Ed Majors 0:00:05.1:

As I was thinking about our session today, I look back and when we first started to talk about Anaplan, had I been able to acquire your stock, I'd be up over 100 per cent right now. 

 

Raj Budhrani 0:00:17.0:

That's true. 

 

Ed Majors 0:00:17.9:

Which is absolutely phenomenal. So is that because you guys plan with Anaplan?

 

Raj Budhrani 0:00:22.3:

No, we started planning later.

 

Ed Majors 0:00:27.7:

That's perfect. So with just the organization that has such amount of growth as you have and just have hired so much, maybe we can start to talk about your overall strategy that you took on. So it was unconventional, but initially we started to talk about there were so many pieces all over the place, and I was speaking with a client yesterday and they said, 'Ed, are all of your clients like us? Are they so all over the place? Do they have so many challenges?' I thought about it and I'm like, yes, it's a good thing they do because I have a job that way. So you had a lot of pieces floating around, you were very much hypergrowth mode. Maybe we can just start and talk about your overall strategic vision, and then we'll double click on it and get through it during the discussion as well.

 

Raj Budhrani 0:01:23.7:

Sure. So, before I go into the strategy, this is my third year at Anaplan Connect. So if you attended the previous ones, a little bit repeat of what we are doing. I just came to know today that I am speaking because Liz posted, then it reminded me I'm speaking here today. That's our strategy.

 

Ed Majors 0:01:44.4:

Yeah, Raj showed up about ten minutes ago. I was a little concerned because I'd be doing impromptu comedy right now.

 

Raj Budhrani 0:01:50.6:

So I think, from a strategy point of view, there's a big advantage that we carry at Synopsys. So we started the digital transformation three years ago and, as a part of the strategy, we brought in Anaplan to do the integrated planning and forecasting. That's the strategy we started building. Now, the big influence for us was, because of digital transformation, we had a lot of leeway and say into how we want to proactively step into this area rather than reactive, like, okay, go and ask for the specific use cases. So it was a very top down approach. We said, what should be our strategy? Where should we start? Then we will go from there rather than asking what use cases you want to start? So it was very different, then at least I know how others do it, right?

 

Ed Majors 0:02:50.3:

Yes, and I think what was unique about the approach you took, so typically a client says I want to do finance transformation, and then a lot of stuff we do is outside and we'll talk about the edge in a minute, but, okay, let's go do OpEx. You can do OpEx and Anaplan, you'll probably get something that looks pretty much the way you do an OpEx currently, not a lot of value, but you really focus on what is going to drive value to build the momentum, and we'll talk about this a little bit. We continuously go back and reprioritize what's the burning platforms for your organization and how can we address that?

 

Raj Budhrani 0:03:32.0:

Correct. So that's exactly what we did. We started with instead of thinking about just planning and forecasting, how can we think about what decisions are we making? That was a big shift for us, how we approach these use cases. So the first thing we started doing was we started thinking of what is our strategy of the company and that strategy should be on Anaplan. We worked with the CSO, our chief strategy officer team, and we built the strategy models first. In parallel, we started the corporate planning models as well because that is where the major decisions are taken, how the next five years, three years are going to look like. That should drive the downstream projects and models and initiatives. That was a big shift in how we approach this whole Anaplan journey. Now, before we started this on the strategy side, the big advantage we had is that our sales team was already using the compensation management, the ICM and TNQ to a large extent, so those were always there. Where we started is when it came from digital transformation, we started with the strategy and corporate model, thinking from top down perspective.

 

Ed Majors 0:04:54.7:

So I think one of the things we can double click on that was very unique is your smart global footprint strategy. The rate you guys grow and you're hiring a lot of engineers and they're not cheap, so it wasn't only where to hire the best talent around the globe, but once you hire them, you've got to put them somewhere. There's a couple use cases we did upfront around strategic workforce planning and the real estate, because you can't hire somebody if you don't have a place to put them. So maybe you want to comment on that and how we enabled that strategy with Anaplan.

 

Raj Budhrani 0:05:35.3:

This goes to the strategy because whatever you plan, it never goes that way. We started strategy, corporate business unit, but then a couple of years ago when the work from home policy started shifting for the company, that became a priority. We want to bring people in offices, but do we have enough space? Based on the utilization, the numbers, we are telling a different story because how will you calculate if somebody is coming for three days a week or once a week, like how will you count the utilization of those people and how should I plan for the facilities? So that became a big problem and issue for us, so we quickly added that use case a couple of years ago. We said, okay, let's start doing the strategic growth facilities, what are the strategic growth opportunities for us? Which locations will see the growth in number of employees and where we need to enable the workspace? We started immediately working with the HR team, finance team and also brought in our places team, what we call them, as we started working on these models. 

 

Raj Budhrani 0:06:51.3:

The first one was can we forecast the headcount properly? So we started focusing on bringing in the headcount forecast. Then we said, okay, let's look into the utilization rates. Based on the utilization rate, where are we growing and what is, again, the strategy of the company for next five years, where do we want to grow ideally? Based on that, we started creating something called a smart global footprint. What is our footprint? Where do we want to grow? Do we have enough space or not? Then the facilities growth will drive that objective for the company. That was a big use case where all the facilities people's team and finance team actually work together very well.

 

Ed Majors 0:07:44.6:

That's an accomplishment, right? So I think just the vision there, because if you need to open up a new floor in an existing building, that takes six months. 

 

Raj Budhrani 0:07:57.4:

Yes. 

 

Ed Majors 0:07:58.0:

If you need to acquire a new building and do a full office retrofit, that takes eight to 12 months. 

 

Raj Budhrani 0:08:04.0:

Yes. 

 

Ed Majors 0:08:04.5:

So being able to figure out how you're hiring based on the demand and aligning that, and then also understand the cost, because it always comes back to the cost of everything as well. That was tremendous.

 

Raj Budhrani 0:08:14.6:

That was tremendous. In fact, I'll add one more to that. So not only the floor, but also we started evaluating the floor plans, can we accommodate more people on the same floor? In fact, the whole facility's design, the furniture and the meeting rooms and everything's design started shaping up because there was a push, how can we accommodate more people where we have shortage of space? So it literally went to that, like in headquarters, the facilities team immediately created a model, this is a future model for the employees, for the workplace, and started looking into those ideas and feedback from the employees. So it actually turned into a very quick evaluation of how we are looking at facilities overall.

 

Ed Majors 0:09:05.9:

That's great. Again, it's using Anaplan to make business decisions, operational decisions that are truly moving the dial, which is great. I've been doing FPnA use cases for 25-plus years and a lot of stuff we do, we're sort of scorekeepers, we come in and say how things are going to end versus driving actual decisions. I think some of these are edge use cases where we're actually able to manipulate what we're going to do and drive better outcomes for the organization. 

 

Raj Budhrani 0:09:39.2:

That's true.

 

Ed Majors 0:09:40.3:

So we sort of surrounded everything with the edge use cases, demonstrated the value. Then once we started to get into it and we did start with the corporate model, I think a mistake a lot of organizations make is they try to go into the BUs upfront. The problem with the BUs is that your BUs are very different, they have different perspectives on how they want to plan, what level of detail, this, that and the other. I think just starting at the corporate at the top of the house and establishing that standard and then plugging in, your vision has always been connected planning, like how do we plug all this stuff in together? Starting there before we got into all the detail, what we call the swamp of the BUs because everyone does everything differently and it's very complex, I think that was a very strategic perspective you took to get some level of standardization in the organization.

 

Raj Budhrani 0:10:38.4: 

That is true. Our big worry was every BU was planning in a different way. In some cases, the methodologies were also different by HPU because they prioritized some of the spin and some of the areas differently than each other because of the nature of the business they were in. So when we created the corporate model, our first was there's a corporate model and then there are business unit models. We created a layer in-between, which is like the full standardized models. So we gave the full freedom to the business unit, said that you can create your own models the way you want it, but it has to feed into the standard model, which will eventually be consolidated into the corporate plan. So we manage corporate and the standard business models. We did not care about how you want to manage internally on the BU side of it. That helped us to have apple to apple comparison, standardize the methodologies across the company. The biggest problem we always had was the Excel, Excel sitting in different BU.

 

Ed Majors 0:11:45.0:

Excel hell, blood, sweat and Excel. 

 

RM 0:11:48.6:

Yes. So all these Excels were eliminated because we asked them to come and plan at one place. They had the tool, they had the information, they knew what is going to the corporate leadership, what is being presented, what numbers and so on. So it kind of came together for us because then everyone is looking into the same set of numbers. Of course, we had tons of challenges. It did not go smooth, obviously. So we had those challenges, but I think we accomplished it.

 

Ed Majors 0:12:21.1:

Those challenges sort of dovetails into my next question. I think a lot of times organizations buy Anaplan, they start in one place, and then Anaplan just sort of stays, if that's sales or if it stays in supply chain. What I think is remarkable, and as a chief transformation officer, you've got 45, 50 projects, hopefully Anaplan is the favorite one, but you were able to work the organization and get people on board. I think that's something that's going to be of interest to folks out there that are in your shoes. How do you approach the organization and say, hey, we know you've got a problem, we think we can fix it with Anaplan, we think we can do it very quickly and make it very agile and very scalable? So maybe just talk about the magic you work behind the curtain to get your organization on board.

 

Raj Budhrani 0:13:17.4:

This magic word I'm hearing since yesterday a lot. In fact yesterday, we were discussing the assumption from the leadership is like, okay, it's a magic wand, like Disney magic, like Disney Anaplan. I said, tomorrow I'll have it. Very few people, obviously the leadership, it's communication, we have to make continuously that, it's not that easy. It takes time and it's not about the technology, it's about how we are defining the processes. Are we agreeing to the definitions? Are we agreeing to the process? Overall, the data components that will feed into the models. So it's very challenging for us to come to those agreements, and still the problems we face is everything is blamed that Anaplan is not working. There's no discussion about we don't have the process. I know everyone is laughing here, but that's the truth, that's how everyone says Anaplan is not working. Anaplan doesn't work, it's not right. It's a continuous message that we give, it's not Anaplan, do you have the process? Why are these issues popping up? What is the root cause of this? 

 

Raj Budhrani 0:14:39.7: 

The problem is one thing. Excel, right. So that's the only problem. If you're asking everyone to move away from Excel, which they have used for their lives, and now you're saying you can't use Excel, then it becomes a problem because now you don't have flexibility. This is something goes back to, if I summarize the challenges, one is definitely the change, how we train people. We had multiple trainings to the people, but I think people don't pay attention until something breaks, something they are into, something they are not able to answer to the leadership. Number two is the siloed planning. For the different groups, we're used to having siloed plannings, doing their own things. Now, once you bring everything together on Anaplan, they don't have to call each other, they don't have to ping each other, it's available to them. So it's a big shift for them. If they don't understand those numbers, they say this is wrong because in their mind I did not check, I did not confirm. So, again, it goes back to Anaplan is wrong, right? It's not like this number is wrong, it's Anaplan is wrong. Then comes the problems. We see the formulas difference, some people were calculating in a particular way, others are calculating in a particular way. Now the numbers are appearing in different ways. So all these issues have started popping up. Again, it goes back to Anaplan is not working. These are the challenges we continuously face, and who gets the first call? I get the first call even though I'm not a model builder. 

 

Ed Majors 0:16:36.3:

I get the second call.

 

Raj Budhrani 0:16:39.5:

So I get the first call, like, hey, Anaplan is not working, this number is wrong. I have no clue what they are talking about. So the communication is key for us, like how we address those challenges. So we keep communicating on a continuous basis. Something which shifted in the last few months, this year actually, in 2025, we created a steer co for Anaplan where we bring in these key leaders and we openly talk about the issues, like what they hear, what are the real issues and what we are doing about those. That has gone a long way for us and it has made our lives easy. We started demonstrating some of the Anaplan capabilities and teaching the leaders that this is how it is calculated, this is how you are receiving these numbers. That has gone a long way. It has really helped us to minimize that noise, minimize those issues, because now they are also questioning the teams. Now they are asking, why are you saying this is wrong, or why you are saying Anaplan is not working? Simultaneously, we created a Teams channel so they can post their issues instantly and there is somebody who is responding to them quickly, and 90 per cent of the cases we saw is the lack of understanding of Anaplan rather than the true issue. So we are solving those issues and doing the trainings and teaching more and more to the people.

 

Ed Majors 0:18:17.3:

That's great. I use connected planning, that's old-school Anaplan, I think it's decision excellence, but part of this thing is people are very concerned about how to pull this stuff back together. I know that once we get a good foundation built, we need to now connect this whole thing together and get the processes to work and the data to flow and whatnot. Do you have any thoughts on, because you were very successful in taking a lot of value and a lot of ROI to the organization up front with a lot of different use cases, and then bringing this all together in a connected planning manner for decision excellence.

 

Raj Budhrani 0:18:54.9:

Yes. So I think we had a good plan when we started three years ago. It never went that way. We were also agile as a team. I think, with Ed's team's help and within our own Anaplan teams, we were pretty agile in adapting to what are the priorities of the organization. That was a big shift. Our mindset was, the example I gave on smart global footprint, like how we manage the facilities, because that was an instant problem that we had. So we were pretty agile in terms of approaching these priorities of the company simultaneously or in parallel to the plan we drafted, how we will sequence, what models we will bring in on Anaplan and how we will start connecting. So these two things went hand-in-hand. The agility that we had is that we started placing the models in different functions. For example, when we created the facilities model, we also started creating the headcount planning model in finance, which also translated into headcount expense. This year we are looking into how it converts to an IT plan, you will need laptops and licenses and all those simple stuff. So we started placing these different models in different areas. 

 

Raj Budhrani 0:20:21.4:

Once we had this group, we have strategy, we have corporate, we have BU, we have expenses now, we have revenue forecasting sales, we are yet to connect. We have the integrated business planning happening in SAP, IBP for our hardware business. We are now bringing in that data. So we have these different components that are sitting in different functions, but we centrally control, and we started connecting these models. Always the plan was a standard definition of the data components and making sure the different groups are aligned. Once these models are settled, we started connecting them or integrating them. We started integrating the source systems as well. We don't want to upload any data, so we connected SAP, success factors, salesforce and multiple other tools.

 

Ed Majors 0:21:16.2:

That's great. As you started, when you had this initial vision a couple years ago, you weren't expecting to spin off a major division. Right now, you may be in the small acquisition, you're doing $30 billion acquisition. So maybe just talk about how you were able to think through this and create the agility where you could carve out a major business unit and then merge in a new business unit into the existing organization really without skipping a beat here.

 

Raj Budhrani 0:21:52.4:

This goes back to when we started, that was the first point we discussed as a team that how we create a structure so that in and out can be managed easily, the mapping can be managed easily. That was the heart and core of how we designed the Anaplan models. So we divested in SIC, we divested in small other businesses, then now the big acquisition is coming. Our core structure has not shifted because that's something we developed to bring in and kick out some of these business units. That was always on the top of our mind because we knew this is going to happen all the time, we can't just create new models or change the models because of the acquisitions or divestiture. Not even that, even we split the business units and we merge the business units as well all the time. We split the business groups and business units, all the business groups, all the time, functions. So that keeps happening, that is not going to change. The core central mapping that we created, that remains the same. That has helped us in a big way to manage all these different changes that are happening. 

 

Raj Budhrani 0:23:19.2:

So our models are not changing. What we created is that this model was related to say SIC, now SIC is gone, we just deactivate that model. When Ansys is coming next year, once that deal closes, we created Ansys model. We just duplicated the current business unit model, and we have some unique nuances from the acquisition that will happen after day one. Once we close the deal, then we will discuss with Ansys and see what some specific nuances we need to take care into that model. Other than that, our models are there, they don't change much.

 

Ed Majors 0:24:03.0:

That's great. So I can't have a discussion without talking about GenAI and AI, and we've been talking about this for a while. I know it's a top priority from your CFO. We actually just kicked off our initiative on Monday. Maybe just talk about the broader strategy, now that you've got this amazing foundation, the data is right, the data is automated, it's flexible to let you do divest, acquire. Now what are we doing with the machine? How does the machine come into place?

 

Raj Budhrani 0:24:38.4:

So outside Anaplan, actually we have what we call the whole data strategy and operating model. That's a whole program that we are running across the company. We partner with the engineering transformation team and with the central engineering team as well on this AI, ML and data strategy. So our first goal last year in 2024 was to create the data layer and catalog all the data items, because that was the key. Without cataloging, setting the data stewardship, there was no point. So a lot of effort has gone into that last year. It was very slow, but a lot of effort we had to put last year. This year, we are bringing in more and more data and functions and stewards onto the data lake so that they can catalog these items and it is available to us. From connectivity to Anaplan, we connected Anaplan to our snowflake, which is our data lake, so that is the in and out for Anaplan for us. Again, if somebody is cataloging the data, Anaplan can pick up that data component and use it in Anaplan. So that worked very well for us since last year.

 

Raj Budhrani 0:25:56.8:

The second layer which we started is the AI layer, AIML layer with the Deloitte team on the precision view. So that's the layer we are keeping on the top of snowflake, which is basically a huge accelerator for us rather than building ourselves, huge accelerator. So that is where now we are building the AI models, which will work with Anaplan, work with the other data analytics tools that we have as well. So that is the AI layer. The third layer, which we are planning, is how we can create the GenAI on the top of it so that it is available, not only to Anaplan, but others as well. How you extract the data, how you play with it, what kind of data visualization you want to do, that is something which we are planning this year again.

 

Ed Majors 0:26:49.3:

That sounds great. There's a lot of heavy lifting, I think, over the last couple of years to get the infrastructure in place, and it feels like we're now at such a level of innovation. So I guess the question is what's next?

 

Raj Budhrani 0:27:02.1:

There is a lot, as you can imagine. Our goal is, coming back to the edge use cases, we never focused on the finance only use cases, the goal was how we can bring Anaplan for decision making, rather than just planning and forecasting itself. So we are going beyond financials, going to the non-financial plans, whether it is business unit plans, for example we are working with one of the business units, what is your five-year strategy? Based on the five-year strategy that comes to the strategy office, what is the impact on your business group? What investments you are going to make in the next five years? So bringing in those, like I will need these investments, which is obviously the finance, dollars, but there is non-financial plans that are associated with those. We will be bringing all those non-financial plans which will convert into the dollars, which will eventually convert into the decision making for the companies. That's the focus this year, so AIML, then we'll be focusing on the non-financial business unit plans this year. Then next year is making sure it stabilizes and works for everyone. 

 

Ed Majors 0:28:29.7:

Yes, hopefully we'll be around for a couple of years with you.

 

Raj Budhrani 0:28:32.5:

Nobody complains that Anaplan is not working.

 

Ed Majors 0:28:34.4:

Yes, exactly.