Unknown speaker 0:00:12.8:

Well, we might be one minute early, but I think we'll get started anyway. So as you've been listening throughout the day and understanding the journey Anaplan is taking with applications, obviously bolstered by the platform, obviously, getting an efficient way in which to ingest actuals. You can quickly run forecasts, and being more agile as a business is critical. So what we're focused on right now in this session is really modernizing consolidations, and then obviously, driving it through to your forecast. So joining us today to talk through this are Ben Riddell and Ed Chiang, part of our solutions engineering team, to take you through the approach to modernizing consolidation. So, please join me in welcoming Ben and Ed.

Ben Reddall 0:01:08.2:

All right. Thank you. So welcome to - what time are we, three o'clock - so we're getting close to the end of the day. So I'm Ben and just want to go on to the next slide. I'm Ben, part of our solution consulting team here in Anaplan. I'm really focused on our finance solutions, so today we're going to talk about consolidation in this session. Many of you have heard many of the different aspects around integrated financial planning, financial planning consolidation, subscription revenue. All of these aspects really help, not just drive your actuals, and driving that process, but also, how do you bring all of the budgets and all the forecasts together from that side? I've been in the industry, doing this side of the job, for about 25 years, really focused around financial close and consolidation solutions. So with that, I'm going to hand over to Ed, who's just going to introduce himself, and then we'll kick off into the presentation and demonstration.

Ed Chang 0:02:09.2:

Thanks, Ben. Yes. So I'm Ed, without going deep on my background, too, very similar. I also specialize in planning, consolidations, and mostly a finance lens. I'm not as old, but I haven't been as long as 25 years in the industry, but I've been in this industry for 15 years. So it's still like, I think it's a healthy amount, but I'm always humbled by everyone I meet and how experienced they are. I'm always learning new things, and I have a background in a little bit on services, a little bit of product, and the most recently, and the last, I'd say, eight years, give or take, has been mostly in pre-sales, which is like my partner here, Ben. Yes, that's who I am. Thanks for listening, guys.

Ben Reddall 0:02:54.6:

All right. Perfect. Thanks, Ed, and I've got a few gray hairs. You'll see them going through the week, because my beard gets longer. So we've got a big kind of honeycomb, right? You've seen this probably in a number of different sessions. When we think about the approach, we're looking at that dark blue phase of the process. We're going to focus on a couple of different areas today, really just around that financial consolidation part. I always say the actuals are the most important part of any business, right? You get your actuals. You don't get those right, the CFO is in big trouble. There's a lot of audit control that goes around that. So your consolidation really is the focus of how you report out to your stakeholders, internal and external. It's also how you get about bringing those numbers together. We know organizations can be very disparate in how they collect data. So if you've got one, two, three, four, a hundred subsidiaries, you're going to have very similar problems. You're going to have maybe multiple ERP solutions. Some organizations are lucky enough just to have one. Many organizations, if you're inquisitive, you're going to be going through that process of acquiring new ERPs, along with your subsidiaries. So, how do you get all of that data into that consistent income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow? That's really what we talk about from a financial consolidation standpoint. It's absolutely part of, not just your consolidation controllership team, but it's also part of that FP&A process. 

Ben Reddall 0:04:28.0:

It helps seed the plans, helps seed the budget, and it helps then drive that forward-looking part of your business as well. So when we kind of look at the unified experience, we're going to focus really on the right-hand side, but it is an iterative process. It's a backwards and forwards, right? There's always going to be changes in your plan that need to be ingested into your actual reporting. If you want to do that comparison, actuals to budget reports, actuals to forecast reports, you're going to have not just those scenarios. You might want to do actuals at budget exchange rates. You might want to do budgets at actual exchange rates. So taking away the net effect of currency differences to see that true performance reporting. So when it comes down to that unified experience, it's not just ultimately, how do we get to our actual consolidation, or how do we get to our plan? It's, how do we bring that information together, and how do we use that in a valuable fashion? We've talked a bit about the process of ERPs. We can ingest data from all of those different data sets. For us, from a consolidation, it's generally those trial balances. So how do we get that information directly in? We can connect automatically. We can have individuals inputting data. So we can collect data in a number of different manners. When we get into that process, it's really then bringing that information in that consolidated governed fashion. So when you think about a consolidation, you want to know there's an audit trail. 

Ben Reddall 0:05:57.6:

What happened to my data? If you have adjustments going into the process, are those adjustments audited? How do we get to a complex consolidation? We've got these entities that are consolidated using equity method. We've got these entities consolidating within NCI. So we've got a non-controlling interest. All of these aspects come into play when you think about a consolidation. We go on to the next slide. It's really a journey. So when you think about the key objectives of the CFO, it's really, what is our growth challenge, and what is our cost challenge? So how do we balance that as a CFO from that perspective? Everything really starts from the actuals, right? It's probably the most - I don't want to say mundane - I find it exciting because I've been in consolidation all my career, but you've got to get those actuals correct. They really start to drive how the business then looks forward. Going forward, and making those growth decisions as you look forward within the business. So when you think about that process, consolidation really is a circle. I always say consolidation, whether you are a $5 billion company, a $1 billion company, a $100 million company, if you've got multiple subsidiaries, you're going to have to go through a pretty similar process. You're going to have multiple currencies. So actuals, using the average rate, closing rate, opening rate, historical rates. Those are standard methodologies.

Ben Reddall 0:07:26.0:

Inter-company eliminations. So how do you do your AR, your AP? How do you do your interest income, interest expense eliminations? These are standard processes. Most organizations, you could be the biggest organization globally, but your consolidation will still follow those same processes. Yes, the level of detail may be different, but it's going to be those processes. When you get into planning, those challenges can be a lot broader. So you're going to have your standard processes, then planning. Every business will do things slightly differently, whether you're revenue planning, whether you're cost planning, whether you're looking at your operational expense planning. It's going to be slightly different when you look at it from a different organization's perspective. Next slide. So, let's look at that from a challenge. An easy thing to look at is scalability. There's many systems out there that will say they do both processes in one, and that's an easy statement to make. When you think about the complexity of organizations, when you think about not just the financial aspect of planning, but when it goes down to the operational side of the business. If you're a business that gets into supply chain planning, you're going to have a lot of levels of different depth within your structures and how you bring that information together. So on the planning side, you could have a process that ultimately brings together not just one dimension, but brings together fifty, maybe different dimensions.

Ben Reddall 0:08:55.9: 

For your revenue models, you may have ten dimensions. When it goes into your supply chain, it's going to be a different set of dimensions. You want that flexibility. So, an application that's designed for that, like our integrated financial planning application, it's going to give you that flexibility to decide how you want to plan as a business but then give you the flexibility to get into other different areas as you maybe expand from the platform perspective. When you look at consolidation, consolidation's all around statutory. Statutory is all around your entities, your account structure, your currency, your inter-company. There's a standard methodology around that. When you get into management, there's going to be an extension of that into other dimensionality. So you want a solution that has standards but gives you that flexibility, then to grow beyond that as well. From an application perspective, it's those processes that really come together to give you the best approach to, not just your planning, but your consolidation side of things. Next slide. So we're focusing around consolidation for the next 15-20 minutes now. Ultimately, we can start in any different place within here, but ultimately, it's bringing that consolidation wheel of the cycle together. It's not just you're adding up of your numbers. It's all the processes that go into that. You've got the regulatory side, you've got the statutory side, the management side. You've also got other reporting that may come into that. 

Ben Reddall 0:10:25.9: 

Many of you have seen Anaplan XL, which is an Excel interface to be able to create reports. We ingest those reports into the user interface, and Ed will be going through that in a few moments to show you how those reports look from the web interface and all the flexibility around that. We can extend into Word and PowerPoint presentations as well, giving you more aspect to present the data how you want to see it. Typically, on a consolidation, it's all about your indirect cash flow, your income statement, your balance sheet, and maybe some of the disclosure notes you need to collect on that. So if you want to go down to indirect cash flows, then it's down to bringing in that investing activity, your additions, disposals on your fixed assets, and how that affects your investing items. So it's that level of granularity that you can get to, and that transparency you get to when you're looking at, not just the income statement balance sheet, but your cash flow is the ultimate report that many organizations still do in Excel, because it's after the fact. We have it fully integrated into our consolidation. I never say 100 percent automated, 95 percent, 96 percent, because there's always going to be an adjustment that comes in for maybe a reclassification. So some of the key factors that we always talk about is it's a unified approach. It's owned by the business, it's flexible, it's scalable, it's adaptable. The application gives you the ability to have that upgradeable path. We want it to be easy for the business to manage. 

Ben Reddall 0:11:57.4:

So if you make an acquisition, you don't need to ring up your consultant and say, 'Hey, we're acquiring this company. Can you come in and recode that in the application?' We want to give you the benefit of being able to do that within our platform. So we do integrate, not just with the Office solutions, but giving you the flexibility to manage that yourselves within the platform. You may have seen these a couple of times over the last couple of days, if some of you were here yesterday. These are the true value propositions from a consolidation that we bring. It's a browser-based, third-generation consolidation solution. There are other consolidation solutions that started off on-premise, and then they adapted them to be hybrid cloud. Ours is designed for the cloud from the ground up, like all of our platform. We're going to give you the flexibility of alternate roll-ups. So we know that organizations don't just consolidate the business that way, one way. It's the ability to have maybe a different management consolidation hierarchy. The ability to have maybe a different regulatory hierarchy. I worked years ago with an organization, they were doing direct to responsibility hierarchies, where they had certain directors who had certain subsidiaries underneath them, and they were measured on the actual performance. So it's that flexibility within the dimensionality to have alternates. We'll talk a bit about the adjustment side. So it's the ability to have standards. 

Ben Reddall 0:13:28.1:

You see the feature movement. What is a movement? That, effectively, is your balance sheet. Here's your opening, here's your closing, here's all the activity that happens in the middle. So you need that to help with your indirect cash flow, so we have that as a standard. Audits. You've got your standard data coming into your local gap. How do you adjust it for alternate gaps? So that's our audit. You have the flexibility. Here's your standard trial balance. We then track all of those adjustments to get to your final reporting standard. Those could be manual adjustments. They could be automated. We give you that flexibility. We don't use code. So that's just a fact. We don't go in and code behind the scenes. We're going to give you that business-owned interface, and Ed will touch on some of those points as we go through the demonstration as well. We're future-proof, right? We have the flexibility to not just start today with your process but also grow as your business grows. So if you don't have a complex ownership structure today, maybe everything's owned 100 percent. We can grow into that as you grow. So if you buy a business, and they have some minorities, or some NCIs built in, or they have some equity pick-up, then we can adapt, and the system is just a standard configuration to bring in and adapt for those entities. Again, if you've got no currency, you may acquire an organization that has currency translations. That's just something that's built into the application, so it's just an addition. 

Ben Reddall 0:14:55.6:

You can configure it now to be ready for when you make those decisions. Time-based ownership. So this is just tracking ownership over time. We know that companies will sell parts of companies, acquire more of companies. So it's the ability to track that ownership changes over time, and that flexibility that goes alongside that. I think that may be my last slide. Oh, one more. We've got customers globally who are using us for their consolidation. We have a lot of statistics. Everyone loves numbers, right? So when you think about consolidation, if you're doing this manually, or maybe a historical system that you're utilizing. We've got customers that have seen a 90 percent improvement in their time to get their numbers from coming in, from their ERP, out the door for their reporting. Reduction in audit time. I'm not going to say we save money from the audit, because there'll be different things you can audit from that perspective, but the ability to actually save time on the audit, to provide a future-proof application. It's not a bunch of spreadsheets that you're going to have to prove out all of those calculations. We have a true, audited path of how you get from your data coming in to your final consolidated numbers, with all the drill-downs and all the flexibility to understand the data. We can integrate new acquisitions. Pretty much our standard demo that we do on a daily, weekly basis, is we bring in a new acquisition into our demonstration. 

Ben Reddall 0:16:27.4:

So being able to integrate that, be able to bring that in, and to be able to report. A lot of organizations, if you're trying to centralize on one ERP, you're going to have, I think, some of the challenges. You're going to have to bring that entity into the ERP. You're going to have to change some of their back-end processes. That's why many organizations look for a dedicated consolidation solution, because it's a lot more rapid to be able to bring those acquisitions into your organization. So, with that, I'm going to be handing over to Ed, who's now going to be leading the demonstration. Thank you.

Ed Chang 0:17:04.9:

All right, on to, I always say, on to the fun, which is the actual demo. Obviously, in the next 15 minutes, we're not going to cover everything, so it's going to be more of a high-level. I'm just going to show you a little bit the greatest hits and try and just show you what financial consolidation is within Anaplan, and how it would work. Now, I'm sure we're almost at the tail end right now of Anaplan Connect, and I'm sure everyone here has heard of the app strategy, and what's an app, and the applications and all? Financial consolidation aligns perfectly to that same story, and it basically is an app. An app is something that is very pre-packaged. It's out of the box. It's upgradable to Ben's points, and it's standardized, and like from a consolidation lens versus a planning one, to some degree, consolidations is very common. Let's put it that way, across all the customers, depending on where you're based, US, Canada, Europe, Asia. We're all consolidating with the lens of what is compliant to where I'm local? So everyone, whether you're small or big, has to adhere to US GAAP, IFRS, and so on and so forth. So, the idea is that there's a lot of commonality in the app and the use case across whatever company you're working in, and whatever vertical or even size. The use case fits everyone as a whole. What I'm showing you today, here in the next bit, is a little bit of a sneak peek, too. 

Ed Chang 0:18:26.2: 

This is a little bit in the direction we're going, and for those who are already part of the Anaplan family, who are very familiar with it, the jumping-off point to get around applications and navigate Anaplan as a whole is what you're seeing on the screen. Very soon, coming to a place nearby, this financial consolidation can be accessed and jumped off directly from within the Anaplan portal. Oh, my session, the security is really high. Essentially, my session timed out for the 15 minutes I was basically in the presentation mode. The idea is, when you click on the toolbar, you can jump straight to this app, and then into the landing page. We go over here. Now, the idea of consolidations, the use case between accounting, the use of what an accountant is looking for versus, say, a planning cycle, the use case is a little bit different from the lens of whether you're consolidating monthly, quarterly, yearly. In some cases, we have customers who are consolidating weekly. The idea is, when it's my time to consolidate, you come in here and get a very targeted, what do I need to do from a day one, day two, day three perspective. You load the data, you review it, and then you get out, so to speak, and then when it's consolidated and signed off, then downstream to whatever various planning or use cases, other apps. You can send it via Anaplan Data Orchestrators, another one, you can send it downstream to whatever connected planning or connected application you want to use. From here, you can see a little bit more of a modernized, unified GUI here. 

Ed Chang 0:19:58.9:

Everything is curated by the end user. A big story point within the Anaplan family is the idea of a connected solution that hits all your use cases and users as well. So whether you're the CFO, an executive, or someone who's more like a manager, a group controller, or someone who is like an analyst or an accountant, basically, all levels of the business. There's basically a U or a UX page that can be curated by your individual user. That persona ultimately drives what you can see within the application, and how you navigate and navigate within the consolidation process as a whole. The whole application is very targeted to be, like I said, it's meant for a quick, what do I need to do? What do I need to get really quickly? That can be illustrated here on the home page or the UX page on the screen. There's a lot of things that you can customize by the end user. So whether you want this bird's eye view, which is what we typically jump off within demonstration, or you want a more targeted view for a specific process, which is obviously consolidations here. You can also curate these views directly onto the home page, and just quickly navigate to, hey, where are we within the consolidation process? You get this cockpit view right at the very top, which a controller or CFO can quickly look at from just a click of the button over here. Consolidations as a whole is very much a process that's very streamlined, like it happens at the end of every month, or every quarter, every year. 

Ed Chang 0:21:25.9:

So it is very repeatable, and as a result of that, the idea of quickly checking what you need to see and do. We want users to be able to come in here and look at it, and just quickly check the boxes, hey, is this good? Is it not? The idea is we have validations that are pre-built into the app that allow you to quickly just spot check a report, and you can see are things in balance? Are there any exceptions in my data? Can I move on to the next stage of consolidation? Would be like validation, sign off, and send it downstream to whatever you want from a planning perspective. One of the key things to take away, when, again, it's an abbreviated demo, is the app strategy. There's one wrinkle, a little bit of a nuance, to what makes consolidation of this app a little bit different, is that the ownership of the majority of the application itself. When I say the application, I'm referencing to things like this report you're seeing on the screen. Pretty much all the reports, all the forms, all the input templates, and even the model, to some degree, all the modules and everything that is incorporated in this specific app, the ownership of it, and the roadmap of how it's deployed and upgraded, is actually owned by Anaplan. It's a very different - when I use the word out of the box - most of the time, it means that's something you see, and then you deploy it, and then you're free to modify it. Then, when it's modified, you've extended it, and the ownership is landing on you. 

Ed Chang 0:22:51.2:

In this case, here, this application, due to how common it is amongst our customers, a lot of it is standardized to the point where Anaplan does own it. This is a true out-of-the-box, which was pillar one in the deck that you saw earlier. All of our customers share the same reports, and they share the same input forms from a time to value. The stand-up point is, you're basically starting at the end. You just fill in your data, your metadata, and align the app from a deployment perspective. The ownership of it is a little bit different than some of the more traditional, out-of-the-box apps you might see today. That's something. So on the screen here, I'll just give a very quick shout-out. This is a sneak peek, too, for those who haven't seen. I think most people have. You can maybe correct my wrong. There's another reporting layer called Anaplan XL, and Anaplan XL is another tool in our quiver that allows us to report against any data set within Anaplan. All the reports, from an SCR perspective, are built on this technology and this specific application. To Ben's point earlier, around cloud-based, it's all cloud-based, so you don't even have to leave the browser. You can just look at everything, which is basically the Anaplan story as a whole. So it's very cloud-friendly and just very user-friendly. You just come in here and look at that. One of the things, also just jumping into how the process is managed. So a lot of customers who look at consolidations, they say, well, our process is unique. 

Ed Chang 0:24:15.1:

We're a little bit different, and that's something, absolutely, that customers can do, and obviously, curate the consolidation process to what they do. We have a built-in workflow within the consolidation app itself. Now, the workflow does overlap a bit. From a terminology perspective, it is a very broad term. The idea of a workflow is, frankly, you have a business process, whatever it might be, but there are various different activities and tasks that you need to assign, and then there's an order and sequence to it. Essentially, what's the flow of completing said process or said workflow? The workflow in FCR or consolidation lens here is that absolutely, every business is a little bit unique. Some companies consolidate at a group level, meaning they might be on one ERP, or it's a job that corporate will handle. So corporate is going to take care of all the data loads. They're going to take care of everything. So it's controlled from maybe a small set of users. Some customers consolidate from a more disparate, more of a, they push the responsibilities down to the BUs, and the individual entities are responsible for their subsidiary. They might do a sub-consolidation and then push it up to corporate, and then go from that lens. The idea of customizing how you consolidate can all be done through what you're seeing on the screen here, which is our graphical interface, our workflow designer, to help you lay out how to consolidate from more of a visual perspective over here. 

Ed Chang 0:25:34.1:

This interface, we typically, when demonstrating, a lot of the time, when they see it, it's like, 'Oh, we do it this way. We do it that way.' The idea of it being very drag-drop friendly. There's no coding throughout the entire application, but we always go at this consolidation process with a very - I'll call it a rational approach of - we're not promising you full automation on day one. There is this philosophy of a crawl, walk, run. So how do we get data in? How do we start consolidating? How do we get value quickly, which is very much aligned with the app strategy of how do we deploy it? How do we get customers up and running really quickly? The flexibility of that is governed and provided with… What you're seeing on the screen here is because of the nature of how easy it is to modify and automate, or semi-automate your process as much as possible, our customers do immediately start to see value from… You saw in the last slide that it could be ten, twenty, thirty, forty, up to ninety percent efficiency gains. It's with this flexibility that you're seeing on this screen here. Some have bottlenecks in data loads. Some have bottlenecks in collecting data from manual users, and they just can't wrangle it. They're dealing with delays and sending templates back and forth. That can all be adjusted and tuned, per se, with what you're seeing on the screen. There's a whole toolbox to different things that you can modify. One big pain point we always see is, frankly, data loading, because we're consolidating data at the end of the day.

Ed Chang 0:26:58.3:

We're consolidating and loading data from disparate systems, sub-ledgers financials, and that typically is one topic that, it's a core part of the demonstration as a whole. You see, at a high-level, we manage it and govern it through. What you're seeing is this workflow process. As users come in here, everything is task-oriented. You see, at a very quick, high-level. Hey, I got things that are assigned to me, and I want to get a view of what I need to do. So you can see task counters at the top over here. When you click on these workflows, you see this giant to-do lists. If you watch a full demonstration, we want users to basically navigate with their to-do lists through this interface that's on the screen. Some of the key things that also make it unique in how the app is deployed and how it's owned. You'll hear this thematically across any presentation you've seen throughout the last two days, and even right now, is how we deploy it and how we upgrade it. So maintainability is one. So how we own and how users can - we hand you the keys - how do you make changes to the system? How do you make sense of everything within the model? I don't know if there's any model builders in the room over here, but the idea is that we want finance to ultimately own the solution and own the app. So you don't need to keep picking up the phone, call IT, or call your SI or business partner and support. We want everything to be self-sufficient from an end-user perspective. 

Ed Chang 0:28:21.5:

One of the examples, and again, you can see on the screen, pretty much everything that you would need from a consolidation lens and use case from validations, what I showed you earlier, to inter-company rules, cash flow rules, ownership rules. To Ben, if you buy another company, how do I define the ownership for that new company within my business? The idea there is an ownership table or rule list that allows users to come in here and define, hey, how do I define that new acquisition? What happens if I sell the company, or I sell a piece of the company, or I reorganize, and I move the company from one subsidiary to another? It's like another holding company to another one. These kinds of changes to your business. How do I handle it without having to call the technical folks to bring them in? What you're seeing on the screen here, and it's a little zoomed in, I'll zoom out so you can see it. They're all governed through these, what we call rule tables. Everything is fill-in-the-blank. We provide all the framework. We provide all the reports, input forms, and all the tools that you would need from a consolidation lens, and users come here and tweak it. One of the things that, just a quick shout out, again, I'm like just abbreviating the greatest hits here. Ben mentioned around future-proofing the tool. There was a degree about time-based entities he mentioned.

Ed Chang 0:29:37.4:

One of the big differences between planning and consolidations is the idea of always preserving, and I would say, looking backwards. Consolidation is very much the current process, the current month-end, and looking backwards. When changes keep occurring from a current lens, we always want to make sure that we never touch the historicals, because they've been disclosed. We've already signed off on the data. It's been checked off. I don't want to touch historicals, but the nimbleness, usually, with a highly flexible tool, hey, I'm going to change this. I'm going to add another account. I'm going to change the way we do, let's say, FX, or the way we do cash flow. Or we just like a broad change. We sold off a piece of the company. I changed the ownership percentage. I want to always, from an audit perspective, I never want to touch historicals, because that's what it was before. So the whole application and the rules, and even the metadata and how you maintain your hierarchies, can be governed through these. They basically have time awareness to it, and I'll re-zoom in over here. They all have these start and - oh, my wheel is going crazy - they all have the start and end date, basically, on the screen. You see an example of it on the screen over here, where something changes. The idea is, you can always stop the existing rule and put an end date to it, and then add a new rule or a new parameter, saying, okay, hey, this is what it was right now, this is what it's going to be.

Ed Chang 0:30:58.8:

Then you can trace and prove, okay, everything was set to this one before this rule. Then, moving forward, it's going to use this. So it gives you that auditability, the flexibility, and again, control. That's the key thing here that makes consolidation different is governance and how you manage your model and manage your data from a consolidation lens. Another quick one. I'll just quickly shout out. It's our view. It's a big differentiator when it comes to looking at consolidations versus planning. Very much so, is around the way data enters the system. It's really just like a core principle I speak to. I was speaking to other CFOs and VPs of finance over here. It's a topic that I usually double-down on. It sometimes comes off as pretty trivial, but it is a way to think about… It's a little bit different in how data is loaded into the system. So from a planning lens, you change a driver, you change an assumption, or even a unit, whatever it might be, based on the use case. The user keys it in, and that's basically, you key in a value, and then downstream, it can push the calculations, and that's it. There's an audit history from who keyed it in, and that, but from a consolidation side, there can be even more scrutiny over basically, hey, I got debits and credits. I got double-sided bookkeeping. I do need to ensure I have a balanced entry going in. I need, maybe, from a SOX compliance, the user who keys it in cannot approve and get it into the model. 

Ed Chang 0:32:19.0:

There's also different layers over segregation of duty, as well as governance and proving audit changes, journal entries, and so on and so forth. So there is a dedicated journal module also built into the tool as well that allows users to create journals, topside, it, and prove out who did it with full evidence that this is a balanced entry, versus someone keying something in, in a more of an on-the-fly case over there. The journal is another one that, from a difference in the need, from the consolidations versus a planning lens. This is another key thing to consider. Why would you need a consolidation app versus, say, I can just do it within my FP&A model? How much time do I have?

Unknown speaker 0:33:01.7:

Thirteen. You're good.

Ed Chang 0:33:03.1:

I can go to the end. There's no Q&A.

Unknown speaker 0:33:04.5:

Yes, you're good.

Ed Chang 0:33:04.9:

Okay.

Unknown speaker 0:33:05.9:

[Unclear words 0:33:06.9:]

Ed Chang 0:33:07.5:

Anyways, so from the lens of the rule, this is how we go to market, how we deploy the application from an ongoing basis. Everything is defined in a rule-based perspective. The reports I was alluding to earlier, the out-of-the-box nature of the application, from a true, out-of-the-box lens. Like I said, you don't need to actually - what's it called - what you see in the demo, and then you have to extend and modify. What you see in the demo is what you get, which is a very different differentiator as well. So, the nature of how, when we say out of the box from consolidations, the deployment, the upgradability, and the standardization of it, is, frankly, on the onus of Anaplan. Which, also from the downstream, and I do speak to other customers after they go live, a consideration that I've heard also is around support, ongoing basis, things of that nature. The other side of the lens. We're on the front, the sales side over here, but deployment, the support, standard reports, standard tools, standard everything. There are standard documentation, training, enablement, and basically, because of the streamlining nature of the application from an ownership side, after you hand the keys, it's very standardized. So the support is very, let's just say, if there's any issues or you have questions, the enablement side is very standard. You get basically a much more curated response than send me your model. Let's dig in. It's like, no, it's very standardized from that. 

Ed Chang 0:34:32.4:

So it's the ownership, once again, is lower on that side. With that said, then, I'll also just quickly highlight a little bit around the data model. Data model is another one that we're always talking about data. How does data get into the tool? How do I use it? To Ben's point, he showed the slide with consolidation has a specific fixed amount of dimensions, whereas planning are the possible. Whatever use case you're doing, highly flexible. You can add as many as you'd like to. There are many cases where, for example, something like HR planning by employee. I need to plan by employee, but I don't need that employee detail when I plan for fixed assets or CapEx or something. I don't need that detail. So, the idea of mixing and matching dimensions, and massaging it and adding more, removing some, is highly flexible in that lens from the planning side. Consolidation one, we have a lot of standards, also from the model side as well. So when we deploy it, every customer has this audit dimension, for example, and I'll zoom in a little bit, so it's a little bit bigger, but the audit dimension is a crucial one that really does differentiate how consolidation looks like from a hierarchy. Just how you look at your data a little bit from a different lens. Meaning, in addition to looking at who loaded the data, or where did it come from, from that side, you also have transparency into seeing what types of adjustments are being done, and for what reason, and what use case. 

Ed Chang 0:35:56.1:

So the idea is, when you load data from your source systems into consolidation, or into Anaplan, you're loading it in. Let's say, on the screen, I've highlighted the source GL. So if you load in data from your source system into Anaplan, it should match, because that's it. It's just a straight load. Then, as you fold in adjustments, reclassifications, allocations, adjustments netting, eliminations. Basically, any adjustment you layer on top of the data, you can have your own line-item detail or member in this list. It's very important to think about it from different jurisdictions, different gaps based on the entities. You can basically put in a bucket for every single type of adjustment, and then local adjustments, plus local data with respect to the local GAAP, and then from local GAAP to corporate GAAP, you can make more adjustments. Then, the idea is, this dimension allows you to visualize it, as well as drill, slice, and dice, and always see the history of where data came from. So it really gives you a fully transparent view to your data from an audit perspective over here. The movement one is another one that Ben touched on. The idea is very simple. Every model has it. Your opening and the closing balance, so you can always see where your data came from. From a time perspective, within the fiscal year, you're opening the beginning of the year. The closing is where you are right now. We're talking current period right now, and basically changes in acquisitions, disposals. Are there any dividends that I paid off? What's the cash variation? What isn't a cash variation? 

Ed Chang 0:37:27.7:

Basically, explaining how the movement of your data is over a period of time. That, once again, transparency of looking at your data over time is another core dimension that, once again, lets you see, where did that number come from, and how do I leverage that data point? How I fold it into - which is a key report - the cash flow. This is a foundational dimension that does allow our customers to really drill in, to see the impact of movement, of my numbers across assets, liabilities, and basically seeing the movement of all my numbers from a balance sheet, and perhaps P&L perspective over there. Ultimately, this culminates into reports like - I'll just flash one on the screen over here - like a consolidated P&L report. You load the data, we help you consolidate, and at the end of it, I'm going to zoom out a bit. Over here. Perfect. You can consolidate all your data over here, so you get a true consolidated P&L, consolidated balance sheet, consolidated cash flow statement. Take my word. All three statements get consolidated with the same lens and scrutiny over what needs to be eliminated. The audit dimension, the movement dimension. We all share that same transparency from slicing and dicing, and whether you're consolidating your financials from a current perspective, which is the actuals, to consolidating the big picture here, the planning, your forecasts, your budget, your what-ifs. Whatever, frankly, you want to consolidate as well, using the same logic of ownership, FX rates, different inter-company elimination rules, cash flow rules, and get a true apples-to-apples comparison. 

Ed Chang 0:38:59.1:

You can also facilitate loading in all your budgets, your plans, your forecasts, your annual operating, AOPs, all your what-if scenarios. all into this consolidation app as well. You can produce various reporting to drill and view it in real time with a report that you're seeing on the screen. This is built using that tool that I alluded to earlier. I think Ben made a shout-out earlier, Anaplan XL. It's been a very big, let's say, it's a big plus to most customers. They love Excel, and the idea is you can build any of your financial reporting needs through the Anaplan XL lens. It has multi-system connectivity. It's all built using Excel, and when you're done building a report set in Excel, the beauty is, you can publish the reports to the web and consume them in what you're seeing right now. So you get that benefit of a very friendly lens. We know a lot of finance people love Excel. It makes it very easy for the end user to build and format their own reports, and as you can see on the screen, you can build it, fold in visualizations, fold in views, and do a variance analysis on your data, simply on the screen over here. This one is a little bit more of a curated report. It does show a consolidated view of your P&L from an actual to budget, but you can also load in forecasts. You can even run comparisons of an actual budget rates. We also have the ability to rerun consolidation using different rates, different scenarios. 

Ed Chang 0:40:21.7:

So you can basically eliminate the impact of a… Kind of isolate the impact of FX. So you get this constant currency view. So if you want to compare, what does actuals really look like using budget rates, because I'm looking at it at actuals, I want to remove the impact of FX to really look at the true variance. You can rerun consolidation at different sets of rates, and also different sets of ownership scenarios, to really play around with the consolidation engine in your back pocket over there. Again, this is just a shout-out once again to Anaplan XL. The idea of the model and the live connectivity, users drill-in, drill-out. This is one of those. I can go down the rabbit hole of Anaplan XL for over an hour, two hours, if anything, and it goes pretty deep. The idea is that we're allowing end users to look at their data, drill in, and drill out, and slice and dice their model, so to speak, live directly within the tool. You can, at any point in time, assign these reports. Whether you're just jumping into consolidations and just looking at it very quickly from the dashboard, the UX page, to something that would be used during, say, day one, day two, day three, or minus one, day minus one of the consolidation process. You can assign any report that I'm showing, the validation ones, this P&L report. Anything you build, you can assign them to the users and use that same lens to your data. You can really transparently look at the data from whatever you're trying to do. To be honest, I did scratch the surface of what is available in consolidations, but as a process, and how we deploy it, the value to customers the standardization of it. The greatest hits! That's ultimately what makes consolidation interesting to our Anaplan customers.

Ben Reddall 0:42:08.4:

All right. I think we're nearly at the end now, so thank you, Ed. That was a great demo. Great to see some of the key aspects that we talk about from an application perspective. I think we've got about three or four minutes left until we're going to be moving on to the next session. If there are any questions, we'll be here at the end, but if you have any questions now to ask us, please feel free. Thank you.

Audience 0:42:29.9:

I have a couple of questions. One of the questions is, you're showing a set of rules which can be used for mergers and acquisitions, or splitting off, and you can… Now, what about if you are creating a new entity completely internally, so you can set those rules up, or was it only for M&A activity?

Ed Chang 0:42:52.7:

So the model is shared. Like, we're consolidating all the entities, and if you add another entity to your model, you're adding one to the entities dimension, like another list item, right? If it's being used for, say, a more of a what-if, like what if I buy this entity, you can add it into… We also have shared or alternate hierarchies, and you can put it outside the main corporate or statutory legal entity hierarchy. You can put it outside if you want to do that as well. That audit dimension I showed earlier as well, we have a lot of customers who do pro forma, I'm buying a company, but I don't even have their financials yet. I'm just high-level putting things in. So you can basically see the layering of all the data. You can create a hierarchy outside, at the very top, that just has some high-level adjustments and high-level detail that you load in, and again, keep it outside the model. You can also do that as well from… Whether you want to put it inside or put it outside, you can massage and play around with it.

Audience 0:43:50.7:

Okay, that sounds good. The other question I have is one other slide where you were showing the KPIs, the audit time reduced by 50 percent. My question is more around, how many customers are using this app, and they do SEC filing as file? What is the extent to which they're using Anaplan for doing that?

Ben Reddall 0:44:12.4:

We've got customers globally, so probably hundreds of customers using us for a consolidation standpoint. Some of those are SEC filers, some of those are private organizations. We have organizations in Europe that are filing to different regulatory standards as well. So we have customers that are private. We have customers private equity owned. We have customers that file up to the SEC., do their 10-Qs, 10-Ks, and all the preparation from that perspective.

Audience 0:44:41.9:

Thanks.

Ben Reddall 0:44:44.2:

Thank you, everyone, for your time. Have a great rest of your day, and thank you for your attention.

Ed Chang 0:44:49.0:

Thanks, everyone.