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VMware enhances sales productivity using five Anaplan implementation best practices

Anaplan

The platform for orchestrating performance.

VMware’s Awinash Sinha, Director of IT, and Sri Vellimedu, Director of Business Transformation, joined us on stage last month at our Hub16 conference to discuss lessons learned from the Anaplan implementation and deployment across the company’s global sales organization.

Prior to Anaplan, VMware was trying to reconcile multiple, inconsistent data sources across Excel and inflexible siloed systems, which resulted in significant productivity losses. With the help of Anaplan and Deloitte, VMware was able to revamp its go-to-market sales strategy, territory and account planning, and will soon overcome its quota and headcount planning challenges.

Sinha and Vellimedu indulged the audience with the following best practices learned from this transformation:

  • Define the problem you’re trying to solve for before diving in and solving for it. “You can experience pressure to get the project implementation started, but be sure to define the business case and key outcomes you are expecting from the project to ensure it can be a proven success,” recalled Vellimedu.
  • Define key milestones and how you can show an outcome for each milestone. This is your time to streamline processes and define a common language across geographies, departments, hierarchies, etc. “Without a common taxonomy, your data has no meaning. This is the time to tweak processes and define a common and consistent language,” advised Sinha.
  • Don’t underestimate change management. Understand the day-in-the-life-of each role that will be affected by this technology change. Customize your communication for each specific role so that they understand the positive impact this change will have on their daily lives.
  • Create a Center of Excellence (COE), but consider formatting it around the specific business capabilities instead of the platform. “We realized quickly with Anaplan that the use cases were going to span across departments, so we created a ‘virtual COE.’ Rather than the COE consisting of one department, we created COEs that were focused on specific business capabilities and use cases, and members span across the organization,” shared Vellimedu.
  • Talk to other Anaplan customers. The best implementation advice can sometimes come through Anaplan’s ecosystem of successful partner and customer implementations. “We gained great insight and advice by speaking with our industry colleagues that were Anaplan customers,” said Vellimedu. “They were able to provide insight into processes or tactics that we may have not otherwise considered.”

Watch the full session and learn more about VMware’s sales performance transformation, as well as the broader architecture, implementation, and project delivery approach with Anaplan.