Jeremy Diamond 0:00:13.4:

Good afternoon. Apologies if I startled anybody. This mic is hot. Welcome back. We're going to talk about financial applications. We moved from AI and innovation at Nasdaq to financial applications at Lincoln Financial. I think, look, what we've heard all day today really is: increasing pressure, with shorter time to get it done. Increasing speeds, increasing pressure - and time-to-value is super-important. So at Anaplan, I think you heard it from the keynote this morning, two years ago we had no applications, no out-of-the-box applications. We were talking about our classic engine and other things we were doing. Last year I think we had two or three applications and this year our roadmap, we've got twenty-six applications. So the whole purpose of that is to provide quicker time-to-value out of the box, more turnkey functionality to solve some of the most key, pressing problems.

Jeremy Diamond 0:01:15.4:

At Lincoln Financial there was a similar issue: to provide clean and timely forecasting to the executive team in a super-complex organization, with a ton of different data feeds flowing in. The previous solutions didn't go that well, and so you'll hear from Lincoln Financial on how Anaplan's financial applications help solve that. So to kick us off, again I'll invite my friend Neil Thomas back on to the stage.

Neil Thomas 0:01:45.3:

I should've just stayed on from the last one. Thank you, Jeremy. I am the Johnny Carson of Anaplan, doing my interview thing, but before we get started… I don't think I introduced myself last time. I am an SVP of business applications. So all the applications you've been hearing about, I help bring to market. I specialize in finance because I'm a failed accountant and so I know my debit from a credit and all that sort of thing. We're going to talk a little bit about applications, particularly with finance, and then bring on Natalie a little bit around a real journey - just like we did an hour or so ago. I'm really old, as you might have realized. Lots of gray hair, plenty of wrinkles, bad lifestyle - but let's talk about planning changes to start with, which has been the theme of any slide I've ever done in this industry for about 40 years. I'm going to talk about - oh my gosh, they're growing even more - we're going to talk a little bit about how our innovation has been driven by customers. We didn't just think of this in isolation. How do we build applications? How do we get feedback? We'll talk a little bit about that and then hopefully bring you some power to finance. Then we'll talk about the real world with Natalie. 

Neil Thomas 0:02:54.5:

Planning changes are growing. I just did a webinar with my friend. Faram, rom Forrester. This theme has been around forever. Everything is getting harder, everything is getting faster, data are getting bigger, everything is getting more complex. So planning and planning and planning. Now, I am a planning guy. The reason I joined a planning company 500 years ago, was the value of a company is in what we're going to do next, not what we just did. How do you plan what you do next? You need a really, really good planning application to do that. This is going to get even harder, even more difficult. Therefore, of course you need a really, really good planning application - and you need to be a master of that planning application. Don't leave that mastery in the hands of somebody else outside your company. You heard Katie talk about a COE. Make sure you've got some of those skills in house to drive this forward.

Neil Thomas 0:03:45.1:

It's only going to get harder now with, obviously, the advent of AI and how to really exploit AI for value. We talked about some of the challenges last time around: are your data right, is your culture right? Making sure it's compliant, making sure it's going to be open. Integrating with your other initiatives, etc. So that's where applications come from. Applications for us in the finance world, we have three primary audiences that I like to try to service. There's the CFO: the CFO obviously wants a consistent, predictable, one place for all of their financial processes looking to the future. The second I close my books, I should be into my future-looking system that can range from I consolidate, I have a financial consolidation system - which of course Anaplan has an application for that - all the way through to my five, ten, twenty-five-year strategic plan and all of the components in between across the business. That's what a CFO wants. That's what Anaplan provides.

Neil Thomas 0:04:42.7:

In the FP&A world, we have different levels of FP&A from a complexity and a challenge perspective. So we have corporate FP&A. They float around at the top, they do the high-level stuff. We've got our embedded business FP&A. They run the division. They're the federated finance teams that perhaps Katie talked about. They're sitting in the business. They're running finance for the business. Increasingly, we see functional FP&A, which is of course I'm sitting with HR or I'm sitting with supply chain and I'm helping that part of the business operate even more effectively. Our last audience is, of course, back to accounting. We've got to close those books, we've got to be compliant, get our statutory reporting out. So this audience has had all their different conflicting needs and that's where applications come from. So on our lovely layer cake chart, when - you see a couple of things. You see the engines; we have engines for planning and we have engines for consolidation. 

Neil Thomas 0:05:37.3:

They are two fundamentally different things. One is very consistent, it's very regulated, it's very compliant. One is, anything could happen in the next five minutes. It needs to be extremely flexible, multi-dimensional. Obviously that's consolidation versus planning. We need to glue those things together so that they are optimized for the process that they are intended for. But of course, the data are interchanging as quickly and as efficiently as we like. That's where our data ontology principles are coming from; that unified data model that the team talked about this morning. Before, you would have to build all of this stuff yourself. Now, part of my team - I won't claim all the credit - my team create those applications, maintain those applications, work on the next releases. That's what our team does in the integrated business applications team. 

Neil Thomas 0:06:22.7:

The last thing that we're doing for you is testing all of the latest, greatest stuff because we build the applications on the latest, greatest stuff. It's always on Polaris. It will always have some agent AI involved. We will test CoModeler to extend it and document it. We will do all of those things for you so you do not have to do them yourself. So a whole bunch of reasons why that slide is important and why the architecture is important. Drilling into finance just a little bit, we're going to talk obviously a little bit about consolidation. We do have an excellent consolidation application. It's out there somewhere floating around if you'd like a demo. I believe there's a session later today about that. Integrated financial planning is our fundamental free statement core engine for financial planning which, if you are embarking on a finance journey and you're not using IFP, you are doing it wrong is how I would say it. So I have this conversation with customers all the time. IFP is the fundamental starting point if you're moving on to a finance project. 

Neil Thomas 0:07:23.8:

It would be either the endgame - and we heard that from Nasdaq; they're doing the detail first and looking to combine into IFP - or it's just that's my starting point, that's where I need to go and then build out the detail below. So IFP is like the most critical application. When you looked at the 300 applications that we've sold, about a third of those were integrated financial planning. It is the fundamental core of all FP&A within Anaplan and it services each of our audiences. Corporate, of course, have a high-level strategic plan; IFP can help them with that. They consolidate things; IFP can help them with that. Each business unit can have their own IFP if they wish. If they're so unique and special, meaning they need to consolidate, perfectly fine. We can do it that way - or combinations thereof. Within the functional FP&A group, then of course what we can do there is we can take parts of IFP, so maybe the OpEx piece, and fit that to the requirements. What you're doing with IFP as a result is having the standardized, the process is becoming more consistent, the data are becoming more consistent and then you get all of the value that you need. 

Neil Thomas 0:08:30.6:

So a journey to do that looks something like this. I'll start in consolidations because I've got to close the books. Then I need to think about how I perform my integrative financial planning, collect my actuals from my consolidated books or outside of my ERP system. I then go into applications that will help me do this much more effectively. If I'm a SaaS company I might use our Subscription Revenue Planning application. A very powerful application for planning at the contract level for every single subscription that you have as a revenue-generating device, and then modelling that with all the appropriate drivers, performing your cohort analysis. That is all ready, it's all built in; you just switch it on and load it with the data. If I have other business unit areas or the functional areas, I can go into leveraging my supply chain applications and surrounding that as necessary based on what type of business am I? Of course, in the functional FP&A side, let's sit with HR, perform our operational workforce planning. People are our most important asset; how are we going to deploy them? How are we going to fund them? What are they going to work on? 

Neil Thomas 0:09:32.4:

Then extending that, [unclear word 0:09:34.1] my Contact Center; that's a very specialized application for capacity planning for contact centers, health centers, etc. So as you look at this journey that goes on and on with Anaplan, you'll obviously have applications that you can pick and choose from and say, 'This is more easy for me, it's more appropriate for me, it gets me there on the starting point.' Or perhaps, 'No, we don't. We're going to go in another direction.' But I would always encourage you to look at the applications, even if it's stealing a whole bunch of best practices, all the things that we've done and then modeling them yourselves. That's perfectly fine. We're just here to share what we've been working on and why. One of the other things that you can do, of course, is plug that in with any other application that you want, because we will not have applications for absolutely everything. But the same data ontology, consistency really helps you from an application starting point. 

Neil Thomas 0:10:23.5:

So that's the journey of applications and how they are fueled by our customers. Our customers are telling us, 'We want time-to-value, we want this predictability.' We have that solution for you here. Now let's click through. I'm going to talk about an industry solution, so in more detail if I was a SaaS company and I'm thinking about Anaplan ourselves, this is maybe the combination of applications that's appropriate for me. Again, I have my consolidation. I have my core financial statements. All of the feeding areas below with a particular focus on projects. I find an Anaplan. I obviously implement things. That's a project, so how do I plan for how many consultants do I need or solution architects do I need or project managers do I need to service my customers? Make sure that they are employed. Perhaps even linking into operational workforce planning to go raise the hiring [?RECs 0:11:11.9]. What's the cost of all of that feeds into my P and L. Obviously SaaS companies, we're very revenue-focused - like all companies - but we allocate quotas, we allocate territories. We do all sorts of complex, crazy stuff. Segment our accounts.

Neil Thomas 0:11:11.9:

Our suite of revenue performance management applications really, really help do that for companies that are very sales, dynamic driven with feet on the street, selling things. That's what those applications do for you. I might start with the whole suite. I might start with one. It doesn't really matter. Then I can also, again, continue to extend from there, should I wish. That's a journey through applications. How does that empower finance? We talk a lot about built-in business expertise. So of course we're a software company. We know our product really well. These applications have been battle-tested through the design phase. This is part of my advert that I will now make. If anybody would like to help work on an application, we have seen our roadmap. Areas of things that you think we can learn from, we're delighted to have design customers. If you're an existing customer on an application, please, please, please become much more active with us because we want the next upgrade, the next release to be even more powerful and effective. Or if it's on our roadmap over the next 12-to-18 months, I'm very happy to share that and become part of that group as well. Help us guide and create this application for you. Why go build it from scratch when we can do that work for you? 

Neil Thomas 0:12:39.1:

We also work with - are working increasingly with partners and so we obviously have myself, let's say, sitting next to a partner who is now building an application based on their expertise. Well, of course we'd like design customers to participate in that as well. So this momentum of applications and built-in best practices is from ourselves. Our experience of implementing from our partners and of course, most importantly from our design customers as well. It's a great experience. Whenever you see anything and you see somebody, 'Can you change that, can you move that,' a week later the product comes back and we've done it for you, obviously that's a lovely experience of working with us in a collaborative way. Everything we do is, obviously, embedded with AI so we are designing the applications to be as AI-ready as they can. Let's say I implement IFP. I will have a whole bunch of questions and queries that come with that. We've designed those for you. If you've built that from scratch, you would have to go train that yourself. 

Neil Thomas 0:13:37.7:

If I implement IFP and I want to add a very bespoke revenue application that we haven't got to yet, and you want to use CoModeler to do that, we will have tested that already for you. So again, it gives you that safe, secure foundation with lots of time-to-value benefit other than versus just build it from yourself. Last and not least, we do put these things through our own product testing cycles of: how fast is the response time, how big can they get, how long can a dimension be? Make sure that they are robust and rigid for you. Obviously, if you built from scratch, you're doing all of that yourself. Well, we do all the stress testing internally with the applications for you. So a whole bunch of benefits: customer driven, AI-ready, super-scalable, super-flexible, implemented many times. A whole bunch of customers have been adding to this list for us and giving us lots of feedback. Hopefully, in the audience some of you are benefiting already. Again, if you'd like to benefit, I'm always happy to talk about applications. Having said that, let's talk about someone that is benefiting from applications. I'd love to welcome Natalie Podkul to the stage. Natalie is from Lincoln Financial. It's a long walk from over there, isn't it, really? It feels like it should just jump up. Thank you, Natalie. Come join me.

Natalie Podkul 0:15:00.1:

Hello. My mic works. 

Neil Thomas 0:15:01.7:

Hello. 

Natalie Podkul 0:15:01.7:

Hello, how are you?

Neil Thomas 0:15:03.3:

Hello, how are you?

Natalie Podkul 0:15:03.1:

I'm great.

Neil Thomas 0:15:05.4:

Excellent. We have a very interesting conversation with you, I think ahead for everybody, because given all the excitement you've had of implementing Anaplan. But before we get started, why not say: who's Natalie, what does she do? Let's start from that.

Natalie Podkul 0:15:21.3:

Excellent, so my name is Natalie Podkul. I am from Lincoln Financial. I've been there over ten years. Sat in my space about three years now in expenses. Lincoln has about $2.6 billion worth of expenses that is under our purview that we're using in Anaplan. I run the corporate finance piece of G&A expenses. What I mean by that is, I have partners in the life segment and annuities and GP that run their business segments. However, it is my team's responsibility to tell them all the allocated overhead expenses, what they're getting, why they're getting them - all of those pieces. So that's where I sit at Lincoln.

Neil Thomas 0:16:03.1:

From a now-time perspective, you're - Natalie earlier talked about COEs. How have you structured your team to help this adventure?

Natalie Podkul 0:16:11.2:

Lincoln does have a COE team. My Anaplan journey was a little bit interesting so I will go ahead and say that around this time last year, we went and purchased in Anaplan as well as on the classic platform. The art of the possible at Lincoln was not the best way for us. What I mean by that is, we knew we needed a better way to do long-term planning. We needed a better way to do forecasting. I needed someone to help, if you will, say, 'What are the best practices?' We very quickly pivoted I would say last - probably September timeframe, if you will. I think we probably signed with IFP late August. We started with the IFP app. Since our Anaplan journey with the IFP has been hugely successful, we did a… We broke it down in parts, so some of my peers were like, 'Okay, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? We built this system but we didn't get something, and now you're pivoting to IFP. Why are you doing this?' 

Natalie Podul 0:17:22.0:

I needed to show value very quickly, so what we decided to do was start with long-range planning. Similar to Nasdaq, we do rolling forecast as well as we have the big budget season. We have everything like that, as well as all of our quarterly deliverables. In September we decided to go with IFP and start on long-range planning. Why we wanted to do that is we're like, let's do this first. I had the goal to be able to use IFP and long-range plan for our November board meetings. So that was our quick timeframe that we went with Anaplan.

Neil Thomas 0:18:03.1:

Yes, so that was a bit quick. Let's be clear, so you started off on a journey that - bumps and bruises because you were building from scratch and trying to work out…

Natalie Podkul 0:18:11.7:

Correct.

Neil Thomas 0:18:12.5:

Didn't want the [unclear words 0:18:13.4]. You could keep building forever, so you wanted us to come in and do the discipline, a bit of structure - which is obviously what IFP… A good IFP customer is like you, where they say, 'Let's start with the application.' If you want to be super-bespoke, don't start with an application but take a lot longer. I mentioned the COE, so just back to that just a little bit, so the skills that you… What do you have in house now versus [?last time 0:18:38.2]?

Natalie Podkul 0:18:38.5:

So we have a small COE team. They're made up of three people; two architects and then the COE team that runs it. The COE team does not roll up through me; it actually rolls up through our FP&A team, if you will, so I'm one outset of the corporate FP&A team.

Neil Thomas 0:18:56.2:

Excellent, I did not realize that. How do you get them to do what you want to do?

Natalie Podkul 0:19:01.4:

I'm really loud.

Neil Thomas 0:19:02.5:

There we go. There you go, that's the secret to successful implementation; be very loud.

Natalie Podkul 0:19:07.5:

Yes, I'm very loud, if you will.

Neil Thomas 0:19:09.3:

Brilliant. We go to the app in August. You have your November deadline - which is crazy - but…

Natalie Podkul 0:19:17.1:

We did it.

Neil Thomas 0:19:18.4: 

But you did it - because you're loud, probably, yes.

Natalie Podkul 0:19:20.3:

The other thing we did is, so we do have a small COE team, but what we realized is we needed a partner to do this. These are where my best friends, Zack and Esteban come in. They're not consultants; they're professional services group within Anaplan. We engaged them and they are our implementation partner that has been absolutely wildly successful for us. There are a lot of times that I'm like, 'I want to do this' and they're like, 'You want to do what?' I'm like, 'Well, let's take the IPF and use the extensions.' We've been great at that, so they've been really good at building on our extensions as to what we need.

Neil Thomas 0:19:56.0:

Brilliant, so IFP, you use full free financial statements, cash balance sheet or just income statements?

Natalie Podkul 0:20:01.5:

We're actually all expenses right now, so everything expense related is in IFP.

Neil Thomas 0:20:07.1:

I meant to ask it around the other way which was, so you've done that bit; what's happening next in the rest of the organization to leverage?

Natalie Podkul 0:20:16.0:

Yes, so what we did is we have - as I mentioned - the $2.6 billion. We report out through five reportable segments, but within that there are fourteen different departments that we run up that has each - SMC leaders that we have to report up through. Within those 14 departments there are - I don't want to say this out loud - but there are over 3,000 cost centers. So we are crazy complex. We go very, very low level, 3,000 different cost centers. We also have over 80 allocation methods that we allocate out through. That's through just not only the top of the house, the four segments, but also down to the very, very nitty-gritty of all the products. So we have a very complex piece of that that we do. That's the first thing; we did IFP with long-range plan. We successfully did it. We went with Anaplan to the board docs in November. Really that's when my CFO realized the value of, okay, you can do this and you can do it well.

Natalie Podkul 0:21:19.3:

The next thing we're doing is, I am challenging… So I don't know how accounting-ish people are in here, but there is a change to SOP 98, which is the capitalization of software in house, if you will, as well as in your IT teams. So we are bringing an extension in IFP; SAB 108 in there so that we can do all of our capitalization in there as a time tracking system for non-IT people, as well as using plan view loads in for there - our IT time tracking so that we can look at everything on a WIP basis, work in process basis, be able to allocate, to capitalize and then also when to amortize that. So that's one of the things we're doing. The other thing we're doing, being the [unclear word 0:22:11.3] insurance company, we are looking at deferred acquisition costs. My deferred acquisition cost models sit in Excel so we will be bringing those as a next step into Anaplan also.

Neil Thomas 0:22:22.1:

Got you. How long do you think that's going to take?

Natalie Podkul 0:22:25.2:

So my goal this year is to do SOP 98, and then next year we'll start on DAP. We're also having some of the original conversations. The other thing we're looking to put in is our incentive comp plans. Some teams have it in; the Salesforce forecasting piece - portion of our organization has put that in already, but this is outside of the sales piece. The annual plans, if you will, we'll be putting all those in also so we can do scenarios and things like that.

Neil Thomas 0:22:56.4:

So you've got this crazy amount of cost centers. Give us a flavor of… You talked about some complexity - and 80 allocation methods is nuts, obviously - but good for you. 

Natalie Podkul 0:23:05.2:

It's okay. 

Neil Thomas 0:23:08.0:

Just some of the complex examples, because Anaplan obviously can handle a lot of different things. So did you stretch the platform or stretch your IP in any way and go, 'No, it can't do that'? Or what were the most hairiest bits of the implementation?

Natalie Podkul 0:23:22.2:

There are a couple different ones, so the first one we'll use long-range planning for. In long-range planning, when you have allocation changes, when you're looking at things to… This is one area that segments don't really like talking about, because they're going to probably give them more expense, if you will. We have been able to build into the five-year plan their allocation changes two, three years out so that they know what changes they're getting. Also, we have projects - and we have a lot of strategic projects at Lincoln that we do when those are rolling off. So we're able to go to that level of detail and say, 'Okay, this project's ending in 2027. We can go ahead and drop that immediately' so that we have that. In our forecast and budgeting models that we do that go live next week, so we are going live next week with… I know, super-excited. A little nervous. Super-excited. We have done what we… Other than compensation, the other accounts that we focus the most time on are what we call our SCOTT accounts. So it's software, consulting, outsourcing, travel and temp help. 

Natalie Podkul 0:24:29.1:

So what we've been able to build in IFP is that our budgeters are actually budgeting those expenses by vendor and by project in what we call the SCOTT module that then is immediately flowed over into the CapEx, OpEx models so that all of our budgeting is done on this side. They can't modify it, so we can have the detail and work with procurement so we know who our vendors are. We see what expenses are going in. Also what the expense was budgeted for. Did that project close okay that we can bring that down in forecast? Or was there a pivot in scope and that changed the scope? So we've also done that in IFP.

Neil Thomas 0:25:08.4:

So going live with the bigger thing, so long-range planning, give us a flavor of the audiences, the users. Who are you having to change manage, and any learnings there?

Natalie Podkul 0:25:18.2:

Yes, so we did a mini-UAT, as I said. When I said we do this, I actually just checked the timeline; we signed with the Anaplan professional group late August, like I said, early September. In six weeks we launched long-range planning with them. Thank you. Also I have between 40 and 50 people that are planners across the enterprise that we had a change manage. I had one individual that, he was very, very negative. He was like, 'How we do it is great. I don't know how you want to do it.' Now he's coming to me going, 'Oh, I can do this in there and I can do this in there.' So that small UAT, bringing on one instance of the app, was so very successful for change management for us that now everybody has bought in. Everybody's excited about forecasting starting next week in there. 

Natalie Podkul 0:26:16.1:

The other thing that was crucial to us was not only bringing in the departments in our long-range plan, but also in the segments. As I mentioned, our long-range plan used to sit in Excel. It was myself and one of my team members that largely did everything. We used the trend analysis to build everything out, putting it, layering in. What's your cost to healthcare? What's your outlook for your people cost? Where are your projects? It sat in Excel, so now what we're doing is all of the departments have to individually sign off on their long-range plan and any changes to long-range plan. So we've made them the owners of their five-year plan instead of making myself and my team the owners - which has been very successful.

Neil Thomas 0:27:02.4:

That's a big process change, right?

Natalie Podkul 0:27:04.1:

Very big.

Neil Thomas 0:27:05.1:

Yes, absolutely. For your users that you're rolling out to, I'm always curious about these big bang moments when you roll out. Have you given them any training testing now? How have you got them ready?

Natalie Podkul 0:27:15.0:

Yes, so as I mentioned they were in there for long-range planning. Yesterday they did… So we did training… People have been in there testing it with us. I had our primary testers that were my team and my crucial people that I need to make sure… When I say my crucial people, these are the people in the org that are change agents as also change complainers, if you will. I made sure that the people that I knew would tell me what was wrong were in this testing group. Once we launched those guys and they signed off, we also then did secondary testers so that people could go in and see everything. The other thing that was crucial is, within six weeks we had our data, our structure, our people in the app where they could see it. So it wasn't just a demo of, 'This is what it's going to look like.' It was very quick to say, 'Oh wait, those are my cost centers. These are the numbers I recognize.' That was also very helpful.

Neil Thomas 0:28:13.3:

Yes, that's another advantage of the app. 

Natalie Podkul 0:28:14.2:

Very much so.

Neil Thomas 0:28:14.6:

You have to load up the structure. How easy was getting your data ready? We've always talked about data a lot. What was it like for Lincoln?

Natalie Podkul 0:28:21.4:

It's actually been very clear. We use PeopleSoft. Like I said, our COE team has been great working with our IT partners as well as the Anaplan team to get everything in there, get it cleaned up. What we did do before we went on IFP, is go through the listing, if you can believe it, the 3,000 cost centers - or even more. We went down and shut down cost centers. Like, what are we doing? How are we doing this? Making sure that the data were clean and really challenged everybody on that before we went live, so that was very helpful; to only load in what we needed.

Neil Thomas 0:28:54.4: 

Did you change any process, like different planning methods? Was it a rebuild or was it, 'No, we're taking advantage of this to actually refresh what we're doing'?

Natalie Podkul 0:29:04.4:

A little bit of both. I have some teams that want to go down to the cost center level to not only plan and forecast, but also five-year plan. They are able to do that. I've had other people that say, 'I don't need it at this granular level, let's go here,' so they can plan also at this level. It was giving people the ability to choose which level they want to do and also being able to run with that, so it's been the benefit of both.

Neil Thomas 0:29:28.4:

That's interesting. Force the standard.

Natalie Podkul 0:29:31.4:

Yes, I was trying - and I'll be honest with you - it worked out this way. Now, from a forecast point of view, they are doing the cost center view because that's honestly what our team wanted. I tried to pull it up and they wanted to live in the details. So we're letting them live in the details.

Neil Thomas 0:29:46.3:

Okay, and as we're about to go live, what other - any other lessons learned? If you knew what you knew… Wait a minute. If you knew now what you knew then a year ago, what would - anything different? Obviously, you wouldn't… You'd change a few things.

Natalie Podkul 0:30:00.2:

I think I would change a few things. Number one is definitely making it okay that we failed first, in my opinion. I couldn't get anybody's buy-in without IFP. I was struggling with it. When we brought in the IFP app and I then got the best of the best, like what were the best practices there? Being okay with that. Bringing in the change champions was the right time to do that, so that was definitely a great lesson learned. I also think it was… Other things we could've done differently. I think that's pretty much the big things.

Neil Thomas 0:30:36.2:

Yes, that sounds pretty big.

Natalie Podkul 0:30:37.1:

Yes.

Neil Thomas 0:30:38.4:

That's enough. I've got to ask you about AI. What's the philosophy at Lincoln about AI? We've got Nasdaq going crazy. Where are you guys?

Natalie Podkul 0:30:47.1:

Lincoln just brought in a new AI SMC member, so he is great. He's been transforming it. We have the Copilot, things like that. We are starting on our AI journey. I'm hoping that by the end of the day I've got approval to bring in my AI agents today. 

Neil Thomas 0:28:14.6:

Fantastic.

Natalie Podkul 0:31:05.8:

I just followed up, but we are excited about that.

Neil Thomas 0:31:09.1:

So you're going to go Analyst and work with the users, got you. No CoModeler yet?

Natalie Podkul 0:31:14.0

We're working there.

Neil Thomas 0:31:15.0:

Thinking about that?

Natalie Podkul 0:31:15.2:

We're slow. We're a 120-year-old company; we're a little bit slow.

Neil Thomas 0:31:19.3:

No problem. We're crashing through these questions. What have we missed? Have we missed anything?

Natalie Podkul 0:31:24.2:

I don't think so.

Neil Thomas 0:31:26.5:

Yes, I can't think of anything that we've missed either. So we might as well just open up to everybody else - unless somebody else thinks we missed something that I should ask. That was quick. That was obviously quick, so anybody got any questions for Natalie or myself? Don't be shy. There are prizes - big prizes; weekends away in the Caribbean if you ask a question. Maybe.

Natalie Podkul 0:32:11.0: 

How loud are you?

Neil Thomas 0:32:13.3:

I can hear you. It's a miracle.

Audience 0:32:16.2:

So with the app, does it come with multiple iterations? How do you guys do the long-term planning? What's on the app side of things? How many iterations are you guys expecting [inaudible 0:32:28.2] 15-to-20 different iterations on either our forecast, our plan and our strat plan. So I'm just curious to see how you guys are going to be able to handle it within the app natively. Or do you guys build it in later on [inaudible 0:32:43.4]?

Natalie Podkul 0:32:44.2:

Yes.

Neil Thomas 0:32:45.5:

Yes, sorry, just to make sure so other folks could hear. So you're thinking about the versions and the scenarios within IFP and how quickly you took… How does that work? Maybe how did you stand it up, so what was that like, and then how did - versions and flexibility from there?

Natalie Podkul 0:33:03.2:

Excellent. There's versioning in there. It's snapshotting so any time you make a change, we will snapshot it down in Anaplan. Very easy to do, so we can do those different iterations as well as any scenarios that we have. We run all the scenarios in through Anaplan. The other thing that we do, so again we do monthly forecasting, so every month we load every - our actuals in. Then we go ahead, open up the forecast time, bring it down and then what we are actually doing… So you can do a lot in Anaplan with their forecast - their reports. Sorry, the word slipped my mind, but what I've also realized is I didn't want all the users that are 80 plus across the teams, not only just in the expense world, but in our larger FP&A teams. We also use an Excel add-in so we're actually pulling it down and loading it back into PeopleSoft so that people are not having to rebuild their Excel files that they do send out. We're doing that also. 

Natalie Podkul 0:34:07.0:

From a five-year forecasting point of view, as I mentioned it was an Excel. It was not great at scenarios, so we did it once and prayed that nobody asked to update it. That's not the world we live in anymore, so for last year we did… I think in a three-week span. I had five different iterations as well as scenarios that we run. We will then also go ahead and refresh it again in June for an updated piece. So all those things, it's a living, breathing piece that's very easy to go back and see. The way that the snapshots work, it's also to see - really easy to see what… The other thing is change control. Here's the other thing that I love about the app - and I don't know if anybody else runs into this. When we forecasted, things would change - and nobody knew why they changed. Well, now there's a history of who changed what, so now I know exactly who changed what and why it was changed and if I need to override that - which is also very helpful.

Neil Thomas 0:35:09.3:

Yes, so the application obviously comes with version scenarios built in. It's expecting you to do that. Part of the other thing I think I mentioned earlier was: IFP can be one thing or it could be corporate, division A, division B, division… You have to decide, so if your division C is extremely volatile and it's a retail store-based model and your division A is manufacturing, you would probably have IFPs and then one consolidated IFP. So you can deploy it as many times as you like and then fit it to the requirements that you have so it can flex up and down depending on how you want to do it.

Natalie Podkul 0:35:46.1:

It's very easy to use.

Neil Thomas 0:35:48.1:

It is ridiculously easy to use. Any other questions, anybody else? Thank you, sir.

Audience 0:35:54.5:

Natalie, can you talk about the alignment with FP&A and the decision-making to move forward? So you mentioned the groups actually don't roll up together, but now they're owning the Anaplan footprint for you. What was the involvement just getting to decision-making?

Natalie Podkul 0:36:08.4:

Great question. The question was on decisioning, on when we went to the IFP app and expenses. Our FP&A teams realized pretty quickly because of the additional need to continue to use the five-year plan, really, and to understand and to do more scenarios with it. So we had everybody bought in pretty quickly and that's why I did the mini-UAT. We did make a decision larger just outside of expenses, if you will, to purchase the app. So they're also using it. For example - and don't ask me a lot of questions on this because I know from the outside - but our COE team has done a lot also with sales forecasting. They're also seeing the benefits of it that we can utilize. But they've learned very quickly, because they can see their data and they can have ownership of the departments. For example, just in finance alone we have some finance teams that allocate over all the businesses. Then we have more specialized valuation teams that only allocate to their particular department, particular segment. Them being able to click into those as well as the growth drivers and ask those questions, was so beneficial to our leaders. The business units really are really enjoying those.

Neil Thomas 0:37:28.3:

Anybody got any other questions they'd like to ask Natalie? We always leave time for Q&A and there's never enough Q&A. Come on guys, there must be somebody with a burning question.

Natalie Podkul 0:37:41.1:

Highly recommend IFP. I can't say it enough. The other thing about it is to stretch it, as you mentioned. They give you what are the best situations and then you can go on and build everything - like we did the SCOTT template - to build in on what they have. Procurement's really enjoying that as well.

Neil Thomas 0:38:04.1: 

Looks like nobody wants to ask us any more questions. 

Natalie Podkul 0:38:06.8:

That's okay. 

Neil Thomas 0:38:08.0:

I know. Must've done a great job. Natalie, thank you very much indeed. 

Natalie Podkul 0:38:11.1:

Thank you so much.

Neil Thomas 0:38:12.8:

Thank you so much.

Natalie Podkul 0:38:14.2:

Thank you, guys.

Neil Thomas 0:38:16.5:

Oh, Natalie, you can't leave. Because you're going live next week.

Natalie Podkul 0:38:20.6:

We are. 

Neil Thomas 0:38:21.6:

When you get back to the office - probably next week, somebody tell me - you're going to get one of these massive cakes. 

Natalie Podkul 0:38:26.4:

Oh, geez. 

Neil Thomas 0:38:27.1:

So after all that hard work and effort, enjoy your launch cake next week. 

Natalie Podkul 0:38:30.1:

Thank you. 

Neil Thomas 0:38:34.8:

Yes. Congratulations. We went through Q&A, so inevitably a few QR codes if you're interested in some of the things that we talked about and some of the applications I mentioned earlier. So please feel free to take pictures of those. There are folks out there demonstrating all of these great things for you, so enjoy that at your own leisure. With that I will say thank you very much for spending time with us this afternoon. Have a great conference. Thank you