Desiree D’Souza 0:00:10.4:

I'm just going to maybe spend a couple of minutes just sort of setting the context around some of the external as well as internal disruptors that we're seeing impacting the way companies plan and forecast. So not surprising, a lot of shifts in technology disruptors, as we've been talking about today. Obviously, I heard from Charlie and Adam here up on stage about how Anaplan is responding to that. If you're in financial services, regulatory compliance, obviously another area that is impacting the industry in particular, and just market volatility, and a need to be able to be much more agile and nimble in the way that companies are planning. Then obviously around internal disruptors in a post-COVID world where we're all starting to think about the workforce and making sure you've got the right skill sets in the right place and the ability to do that through workforce planning solutions. So I think we've talked a lot about the tech disruptors and how we're seeing companies leverage generative AI, whenever I give any of these talks, I think I'm remiss if I never say the word, generative AI, but if we think about those capabilities. Looking at companies, leveraging AI models really to drive greater precision in the way that they're forecasting and being able to do that on large data sets. 

Desiree D’Souza 0:01:38.7:

You heard the team here talk about the capability of Polaris and what that opens up in terms of much, much greater volumes of data and how you can bring together disparate data sets to drive much more insightful forecasts and insights into business planning. ML, so helping firms run scenarios and be able to plan for stress testing or capital adequacy and strategic planning in a much more automated and nimble way. Then lastly, obviously, the move to cloud and digital technology. So solutions exactly like Anaplan, and the benefit that that gives organizations in terms of real-time data analytics, and the removal of a legacy batch processing environment. Where companies now have access to data in real time and they're able to significantly reduce cycle times in their planning cycles. Reg compliance, which Alex, I know is a lot of the world that you live in, right? So as we think about how do you plan for changing regulations, so for example, stress testing, capital adequacy, and really looking at how companies are responding to forward-looking forecasts that they're presenting to the regulators and then linking that back to baseline forecasts that they're using for internal management purposes. Then lastly, market volatility. Interest rate fluctuations, trade tensions really driving a need for companies to be able to have a lot more agility in the way that they forecast and plan. 

Desiree D’Souza 0:03:16.7:

So those are all very high level, the external market factors. If we think about the internal factors, post- COVID and how companies are starting to think about, shifting resource demands, managing sort of one of the largest expense line items. Maybe Simmi, do you want to share a little bit of perspective around workforce planning and just how some of those internal disruptors are impacting the way companies think about workforce planning? 

Simmi Mehta 0:03:42.7:

Hey everyone, Simmi Mehta. I'm a partner at Deloitte. I helped lead our planning practice. I helped found our Anaplan practice over a decade ago and have been working for the last five years with organizations across sectors to drive workforce planning transformation. So when I work with clients, a lot of what their question, Desiree, you touched on it is, how do I make sure I have the right person with the right skill in the right place at the right location at the right cost. Sounds maybe simple, maybe complicated, but obviously takes a lot of different data sources, different functions to interact, to make sure that companies can actually achieve and exceed their business objectives. So you talk about these disruptors, that's obviously disrupting the workforce, who do we need, when do we need them, how is AI going to augment what we do or change the nature of the workforce, and different clients that I've been talking to over the last, I would say, five years, have different aspirations as they think about this core planning capability with regards to workforce. Many times it includes that foundational pieces that the app provides that Adam spoke about with regards to annual budgeting, your headcount planning process, maybe your long-range headcount planning process.

Simmi Mehta 0:05:02.5:

I think about some of the other definitions of workforce planning that we're working on with clients, some of it includes, and part of what Deloitte does with Anaplan is, what skills do we need, in what locations, in what cohorts, to serve which kind of industries. So we do that kind of skills-based workforce planning. Other organizations that I work with are looking really closely at forward-looking location strategy as they think about where are they going to be opening new operations and how are they going to get the right talent in the right talent models in those locations as they think about maybe leveraging offshore a little bit more, and that's their definition of workforce planning, and yet others are thinking about the organization and operating model around maybe mergers and acquisitions or strategic type of programs that are either going to augment the kind of workforce they need or shift the skills they need or actually reduce the workforce that they need. So as we think about workforce planning, the definition of it is very broad, from all the way from operational, tactical, head count planning, workforce management, to some of these more strategic objectives that organizations are grappling with, and maybe just to invite Alex a little bit to talk about the Vanguard story a bit, that he and I got to partner a bit on some of that more workforce management to make sure they were providing the right kind of service to their customers. So maybe, Alex, if you want to share. 

Alex McElwee 0:06:31.3:

Yes. Hello everyone. Alex McElwee. I work in Vanguard's personal investor division. I currently lead a team of Anaplan model builders who are responsible for our first use case at Vanguard, which is a workforce planning model. So a few years ago, we set off on a journey to try to uplift and modernize our capabilities, and really there were, you talked about some challenges. Challenges that we were facing, first, we had an extremely manual process, and then second, we were having a tough time keeping up with the growing complexity of our contact center, like you mentioned a little bit. So starting with the first, our process was manual through and through. Our analysts were relying on a web of very homegrown Excel models, each of which were owned by an individual analyst for an individual journey, and they're becoming more and more customized over time. They're also spending a lot of time maintaining those models, throwing together reporting for weekly, monthly, quarterly deliverables in Excel and PowerPoint. Going out to a web of different dashboards to pull data down and plug them into the model. So the process was just extremely manual, time-consuming, and also, any time that you have a manual process, you open yourself up to risk. You're pulling data down, you're manually plugging it into a model, you could transpose a number, you could put the wrong number, and small mistakes can add up to be bigger mistakes as an outcome. 

Alex McElwee 0:07:56.6:

So that's one of our biggest challenges, and then the second is just the growing complexity of our contact center. Our existing channels were becoming more and more segmented, more specialized. We were bringing on new contact channels like chat and email. We were looking at new worker types or worker mixes, looking at contractors, offshore BPO. So because our process was so manual, we were having a tough time really keeping up with those changes and doing so consistently and pulling together a consistent story at the personal investor level. 

Desiree D’Souza 0:08:29.1:

So one of the things that Adam was talking about earlier is thinking about the end-to-end architecture. So as for Vanguard, you were considering building your first use case on workforce planning. How did you think about using that tool in terms of the broader ecosystem? 

Alex McElwee 0:08:47.1:

Yes, so I mentioned we had this data problem. We started internally, we partnered with our internal center for data and analytics to first solve our data issue. We knew that we had all these reports, it was across our ecosystem, we were spending a lot of time. So we started with consolidating all of that. So we use AWS S3 to consolidate all of our key operational metrics into a one-stop shop, but we knew we still needed to find a model to plug that data into. So we hit the market to see what options are out there, and we found a spectrum of options. So on one side of the spectrum, you had these very commercial, off-the-shelf options that were built for workforce planning. You could plug them in. You could be up and running pretty quickly, relatively inexpensive, but you couldn't really adapt them. They were what they were. If you wanted to work in changes, you had to work with the company themselves. It was a workforce planning use case. We couldn't expand it beyond that. So we weren't a huge fan of that, and then the other side of the spectrum, you had companies that were willing to come in and build a very customized model, but it was built on heavy code. You pretty much had to work through that company to do any expansion. Our workforce planning analysts, while analytical, don't have coding backgrounds, so it would have been a big shift for us to be able to maintain it

Alex McElwee 0:10:08.9: 

So we weren't a big fan of that side of the spectrum either, and then there was this sweet spot in the middle that was a little bit of a combination of both with a low-code, no-code platform. We could see that we could maintain ourselves because of our background in Excel. A time to onboard was in the intermediate range, cost-wise, also in the intermediate range. So we found that to be the sweet spot, and that's how we ultimately found Anaplan. We really liked, because we had Excel power users, the Excel-like formulas for building. We could see a path forward of how we could own the tool moving forward and also could see how we could expand it beyond a workforce planning model. So Anaplan stood out to us and then we ultimately ended up partnering with Deloitte to do the implementation of our Anaplan model. 

Desiree D’Souza 0:10:57.2:

Great, and as you were going through that implementation, how did you think about the process impacts too? 

Alex McElwee 0:11:04.6:

Sorry, can you repeat that? 

Desiree D’Souza 0:11:05.6:

Yes, as you're going through the implementation, how did you consider not only the implementation of the tool, but also changes in process? 

Alex McElwee 0:11:14.1:

Yes, so we knew that we wanted to maintain in-house. So that was important. That was a big reason why we chose Anaplan. So while Excel is similar, it's still a big shift to do that. So we knew we had to go with a partner to help us with the actual implementation, bring a big group of power users on Anaplan to actually build the model, but leverage that as a training opportunity to scale up our team, to be able to maintain in the future, and then had some overlap to get them more and more skilled up. 

Desiree D’Souza 0:11:44.7:

Perfect, and you mentioned the sustainment model. I think that's one of the things that our clients also have to face, is what do you do post the implementation, and how do you make sure there's appropriate sustainment in place? Simmi, from your vantage point seeing other clients leveraging Anaplan, maybe talk to us a little bit about how you're seeing other companies think about that shift in operating model.

Simmi Mehta 0:12:05.4:

Yes. So Alex alluded to it as well, but during the implementation, what we're finding really successful with our clients is actually starting that, not only process owner change management process early in the project, but also the post-go-live operating model change management and enablement early on in the project. So similar to how we have partnered with Alex and his team, most of our clients have some element of technical training embedded within that first implementation. So whether you're on the 12-week app trajectory or the, what was it, maybe four or five months of bespoke build trajectory. That is a great opportunity to get exposed to the Anaplan platform, co-build aside the partner. Think about how you're actually learning the why of why things are built a certain way. Because that's really where the secret sauce is in making sure you're optimizing your model. So similar to how we work with Alex, making sure that you've got model builders side by side on the team, working with the partner to get that enablement going, and then as you're thinking, it's more than just the two or three model builders. It's actually, how are you going to own the application going forward, drive continuous improvement. So things like, who's going to be the product owner, how are they going to engage with your end users, what's the intake process going to be. So as you set up that first use case, it's really important to think through systematically how is this going to become an enterprise solution that it has that continuous improvement capability. 

Desiree D’Souza 0:13:39.3

Yes, that's perfect. All right, so Alex, now that you're all live with the solution, can you talk a little bit about, I think you did already touch on some of the benefits, but I think importantly, lessons learned reflecting back on the journey and any insights you want to share with those in the audience that may be considering embarking on a similar implementation. 

Alex McElwee 0:13:59.3:

Yes, so I'll start with some benefits. I talked about our legacy manual process. So now we're definitely feeling the impact of having our data directly plugged into the model. We're not spending all that time doing that manual effort. Better availability of data and insights. We can see how our key operational drivers are trending. We can put a flag in place of when it's time to make a recommendation to adjust those drivers, all in the process of trying to make a more accurate outlook, and so that's number one. We're feeling really good with our base model. The second uplift we're feeling is the scenario modeling. We talked a little bit about it earlier, but we're just loving the scenario modeling capability, and because we don't have all that time being spent doing those manual efforts, our analysts can actually be a little bit more proactive and think about how could this plan break and come together with those scenarios proactively, as well as we might be in a meeting, you might get a question that catches us off guard. What if volume comes in ten per cent above. What if we shift to this hiring type. We can now do live demoing of what would be the impact. So a process that could have taken hours to days, you could do it instantly in the meeting, putting the decisions right at the fingertips of our business clients or our internal clients. 

Alex McElwee 0:15:15.9:

You mentioned lessons learned. I think I could probably talk about lessons learned for a whole 20 minutes, but the biggest ones are, it starts with data. Your model's only going to be as good as the data going into it. So spend time up front, making sure you feel really good about the data coming in. Think about yourself, not just right now, but where are you going to be in six months, a year, year-and-a-half, so on and so forth, to try to set yourself up for success in the future, and then the last lesson learned is just understand it's going to be a journey. We're a year and a half into our implementation right now, and it still feels like a journey, right? We've got end users adopting the models, but there's been some road bumps. So I think just invest as much as possible in getting the end user comfortable, excited, show some art of the possible out there, get them excited about it, and that'll help you along the way. As well as Simmi, you mentioned setting yourself up for, what does it look like when you hand over the keys from your implementation partner to actually owning in-house. I think we had an oh no moment. They're leaving us. 

Simmi Mehta 0:16:23.5:

We didn't quite leave though. We're still a little bit in the back. 

Alex McElwee 0:16:26.2:

Right, but it's good to think about that in advance and think about what that transition looks like. Make sure you're taking advantage of that side-by-side model building. All that time is going to set you up for more success in the future. 

Desiree D’Souza 0:16:37.7:

Perfect. Thanks, Alex. So you mentioned that it's a journey, right. So Simmi is our resident Deloitte Anaplan workforce planning, amongst all the other titles you have up there. Can you just share a little bit about perspectives broadly as you've worked with clients. Particularly how they've thought about getting started on the journey and key considerations? 

Simmi Mehta 0:17:01.7:

Yes. So one is obviously workforce planning is incredibly multidisciplinary. No matter, I talked about the different definitions, how you might define your aspirations may be different from another peer, but it always involves many facets of HR, sometimes many facets of finance, at least FP&A. It could involve your strategy team, your location team. So I think the first step is actually really critical in defining what your aspiration is for workforce planning as much as what it's not for workforce planning, and making that very clear, and then aligning your business case metrics against that. So Alex talked a lot about the operational efficiencies. I think when we first set out on the journey, a lot of it was around making sure that you had the right person to make the right connection to the client at the right time to improve customer satisfaction, and that's really important to Vanguard, very customer-centric organization. That could be a very different or a component of a different set of metrics for yourself. So linking that interconnected aspiration back to the true metrics you're trying to drive, I think is a very critical foundation for workforce planning implementation. 

Simmi Mehta 0:18:20.6:

With ADO now, but also before ADO, making sure you understand and connect your data owners, because again, the disparate data across your HRIS system, across whatever tool your FP&A team is using, your ERP for your core data. So I'm not sure it's that different from any other kind of Anaplan implementation of how to get started, but it is just a broader scope of key stakeholders to manage. You know, we're currently in a workforce planning program that's driving, with another client that's driving operational workforce planning, long-range workforce planning, organization modelling. I think some of our calls have, you know, a hundred people on them because there's so much excitement, but so many people involved in these processes. So the component of alignment and change management becomes really critical as you're trying to drive change within the organization. 

Desiree D’Souza 0:19:14.8:

I think we're about to time out here pretty soon and probably going to get the hook, but hopefully this has been helpful, a very short, sharp segment around workforce planning, but certainly seek out Alex, seek out Simmi in some of the breakouts if you've got any further questions, but you know really our intent was to give you a bit of a flavor and hopefully you can take away some lessons learned or insightful nuggets around how you might think about workforce planning and sort of architecting that journey for your companies. All right, with that, I think we're a wrap. I'm going to hand it over to Bill to close out the morning for us.