable growth is now the true measure of success. However, for many organizations, determining precisely where profitability is created or lost remains a significant challenge.
Products that appear successful on the surface may erode margins when factoring in component costs, production overhead, or distribution inefficiencies. Customers that represent large volumes may actually generate below-average returns once rebates, service levels, or promotional spend are considered. Without a clear, connected view of these dynamics, leaders risk making decisions that hinder performance rather than accelerate it.
Today, finance teams sit at the center of this complexity. CFOs are being asked to partner more closely than ever with supply chain, sales, and operations leaders to model the full impact of pricing, sourcing, and customer decisions on profitability. But siloed systems and inconsistent data often make it difficult to connect these insights across functions — leaving finance reactive instead of strategic.
Anaplan for Product and Customer Profitability gives executives the insight and agility they need to answer a critical question: Where should we invest our next dollar to deliver the greatest return?
The complexity of profitability today
Modern enterprises face unprecedented complexity in managing profitability. Shifts in consumer behavior, supply chain disruptions, and taxation and inflationary pressures expose margins to constant risk. Among the most common challenges:
Hidden cost dynamics: Lack of visibility into how raw material changes, labor inflation, or foreign exchange (FX) fluctuations cascade through the profit and loss (P&L) makes it impossible to see their true effect on product and customer margins.
Disconnected insights: Inability to combine financial, operational, and customer data to understand profitability drivers holistically, leaves leaders guessing how volume, price, and mix truly impact organic growth.
Misaligned investments: Difficulty aligning top-down brand and customer targets with bottom-up operational resources and personnel leads to inefficient capital allocation and missed opportunities.
Slow, opaque allocations: Legacy allocation processes, which can take weeks to run, are time-consuming, inconsistent, and disconnected from business users, limiting agile decision-making.
These challenges are more than operational inconveniences. They directly impact your organization’s ability to grow strategically, allocate resources effectively, and build long-term shareholder value.
Tackling profitability challenges with integrated planning
Anaplan eliminates these barriers by connecting data, people, and processes in a unified platform. Instead of navigating a maze of stitched-together spreadsheets and legacy systems, finance leaders gain a real-time, multidimensional view of their business.
With Anaplan, you can:
Isolate profitability drivers with advanced analytical tools that clarify the impact of volume, price, mix, FX, and return on investment (ROI) across products, customers, and time horizons
Trace cost changes across the value chain — from raw materials through production and distribution — to quickly understand how they affect margins
Align top-down and bottom-up planning by brand and customer to ensure investments and resources are right-sized for maximum ROI
Accelerate allocations with transparency using consistent, real-time solutions for both actuals and forecasts
The Anaplan advantage
Unlike traditional systems that only address one piece of the puzzle, Anaplan’s platform brings together the scale, speed, and flexibility needed to navigate profitability in today’s complex environment. Powered by a connected architecture, Anaplan empowers executives to see the full picture of product and customer profitability — past, present, and future — and to act with confidence.
The result is a more resilient enterprise, equipped to anticipate change, optimize investment, and drive profitable growth across every decision.
