Unknown Speaker 0:00:05.3: 

All right, everyone. The next session in [?Gala 0:00:08.2] room is Manulife's transformative journey with FP&A. Please welcome George, Zahir and Matt from Manulife, and Steve from Anaplan. 

 

Steve Werner 0:00:19.5: 

Well, thanks for joining us today. As we just said, we have the Manulife team here with us, so welcome and thank you for taking the time to do this panel with us. During today's session, we're really going to explore how Manulife went on this transformational journey within their FP&A team and discuss how they've gone through this process with Anaplan to date. But then also explore some things going forward, right, in terms of where they're planning to take this. With that, I'm going to pass it over here to George and let him provide some background around Manulife just as a company, and then also just where they're at in their journey. George, go for it. 

 

George Trowse 0:01:06.0: 

Good to be here, so thank you to Anaplan, and great to be at their conference this year and hope to be back for many years to come. We've had a great relationship and I think that's continuing to build as we work out through the years. For those of you who don't know: Manulife is a large financial institutions company. We are in lots of different places. We have a big presence in Asia. We have a presence in Canada and then we're John Hancock in the US. We have an insurance business where we support personal individuals and we also support businesses. Then we have an asset or global wealth asset management company which supports retirement individuals and companies, so a pretty broad company. We have a lot of employees; 30,000 plus. We have lots of customers. We have lots of agents; over 100,000, and lots of distribution channels. 

 

George Trowse 0:01:57.5: 

The reason I say all that is, there's a certain amount of complexity when you're pulling a plan together or trying to do a forecast. I think that's part of the reason we look to Anaplan to put the system in because it can handle all of those things and help us pull things together. I think in terms of Anaplan journey, I'll probably break it into two sections. I've been in the company just over two years. The Anaplan journey started a little bit before that, but I think our initial phase was a little bit decentralized. We had Anaplan in some places. We did put Anaplan in expenses at the global level. We did start building out an Anaplan CoE based out of Asia - and actually reported in to Asia at that time. I think starting 2024, we've gone for more of the big bang, right? We wanted to be able to put everyone on the same system. So early or mid-2024 - before the planning cycle - we got the whole company from an FP&A point of view on to one system.  

 

George Trowse 0:02:57.1: 

Eliminated a lot of manual process. Eliminated a lot of spreadsheets and that was a great first step. The journey we're on now - and we’ll be finished asset management probably in the next six months or so - is building the models that drive all the forecasting and budgeting. Wealth management, as I said - I don't mean this in a bad way - but it's a little more simple than some of the insurance businesses, so we should be finished that. But it's a big business and it has lots of different streams. Then we're really getting into the insurance part, which has a little more complication. We have a big presence in Asia and a huge distribution force in Asia, so we're actually leading with the sales forecasting in Asia. They're going to do it for us, whereas on the policyholder experience side we're actually going to… We've started in North America and we're going to roll that out the other way, so still on the journey but we've come a long way. 

 

George Trowse 0:03:51.0: 

We're seeing a lot of benefits already and it's been really exciting. We'll probably get into it, but I think the AI piece is really exciting for us. We've come from somewhere quite manual. We're better now, but I think AI is really going to be able to take us forward. 

 

Steve Werner 0:04:07.1: 

Yes, fantastic to hear - and thank you for that overview. I think there's a lot of relevant information you're going to hear today, especially if you're in the same business as Manulife. But also, it applies to a lot of other industries as well, so hopefully you guys get a lot out of that. We'll get to the AI topic here in a little while. Zahir, feel free to introduce yourself. Then just a lead-in question for you is really: what really - what challenges were you facing at Manulife that got you into this transformative journey on FP&A? 

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:03:51.0: 

Thank you, so Zahir Mohamed. My focus is on the planning of the company and also forecasting. So really, it's setting the targets at the business level, at the company level. Ensuring those targets align with executive expectation and the analysts’ expectation, because in the end, shareholders, the executives of the board; all critical stakeholders in our process. In terms of what led us to this - going down this path, I'd start with going back to our role as FP&A teams across the company. We support the CEO. We support the CFO. We support the GMs and the CFOs within the businesses. It's really up to us to ensure that we're providing the right level of insights, the right level of analysis, ensuring that we can generate the scenarios that matter. Running a strategy through our financials. Understanding the outcomes. Doing those what-ifs. That is really what our role should be. 

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:05:47.2: 

It means understanding the opportunities that are available, the risks, all of the levers that you have at your fingertips, so that's what we're trying to do. When you look back at how you get there, how do you provide that information? That's when you start to uncover where the issues sit. As George described, companies are very complex. Insurance and wealth across businesses in Asia, every country, going down to the product level in Canada and the US, again down to the product level. All of those models, all of the forecasts and the plan, it lives in Excels. I think a lot of us suffer from that, so you ask a question; well, you’ve got to find the right person to ask the question. It flows down the chain. Eventually, it gets to the right person. They run it through their Excel. They send it back up. When you're sitting in - and we were sitting with our former CEO just last year - he asked the question. 'We'll get back to you.' Five days later, 'We'll get back to you,' but that is the reality of the situation.  

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:06:44.5: 

You don't have that information at your fingertips. It's not transparent enough. The drivers, the assumptions are all buried in Excel, not available to you. Trying to run a what-if scenario, very, very difficult, so that's the complexity. The other part, it's the speed. The speed isn't there because, again, I have to generate Excels and run through this entire process. Just not available, so what we did is we looked at all the businesses and the wealth and asset management team. I can see Kirsten and Ksenia sitting over there. That was one of the businesses we started with first. Start building out the models at the business level. Have all your drivers, your assumptions. Being able to run those what-if scenarios on the wealth side. On the insurance side - as George mentioned - we wanted to walk before we ran. So let's understand how the models work today in Excel. Let's design what that feature stage should look like. Let's create standards, where we can, across similar insurance businesses across the globe. 

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:07:43.2: 

Let's not just standardize in Canada and standardize in the US and standardize in Hong Kong; let's figure out how we can standardize across the board. By doing that, we'll now enable that ability to do scenarios, to understand drivers, to understand assumptions because it'll all be very transparent within the system and at our fingertips. Again, if I summarize: from an executive perspective they want insightful information and they want it quickly. That's what we're trying to enable through our Anaplan journey. 

 

Steve Werner 0:08:14.4: 

Yes, excellent, and the disconnected tools, right? A lot of various tools that you had in your ecosystem, including Excel - we know everybody uses Excel, right, which is understandable. But I think your focus on, how do we improve from there was a really important realization. 

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:08:32.2: 

Yes, I think the key in last year was getting the foundation in place, so rather than start building models across the company, let's get everyone on the same system. So you go from multiple systems, multiple Excels. Let's have everyone on Anaplan, and that was the big push last year. That was a massive change management task which Matt helped push quite a bit on. Now we're at the stage where everyone's on the same system. They understand how it works and now they're hungry for those models. So get me off Excel, get me into the system, so everything is now happening in the same ecosystem. 

 

Steve Werner 0:09:10.0: 

Yes, excellent. Well, you mentioned Matt, so Matt, feel free to introduce yourself as well. Then maybe talk a little bit around that: how did process and technology come into play as you started to roll this out across your team? 

 

Matt Massenzio 0:09:22.8: 

Sounds good. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Matt Massenzio. I am the AVP of finance process modernization so I work very closely with Zahir and George. Really, that bridge between the business and technology teams. Really making sure that we understand what the requirements are at the end of the day and make sure that we find the right solution for those requirements. As part of the work - and by the way, I'm from Boston, if anyone knows so… 

 

Steve Werner 0:09:52.1:  

Go Blue Jays? 

 

Matt Massenzio 0:09:54.5: 

Go Sox tonight. We can face the Blue Jays and we'll see how that goes. But anyway, when we talk about process and technology, for process it's really important - and I think Zahir, you touched on this - is making sure that we have a process that is consistent, standardized. We eliminate as much of the exceptions as possible. There are always going to be different nuances for a particular segment, geography that we might need to accommodate in the future process. But at the end of the day, before we go ahead and apply any technology - whether it's Anaplan or it's leveraging our Azure Data Lake or Power BI or any other reporting tools - we've really got to make sure that that process is well-understood and that we're delivering what the outcomes are that are expected of the business. So I think as we've started the journey in the last year, we've worked - as Zahir mentioned - to build that foundational model. So having a way to consolidate all of our summary metrics across for actuals, forecast and plan, leveraging Anaplan.  

 

Matt Massenzio 0:10:57.2: 

That was really our major objective; is to get everybody on the same platform. Make sure we had standard business unit and account hierarchies, standard currency translation. All those different aspects that were going to make us successful from the consolidation and total company reporting point of view. Then now this year is really that focus on the wealth asset management side, as well as getting into insurance on the deeper dive into design and the business unit modeling. So that's a lot of the work and the heavy lifting that we're doing this year, next year - and beyond - to really make sure that we're implementing forecasting and planning solutions that not only take advantage of the capabilities in Anaplan, but we're also storing all of our data for actuals, forecasts, plan within the Data Lake. Then that will allow us also to leverage AI capabilities off of our Azure Data Lake.  

 

Matt Massenzio 0:11:50.9: 

It'll allow us to leverage some of the new AI capabilities we heard earlier on the Anaplan, so there's a lot of opportunity there. But our primary objective and goal right now is to make sure we have good data that's going into the Lake, going into Anaplan, and making sure that we're modeling in the way that the business expects. 

 

Steve Werner 0:12:12.4: 

Excellent, yes, and I think that's going to be a very common setup as we start going forward. You heard us earlier establishing that data foundation is a really important core aspect of moving toward an AI future. You mentioned it a little bit, but I do want to hear some more details around: how did you just organize collaboration across these teams? There are a lot of different people and teams, I'm sure, that were involved in this. How did you go about that collaboration? What did you do specifically across the teams? 

 

Matt Massenzio 0:12:42.3: 

Yes, it's a good question. I think one of the big challenges, obviously, with any project that you're rolling out - not just the process but the change enablement, change management aspect of it. There are so many different players involved at so many different levels that you really want to understand what we're trying to deliver, at the end of the day, and make sure that we have all the various teams along the way in the journey. So it's not that we're just going ahead as a small project team and coming up with a solution that, at the end of the day, is not going to work for everybody. We need people to be bought in to the outcome. What we did was, we ended up having a concept of change champions. So we picked different folks from each of the different business areas within the organization to be that representative, to help provide requirements, collect feedback from their teams. Be able to be educated on the latest updates on the project so that they can take that back to their teams. 

 

Matt Massenzio 0:13:41.6: 

We have a very large organization and a lot of complexity in the business. So we really want to make sure that we were collecting feedback from everyone before we start going ahead and implementing a solution. The other thing that we did was, we had change readiness sessions. On a periodic basis, we would set up training sessions just to educate everyone on the new capabilities that were being introduced in Anaplan or the reporting that would come off of the Data Lake. All the various aspects of our FP&A target state that we want to educate and train users on. Even before we went live with it, just really making sure people had an understanding. They could provide more feedback so that we could incorporate that feedback in the outcome, so there was a lot of that work.  

 

Matt Massenzio 0:14:30.3: 

We had different working groups that focused on specific areas of the business requirements, understanding what rules we want in the system. Those people are representative of each of the different geographies. So that really helped to have these different working groups come back to the main group and say, 'Hey, this is a piece of the overall puzzle that we've come up with. This is our proposal for the future state,' and then get more feedback from the broader team. So that allowed us to really have a bunch of different working groups in parallel that helped us to speed up the execution of Anaplan. 

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:15:09.3: 

The one thing I'd add, too: we also kept the CFOs at the company level, segment level, business level well-informed in terms of what was happening, progress. Ensuring we were explaining it to the different stakeholders: what was in it for them? So from the analysts all the way up to the CFO, what was in it for them to keep them engaged as part of the process? 

 

Steve Werner 0:15:34.5: 

So speaking of - did you have something, George, on… 

 

George Trowse 0:15:36.1: 

Just one other thing on that - and this is really, really important: I'm a huge driver, so I will push people to make change, get things done. I think we got this wrong maybe a couple of years ago. If you push too hard and you ignore the stakeholders, that's actually even worse. We want to push to standardize and have one process; I totally agree with that and we should. But I think I've said to the team: at the same time, the stakeholder engagement and feedback is as important, and it's difficult. But I think because we've taken the time, it might mean you take a little longer to do something. But if you ignore that, you can end up with a solution that no one uses and then that's an absolute waste of time. That was a big learning for us. I think early days, we were like, 'Standardize, let's just push ahead.' I think now we're taking a little bit more thoughtful - but still trying to be aggressive. 

 

Steve Werner 0:16:25.2: 

That's great, yes. Tell me, speaking of stakeholders and CFO alignment and all that - maybe back to you, Matt: tell me a little bit around how you developed and executed on a business case to justify the program, and how you're going to make some of these changes. 

 

Matt Massenzio 0:16:43.0: 

Thank you, yes. This is on top of mind these days. It's working with George here on the business case and really making sure that we have a good plan for the future in terms of what we want to achieve and prioritize it. I think the struggle always is, there's so much that we could do. It's really making sure that we understand all of the various detailed scope elements that we want to potentially incorporate as part of our business case and build that ground-up analysis to say, 'These are the different items that we have out there. This is the type of effort it's going to take. These are the people that are - need to be involved,' whether it's our Anaplan CoE, which we have a best-in-class Anaplan CoE within Manulife that's been delivering on many of our Anaplan model builds over the last few years. Making sure that we have that structure in place so we can assign the effort, understand the resourcing and then build that bottom up. That way, we can compare that to perceived benefits to come up with that business case and socializing it with the business. We're in the stage now where we've done that bottom-up build. We're working through. Then the next phase is really socializing that with all of our stakeholders as well. 

 

Steve Werner 0:18:06.5: 

Okay.  

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:18:06.1: 

I think when we think in the business case, too, it comes back to: what do we want to achieve and when, and working backwards from there. So we set some pretty aggressive goals for ourselves in terms of the timeline. But to Matt's point: once you put that all on paper or Excel and layer on the different teams that need to be involved - whether it is CoE, consulting, our time project team, all the businesses that need to be involved, the IT folks that are going to do data transformation for us - it becomes more real in terms of what you can achieve and when. Then you refine and refine. What we've done is we've also created options. We have a minimum scope option: you want to do more; this is what it'll take. You want to do even more; this is what it will take. So anything can be accomplished. It's just you have to be a little bit realistic in terms of what you can achieve in the time you have. It's good that we will push and then it'll come back to reality in the end. 

 

George Trowse 0:19:12.1: 

I'll just add one other thing. I think we're really challenging what we call our global functions - and finance is part of that, as well as HR and legal compliance - that they need to deliver the same ROIs that the business do on their business cases. I think as you go through these projects, there is a certain amount of foundational work, no doubt. But I think you should challenge the teams to find the efficiencies across the company and make sure that that's part of the process. Now, you may choose to go a little bit lower than the hurdle, for whatever reason, but I think that's something… We had a session yesterday where we sat down and really challenged ourselves on the costs and the benefits and the timing, and making sure that we're working within that. If we go to the company and ask for money for investment - which we had to do - we need to hold ourselves to the same standard that we hold the businesses to. 

 

Steve Werner 0:20:04.2: 

Yes, that's a great point. George, staying with you: can you share with the audience here an example of how Anaplan has changed the way you work with executives within Manulife? 

 

George Trowse 0:20:19.4: 

Probably lots of things come to mind, but I'll go back to something Zahir touched on. When I started, the CFO would ring up and go, 'Hey where's the budget for Canada? I want to be able to see it like this.' So I would go to someone and go, 'Hey, can you get me this?' They'd put a spreadsheet together and then I'd send it back to him - and that might take a day, it's not too difficult. He's like, 'Yes, but I wanted to see this piece and this bit.' Then it's like, 'Oh, hang on, I'll have to go and get that done.' Then we'll go back and then we'll get into a meeting with the CEO and he's like, 'Well, what about if interest rates change? What happens?' So it was just this long-winded process - and I think some of the output, to be fair, was probably not that accurate because they're estimates. We will now actually - our CFO now has access to the data. I haven't had any - too many scary questions just yet, but he actually can access things real time while we're doing the plan. He can see and he can actually drill at the same time. So it's not him coming to me going, 'Hey, George,' and then I go and get this.  

 

George Trowse 0:21:18.7: 

Then we're not there yet, but I think what we will be able to do - and we're meeting with the CEO to go through the budget tomorrow - we'll be able to do scenario planning real time, right, rather than take five days. By the way, in five days it's too late; something else has happened. We'll be able to sit there and say, 'Hey, if we change this assumption,' and we'll be able to flow that through every single business. I think insurance is a little complex. I was in banking for a while and trying to figure out how to maneuver things through reserves and all that stuff. But we will have a system, I think, in the end that can actually do that and can tweak all of these things. I think that's really, really powerful. It's having information real time, being able to make decisions quicker. As you have all seen, right, things change every five seconds with all the things that are going on in the world. We need to be able to answer those questions so we can make those decisions quicker. 

 

Steve Werner 0:22:10.2: 

Yes, things are changing so fast these days. You've got to have a system in place to be able to handle that, right? Zahir, just looking back on this journey with Anaplan, will you just maybe share some lessons learned with the audience in terms of some of the key takeaways that you have, looking back on things? What you feel like maybe you could've done better, what you frankly did really well that you want to share with them - or maybe even some things that you could've improved? 

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:22:38.0: 

Sure, so I guess where we could've done better, it is to what George had said in the beginning: we can bulldoze this through and get it pushed through the company - and that's all doable - but we won't get the buy-in, we won't get the agreement. We wouldn't have eliminated the Excels or the old way of doing it. All we would've done is enabled two ways of doing something. What we've learned as we're going into now the insurance models and standardizing, we're taking the time to engage with the businesses, get their perspective. Lock in where we have agreement and then handle the next thing and the next thing, but it is a - more of a progress towards the goal as opposed to just pushing straight through. So that is one of the big things we've learned. 

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:23:26.4: 

Where we've made some - where we had some really good success, our CoE. Matt mentioned that the CoE, our Anaplan CoE, is quite outstanding. We started last year. Remember, we're delivering the business case in November '23 or December '23 to start building in January '24. One of the things we said is that our CoE isn't there yet. They're not at capacity as yet. The training still needed to get up there, the capability needed to be built out. But what we promised in our business case is, we'll start with 80 per cent consulting, helping to build 20 per cent. I think those were the numbers; 20 per cent CoE. We'll switch that by the end of the year; we'll go 20 consulting, 80 per cent CoE. By the time we reached the end of the year, we were at 100 per cent on our CoE build, no consulting. As we go into this year, or finishing this year as we go into next year, it will be again 100 per cent on our CoE. So that has enabled quite a bit of our development work.  

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:24:37.6: 

It's allowed us to accelerate. It's allowed us to put forward ROIs, to George's point, that are more reasonable from a company perspective. So again, one of the best things I think that we were able to accomplish. But again, we had to push for that; it wasn't going to just happen. You needed to enable them. They needed to find the right talent. They needed to pay the proper scale for that talent, so it was quite a bit of work. The other part is the change enablement or change management plan, and Matt mentioned that. That was critical to our success as well. We have change champions within each of the businesses. Well, we picked people who wanted to be part of the project, who could take that transformation mindset and push it across their business, who can engage others within the business to bring them along. Then also keeping the CFOs up to speed in terms of what was being accomplished and what's in it for them.  

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:25:33.5: 

The last thing is a strong project team. Matt and team have been outstanding. We have multiple workstream leads, but that's what it takes to be very successful going through this process. There's still lots for us to learn and as we go through this year, it'll be challenging again and it'll be new things, what we saw last year - or, sorry, as we go into next year - than what we saw this year. I think we're set up to tackle those problems as they come. 

 

Steve Werner 0:26:04.3: 

Excellent. Matt, did you have anything to add in terms of lessons learned?  

 

Matt Massenzio 0:26:07.3: 

Yes, one of the things I'd like to add is just the fact that we have all these business teams out there. Everybody is working on their normal day-to-day work and also all the different transformation activities within their own organization, other projects that they're doing for the CFOs within the individual segments. So there are a lot of competing priorities. What I would say is, as we go forward - and I'd definitely advocate for everyone to do this - is, as you're putting together your project plan and what you want to deliver over the course of the next year or so, that you make sure you factor in the support from the business teams and where those risks are along the way, if there are other competing projects out there, other work out there that would have an impact on the time that the business teams can help to support the requirement collection and support the validation of the capabilities that are being implemented in Anaplan or elsewhere. So really making sure you take that into consideration when you're putting together the project plan; I think that's one of the biggest lessons learned for me, yes.  

 

Steve Werner 0:27:16.3: 

Yes, please. 

 

George Trowse 0:27:17.4: 

I think the guys touched on resourcing. It's important as the lead to not just think you're going to ram this through with everyone who's in the team doing stuff already. We actually pulled out some people - some good people - and you need your best people to actually work on a project full time. I think it's a great development opportunity. But we will have discussions quite frequently about the workload, what's happening. We made a lot of pivots last year. I'll make a cal-out. Zahir mentioned we're trying to get that balance right. There is absolutely a value added by the consulting firms. Deloitte has worked with us for many, many years. KPMG has been working with us. There are times when you need that expertise and knowledge. That's been really, really important particularly in things like modeling for businesses, where we were maybe struggling a little bit to figure out how to move forward.  

 

George Trowse 0:28:08.1: 

That just helps you move that forward and then also helps you sell it, because you've got to go to… You think: we've had to go to countries where they've got these embedded processes, particularly in Asia, where they've done it that way for years. We're like, 'No, we want to change it to X.' It's difficult, but I think getting that resourcing right, not underestimating how much work needs to be done, is important. Putting your best people on the project. 

 

Steve Werner 0:28:32.2: 

Yes, thank you for mentioning that because I think that was an important thing, right? You have the CoE, yes. You guys have an awesome project team - but you've also worked with partners on both the process as well as the technology and where this can go. 

 

George Trowse 0:28:46.1: 

Yes, I will say we would not be where we are if it wasn't for some of the external partners that have worked with us. 

 

Steve Werner 0:28:53.4: 

Awesome. All right, let's switch gears here a little bit and talk about the future. So now that you've established this foundation, George, where do you see this going? What does this hold in the future in terms of your vision for this? We can go down any path you want to. If you want to talk about AI, we can talk about that, but curious to know your thoughts on where this goes from here.  

 

George Trowse 0:29:16.4: 

Yes, and I'll let the others jump in, but I think for me, you want an automated, seamless, AI-enabled FP&A process. I know that sounds really a little catchy and lots of things. At the end of the day, that's what you want. Then you want to have reporting on top of that that gives you the views you want but is really flexible as well and you can drill. It's interesting and maybe it's because we're an insurance company and we have actuaries in the group. I have senior people who want to drill down quite a few levels, so I think being able to give them that capability. Actually, sometimes at my level, I may not actually go down there, but they want to do that - particularly on some of the actuarial lines. So that is helpful, I think, in moving the process along. I think the scenario planning and the ability to do the what-ifs is really… We're not there yet. They're the questions that - where I think we really struggle to answer well, or they take a long time and they're very manual. So I think that will be huge when we get to that.  

 

George Trowse 0:30:16.4: 

Then I think for the team, I've said: if we don't move ahead, we're not going to be able to hire good people because they're going to look at what we do and go, 'That's not great.' The excitement in the team with the AI capability is like, they're already doing stuff before we even ask them. So I think if we're not getting on top of that and building a good process, we're just not going to develop a best team. A bit like you guys said: AI is changing every day. That is changing every day as well, so I think that's important as well. 

 

Steve Werner 0:30:49.0: 

Zahir, anything to add on the future? 

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:30:52.4: 

Yes. I think George said it well on many aspects. The one thing I'd like to see coming out of this is more self-serve, where folks can go into the AI, ask the question and get the answer. You're not waiting for that time to respond. The scenario planning will be huge. We should be at the point where we can take… You're going into strategy discussions with the board. You're able to run those strategies through the system and actually see how it could play out with your financial metrics. So I think really it's - from an FP&A perspective it's also, again, having the tools now that can allow us to provide better insights. Understanding the levers, understanding when you can pull those levers, where the opportunities are, where the risk's at. Being able to model that; that is really where we're going to be able to add tons of benefit to the company. It's not about running the Excels and plugging in numbers; it has to be more than that. 

 

Steve Werner 0:31:48.1: 

Maybe, why do you think Anaplan is the right solution to set you up for that future? Can you share some of that? 

 

Zahir Mohamed 0:31:55.1: 

Well, from everything we've seen in Anaplan on the wealth and asset management side, I've seen the demos of the models working and it is pretty impressive. Where we would've had product-level information sitting in an Excel, because you can only capture the summary-level information in what we had before - Essbase Cube - now it's all available within the system. The detail is there, so when you run the assumptions, when you change a commission rate, when you play around with some of the variables, you see that outcome immediately. When we have more of a connected planning where we're able to build out the drivers, going through our expenses, going through our various functions, so volumes, impact driver - impact expenses or operational expenses and it flows through the system. Now you've got the right level of modeling to make decisions. So far, from what I've seen, Anaplan is nailing it on that. 

 

Steve Werner 0:32:47.3: 

Awesome. Matt, anything to add on the future in terms of where you see this going? 

 

Matt Massenzio 0:32:53.5: 

I would take a different look at it. Obviously, scenario modeling, that's the key outcome of what we're trying to get to and self-serve and making sure we're getting faster insights and all that, too. From my end, data has always been an issue. Just trying to make sure we have well-structured data, in one spot, across all the different elements that we want to look at to support the scenario model and to support the reporting. We're making a lot of good traction along that way. We're investing a lot internally to make sure that we have all the data that we need in one spot. I think we just need to continue making that investment and moving forward. So that way, when we build out all these Anaplan models, we're going to have good data to support. We're also going to be able to take advantage of all the different AI capabilities that are coming to us daily, it seems. 

 

Steve Werner 0:33:46.2: 

Awesome. Before we move to audience questions here, maybe George, could you just cover off on some specific outcomes and results that you're trying to see here with some of the future things in mind? What are you really driving toward as we go forward? 

 

George Trowse 0:34:04.1: 

Look, great question. I think we spend an inordinate amount - or we have historically spent an inordinate amount - of time doing budgeting. Even when I go outside of finance - I go to executive conferences or the next level down - it's in the top three issues. We've spent too much time, so I think this will reduce that time and give the executives back time to spend on other things. I think confidence in the numbers and the process. When I started the budget process, there were a lot of questions around, 'Does this make sense?' We're seeing that already, I think - and some of that's just to do with the way we run it - but we're going to have a much more consistent set of… I'll give you an example. We turn up to a budget review. I'm not picking on any businesses here. They'll go, 'Oh, I've got a budget.'  

 

Steve Werner 0:34:57.5: 

[Over speaking 0:34:57.5] watch, by the way, yes. 

 

George Trowse 0:34:58.4: 

I know. We're meeting with the [unclear word 0:35:00.0]. My underlying stretch in my plan is X. To be honest, my boss - who's the CFO - will come to me and go, 'How do you feel about the plan?' I have to go through and go, 'Well, this business is usually conservative and they hold back.' Forecasting, exactly the same. This will now give us the ability to have a set of models that deliver an output. Then if you want to change that number, you have to put an adjustment in and explain. So we'll be able to see that and I think that will give us a much better idea. It's not that you don't want to stretch things; absolutely you should push. But it's just a matter of knowing where to push and making sure. By the way, all our compensation processes, a lot of them link into the budget. So we've got to make sure it's the right level of push for every business, because that drives that, at the end of the day. I'm going back in history here, but I think we did have a scenario where some businesses had much more aggressive plans than others. 

 

George Trowse 0:35:55.0: 

The flow on impact of that, okay, the budget's one thing. It affects the confidence of groups. We had huge parts of the business just like, 'Well, I'm never going to [?need 0:36:04.4] Anaplan. Why do I bother?' That's not good to hear so that's really, really important and I think it's going to help us. There's a lot of churn and a lot of waste of time trying to understand those things. The more you can take that out, the more you have confidence in the numbers, the less time you worry about, is this right or not? The more time you focus thinking about what you're going to do about it, right? I think that's what we want. 

 

Steve Werner 0:36:29.5: 

Fantastic. All right, thank you for joining us here at the Manulife session. Have a great afternoon. Thank you. 

 

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