Nick Carter 0:00:06.5:

My name is Nick Carter. I'm a director here at Deloitte, based in the UK. I've been with Deloitte for ten years, and I've worked with Anaplan for all of those ten years, and it's incredible to see really the evolution of the product, some of which the latest you've seen just in the morning session. When I reflect on a few years ago, five, six years ago, the product was fantastic, but really was missing some of that secret sauce, and I think that the innovations that we've seen around AI, around integrations, around Agentic, it really is that secret sauce that's going to take us to the next level. It goes without saying that many of our clients at Deloitte, and including ourselves, we're really big fans of Anaplan. We've deployed hundreds of models ourselves, and personally I've worked on 40 implementations with clients, which is quite an experience I think. 

 

Nick Carter 0:01:01.5:

As I look at the last 12 months since we were here at Anaplan Connect, it's fair to say that there's been continued disruption. I think we mentioned it today. Dayne was referencing kind of global trade wars, tariffs, volatility, and to be honest I was hoping in the last 12 months would settle down, but really it demonstrates to us that we really do need this ability to be kind of flexible and agile and nimble, and really react to whatever could come next. We've also got increasing regulation. So the UK agenda has been focused on simplification in some areas, but also we've seen the introduction of new regulations, like CSRD regulations, and practically that's impacting not just how we do business as an organization, but also who do we do business with, and how do we report on that business to the government, and that's changing some of the behaviors around how we run. We've also seen continued evolving customer preferences, and this has been a trend for the last kind of five or six years, but I think with hyper personalization, the need for real time, online, talk to me like you know me customer experience with different companies we interact, it's causing us to invest in research and development, and change the model in terms of how we interact with our customers, which I personally find very refreshing, which is one of the reasons why I love actually the Monzo app so well, because it really does do what I need it to do.  

 

Nick Carter 0:02:31.7:

Then the last thing, and you've seen the phrase around AI and the trends, and I have to admit three, four years ago I was a little bit skeptical. I thought, are we going into the matrix? Are we going to be like iRobot, if you've seen the Will Smith movie where the robots take over, and I think what's been really great is the evolution of thinking around the value of AI to our businesses, and practically that's started with putting it in our pockets, giving us OpenAI and ChatGPT from a consumer perspective, making us realize, well, this can make my life so much easier, maybe I can walk my dog for an extra hour, or maybe I can have a best man speech which can make someone who is pretty mundane look really interesting. I did actually do that last year. I think really it's cemented my reflection on digital transformation and the need for us to evolve is never-ending, and it's not optional, it is inevitable.  

 

Nick Carter 0:03:30.3:

The pace of this transformation is increasing, and keeping up at seminars and events like this, with what's the latest innovation, but how it is relevant to me as a consumer but also to my work, is really an important superpower that you need to learn. As I talk to some of the CFOs that I often work with, one thing we're reflecting on as well is that the role of the CFO is changing. Actually it's shifting from, just rearward-looking accounting and reporting, and regulatory focus to more of a critical friend, a critical friend of different executives, different leaders, and being able to bring that high-performance, risk-aware, analytical perspective into different decisions in the business. I mean Anaplan called this connected planning a few years ago, but really, it's partnering and teaming across the business to be able to optimize an outcome, and that's ultimately what the CFO is focusing on. 

 

Nick Carter 0:04:34.5:

Another area that we've seen CFOs spending much more attention to, and again this was talked about five years ago, but now is starting to become a reality, it's really harnessing the power of emerging technology and data to drive performance. Many organizations I'm working with now in the finance or the sales function, they're asking about, how do we bring data scientists closer to our team? How do we use data to be able to predict the future? And in some ways it's a relatively heavy lift to be able to achieve that, and I'm actually very inspired by some of the product innovations in the last year to make that easier, and bring it into the Anaplan platform, rather than us needing to do a ton of legwork outside of Anaplan to be able to surface those insights.  

 

Nick Carter 0:05:25.1:

When I reflect on the theme around organizations that have managed to navigate some of that complexity, and the kind of headwinds and tailwinds that we've had over the last year, it really is the ability to be flexible that's the overarching trait for organizations to come out on top. What do I mean by flexible? Well, it's the ability to look ahead, run those scenarios, understand what's probable, monitor them, hopefully with these fantastic agents that are coming, and be able to really pivot the organization and focus on the most important thing at that time. Is it around cost reduction? Is it around global supply chain reconfiguration? Is it around making sure that we've got emerging technology to actually automate and focus our time with talent on elsewhere? It really is being able to build that flexibility into the business model so that we can react to anything, And I would say that flexibility is often the trait that effectively enables innovation. Organizations that are flexible, they're able to pivot, they can move, they've got the talent, workforce, that are more of the kind of Swiss army knife of a workforce. Rather than just working in silos and being specialists, we're starting to build out that Swiss army knife talent set, so actually teams that are maybe the planners in the room, the financial planners, or the CFOs, they're able to understand what the value of data science is, how do I bring it into the process? What does good look like? How do I run an experiment? So the language and the fluency of that team is expanding.  

 

Nick Carter 0:07:01.6:

I've had the great pleasure, over the last year, of working with an organization that I would class as one of the most innovative in the UK, which is Monzo, now a very happy customer. I think I said that when I first started working with them. I opened my account a few years ago when I moved back from Australia, and the sign-up process was amazing. It was so refreshing. I didn't realize I'd be telling my friends, 'Cor, look at this new bank, look at this app, it's amazing, you should sign up as well!' And actually that's the infectious encouragement that many of Monzo's customers have helped some of you in the room sign up. So as we look at innovation, and we're going to unpack, what does innovation mean at Monzo? How does it feel to work at Monzo, and what's been the Anaplan journey? I think we'll cut to a video while I welcome Wiliam Luk on stage, who's a Group Performance Director, to effectively see, maybe through their recent ad campaign, why is Monzo different to your traditional bank? Role the video. 

 

[Video plays 0:07:59.9 - 0:09:00.3] 

 

Nick Carter 0:09:00.5:

You know what? I love that noise. That noise is the noise when I get paid through Monzo a day earlier than all of my other Deloitte colleagues, just to let you know. You can get paid your salary a day early. Anyway. So welcome Luk. 

 

William Luk 0:09:14.1:

Thank you very much Nick. Good morning, everyone. 

 

Nick Carter 0:09:22.5:

So there's obviously a lot of creativity that went into that video, but we'll leave that for some other time. Yes, I mean maybe Luk, do you want to give a quick background to yourself, introduce a little bit about Monzo, and obviously a lot of people in the room have heard of Monzo, they've probably seen that fantastic advert, but what's it like, and where did Monzo kind of start from? 

William Luk 0:09:41.0:

Sure. Of course. So I'm William, or people usually call me by my last name which is Luk. I'm Brazilian, born and raised. My parents were Chinese immigrants that migrated to Brazil in the seventies. I started my career at J.P. Morgan at the age of 20. So things like the early days, I was an Investment Banker doing M&A transactions across Latin America, but in other words I was basically like an Excel ninja. So basically, I was, since my early days, like cracking the numbers, late nights in the office, and it was something that was very challenging at the time. We didn't have AI tools, for example, so watching the live demo just brought tears to my eyes, because I remember ordering meals late at night, working Saturdays and Sundays just to make things work, like the balance sheet, the 3-statement model. So, it was a very different time than we have today. After four and a half years I decided to leave New York, leave J.P. Morgan, and I started to work on my career in FP&A, and that's where I met Kraft Heinz. The reason for that is that I wanted to be more closely involved in the other parts of the business. I wanted to be in close interaction with the people team, the operations team, the sales team, and so on. But then shortly after I saw this new company called Nubank. There was a super cool fintech all my friends were customers of the bank, and I was like, hey, maybe this is a very nice opportunity, and when I joined Nubank we basically had four million customers in Brazil, and I left in 2022 when we had 60 million customers, and we were also present in Columbia, and also in Mexico. So… 

 

Nick Carter 0:11:20.4:

Sixty million. 

 

William Luk 0:11:21.5:

Sixty million, yes. So you basically grow… 

 

Nick Carter 0:11:24.1:

Quite a growth for you. 

 

William Luk 0:11:23.7:

Yes. In a short time frame of just four and half years. So it was an amazing experience to be in, and also with the Anaplan implementation in Nubank back in 2020. So I know a thing or two about how hard it is, how challenging it is, but also I know the benefits of a great implementation by Nubank. Shortly after that period, I left to join a local fintech business called isaac. Isaac basically provided working capital solutions for private schools in Brazil, and later isaac got acquired by Arco, which is basically the leading provider of [unclear word 0:11:55.0] materials for private schools in Brazil as well. Fast forward, here I am, so I just started here at Monzo. I moved from Brazil to the UK exactly three months ago, and I'm currently here leading the Group FP&A efforts, mainly trying to make finance stop sitting in the passenger seat, but now switching to the driver mode so that we can help businesses achieve their goals, achieve their budget, and also making finance to be a more influential partner across the firm.  

 

Wiliam Luk 0:12:28.1:

In regards of Monzo, I think this slide speaks for itself. We are one of the most loved brands in the UK, and in fact a Monzo customer is five to six times more propensed [sic] to use the word love in their reviews rather than any other customers from other banks. So I think this is an amazing thing to have, mainly because imagine ourselves 20 years ago, and trying to find someone who actually loves a bank. So I think we did disrupt a lot as well as the other fintechs in the business at the moment, and I think that in terms of the environment, our capabilities, I think everything is fostered towards the mindset of putting customers in the center So I think this is like our secret sauce, and this is how we make customers love us. 

 

Nick Carter 0:13:20.1:

I guess the customer, the net promoter score, which as many of you will know, is around customer recommendations, plus 70 is unheard of in most industries, let alone the banking industry! Very impressive. 

 

William Luk 0:13:32.3:

Yes. So as a result of everything - I mean, again, our mission is to make money work for everyone. So we want - I mean managing money, it could be a challenging task for an average person, but we're here to make the lives of our customers better and not harder. It's a crucial part of our lives, and we're here to simplify the lives of our customers. As a result of this we're able to see this exponential growth over the past few years, and we will continue to grow super high, double-digits in the future. So I think we're very excited about what's ahead of us. 

 

Nick Carter 0:14:10.4:

Yes, I mean I think there's something about the original sign-up period. I think there were some golden tickets, weren't there, where there was like a wait period where they were just building anticipation, which I think again is a very different way to get an invite only bank signup, which is quite, yes, good gamification. 

 

William Luk 0:14:27.2:

Yes, exactly, and in addition [?70 0:14:30.1] per cent of acquisition is organic, so we don't need to pay anything for those customers. So it's a great sign that we are doing the right things, and that we are going in the right direction at a very nice speed at the same time.  

 

Nick Carter 0:14:42.5:

Very good. I know many people in the audience will have probably heard of Monzo, obviously some customers, and I talked about that kind of innovation mindset and flexibility, but I mean what's the culture at Monzo? What's it like to work there? I mean obviously you've moved there relatively recently but been in the FinTech world for a little while. What makes it may be different to some of the other organizations that are maybe a bit more traditional? 

 

William Luk 0:15:08.0:

So I think the Monzo culture is very unique. You mentioned the word innovation. So we are innovators in our DNA, by definition. We are working in an environment or in a culture that is super collaborative. We work with super talented individuals. So I think we have this culture which enables us to take calculated risks. So we're always thinking about customers first, but at the same time we are thinking, how can we make the lives of these customers better by not taking too much risk? So one of my jobs here at Monzo is to make sure that we can grow the business safely, and I think this is one of the reasons why we implemented Anaplan in the first place. 

 

Nick Carter 0:15:48.7:

Very good. I guess I talked about some of the external environment, and some of the factors, obviously for banking: interest rate volatility, inflation rates, changing customer demands in terms of how they like to be offered, discounts and personalized offers etc., how is that impacting, over the last few years, how you're approaching your work at Monzo? 

 

William Luk 0:16:16.0:

Yes. So I think the market is getting more dynamic, and competition is only getting tougher. So I think we need to work really hard in order to stay relevant for our customers. So in terms of the FP&A vision, or the mission, or the future aspiration for us, I envision a pyramid in which we have, in the first layer one thing called scale bone infrastructure. So basically we know that Monzo's going to grow exponentially in the outer years, so we need to make sure that finance functions can also scale accordingly. We can always add more people, but it reaches a point in which the payback is probably very long, or even negative. It would take a lot of time for you to recover these investments, and it's better for you to plan ahead. So the first thing for us is to have a vision of where the company will be a few years from now, and then make sure that the finance team and all the other functions scale at the same speed so we don't become a bottleneck, because if you don't act on the challenges that we have nowadays, basically a few years from now Monzo's going to be bigger, more complex, we're going to have many more customers, many more products and features. So it's going to be much harder for us to manage the business if we don't scale our infrastructure. 

 

William Luk 0:17:28.1.

The second one I call Reactive FP&A. So we basically wait for an entire month to end, we wait for a few extra days to prepare our monthly financial report, and then we present to the executive committees. So this is a bit late, so we're now in a - we work in a much more dynamic environment. We need to be fast in our decisions. We need to make sure that we pass the information as soon as possible in the most accurate way as we can, so we need to shorten, basically, this timeline. The [?friendly of this pyramid 0:18:00.6] is what I call proactive FP&A, so making sure that our finance business partners, they are sitting with the business unit in a similar way that great bankers operate. So you're never going to see a great banker sitting in the office. They're always in touch with the client. So this is the vision that I have at least for our finance business partners. I want them to be in direct contact with the routines of the business units and our stakeholders so that we can do this integrated planning across the company. 

 

William Luk 0:18:31.3:

The last layer I call Final Strategy. So I can think of Monzo as a holding company, in which we have different sorts of business units, products, and customers. So what we're doing every day is basically directing investments and making investments or divestment decisions every day. So in order for us to counteract these volatile markets that we're seeing nowadays, we basically need to be fast, we need to be able to have a great view of our financial models, we need to be able to do stress testing, scenario analysis in a very fast and seamless way.  

 

Nick Carter 0:19:12.0:

Very good. So that kind of pyramid where I think Anaplan fits into that box, isn't it, around the scalable architecture. 

 

William Luk 0:19:18.3:

Yes. 

 

Nick Carter 0:19:18.3:

I guess it's - you've got the opportunity now, because you're in such a growth phase, but also you don't employ millions of people, yet, I would say, so kind of work super smart. So you kind of put the right tools in as the right tool kit for the teams, so that then they can scale their workload and maybe they'll even be managing agents and bots and things in the future, I guess, is one thing. Very good, and I guess Anaplan then being in that scalable architecture - so obviously a lot of people in the room, they've either implemented Anaplan, they're on the journey, they've maybe implemented it in some areas in finance or supply chain but haven't necessarily expanded out, like where did Anaplan come into Monzo's journey, and what were the issues that you were toying with, dealing with, as to why it was needed? 

 

William Luk 0:20:06.6:

I would say there are two phrases in the implementation. We are undergoing the second phase at this exact moment. The first phase was back in 2019 when Monzo had around two million customers, the team was quite small, we had four or five finance analysts working in the FP&A team, and basically the team was working a lot and trying to consolidate all of our products, and all of Google Sheets, Excel files into a single place. So it was very challenging scenario for the team, and we knew that Monzo was going to scale in the future. So in that sense we were already - some help planning for the future, making sure that the FP&A team would be able to focus more of their time on more strategic actions, rather than operational work. So for us it was crucial for us to have Anaplan being used as a consolidation tool, and a tool for other activities such as stress testing.  

 

William Luk 0:21:01.6:

But fast forward a few years, we are now in 2025, the business is much more complex now. The team also grew, but we knew that Anaplan, at the same stage that we had back in 2020 wouldn't be able to serve our needs down the road. So right now we are undergoing phase two of implementation, which is really one hundred per cent, we're trying to get there but we want to have this integrated planning tool across the entire business. We will start in finance first. We also have the customer operations team using that for Workforce Management, and the idea is to basically connect the different sides of the business altogether. In other companies I 've worked for in the past, finance was always like this little team working on the side whilst trying to support other areas, and nowadays we need finance to be much more proactive, much more closer to the businesses, and challenging them and supporting them at the same time.  

 

William Luk 0:21:01.6:

So this is the view that we have for now. So think about the customer journey. Even before the customer starts banking with us, we already know what's the size of our total domesticated market, we know the profiles of our customers, and then we do all of our modeling on a cohort basis. So then we know very well which sort of customers, their risk profiles, their credit scores, their propensity to spend more or less verses the other cohorts. So in that sense we're able to come up with much more accurate results in terms of forecasting, and when the time comes to do our monthly financial presentations, we have a much better view as to why are we over or underperforming verses our original forecast. 

 

Nick Carter 0:22:43.8:

I think the point you made around cohort analysis and segmentation, I mean we saw some of the topics played earlier, but I guess to my point around really getting to know your customer, understanding their behaviors, understanding to your point, the propensity for them to change between plans or maybe take out insurance products, or being able to cross sell or upsell. I think being able to use the tooling like this, to be able to really understand that as a cohort, and then also I think have the hyper-scalers. I mean you use Google as well as AWS to be able to really be that powerhouse that is kind of feeding the information. I think that is a critical capability that I would say Monzo is quite far ahead compared to many other clients that I've worked with. Yes, and as I reflect on what that means, it's really use the right tools for the right reasons, but give super smart people the tools, which is a lot of your team probably fall into that category.  

 

William Luk 0:23:40.0:

Yes, exactly. So I think - I mean we hire super talented individuals, but we need to give them the proper tools, as Nick mentioned. I think that my dream is to see one day FP&A working on like 90 per cent of their time in strategic efforts, and 10 per cent on operational efforts that are not worth automating at the time. So I think this is what we - I mean this is our aspiration as an FP&A team, we need to be more strategic, we want finance to drive the business, and not just be sitting there in the passenger seat. 

 

Nick Carter 0:24:10.8:

Yes. So I was going to ask that, and I guess in terms of what you're expecting your team's way of working to change in the next year, two years, three years? Do you have a vision for that, and where would you say you are now verses where you want to get to? 

 

William Luk 0:24:26.1:

Yes. So I think that right now we are already in the middle of the pyramid that I just mentioned. We are reactive and proactive at times, so we already have a decent level of FP&A deliverables, and the teams appreciate that, but I think we can do much more than that, especially when we have Anaplan, the AI tools, PlanIQ, and other sorts of tooling that we can use. In terms of the roadmap for the team, we still want to increase the team size, because we believe that FP&A can have this exponential effect into our results in the medium and also in the long term. Then we want to embed as much as we can, the analyst routines, into the business manager's routines. So basically having the analysts sitting next to the BU and making sure that the analysts are invited to the routines of the stakeholders as well. So there are so many ways in which FP&A can impact the business, even though we are like somehow working in the kitchen, let's put it that way. So we can affect which type of customers we are acquiring in the future, we can affect pricing of our subscription plans. We can further boost growth; we can put much more investment into marketing, brand marketing. We can also think about credit risk, whether we should be taking more or less calculated risks towards credit. I think there is also one thing that is super important to us, which is to protect the company to protect the business. We operate in highly regulated environments. We want to make sure that we comply with all the requirements. So everything, like putting it together, creates this huge necessity for us to be speedy, and at the same time accurate in our suggestions to the ExCo. 

 

Nick Carter 0:26:13.5:

This is a thing I think, that kind of, how do we have flexible agility on one side, but then also how do you make sure you have a regulator who you need to keep happy, who I think I can say is actually, compared to many of the others of your peers, probably the most happy with Monzo! Which is great, that you're least in the news, and I guess the requirements that you got from some of the regulators, I mean this is where interestingly the backbone of FP&A and planning and modeling, it actually gives you that backbone to be able to have driver-based plans, variables, scenarios, to be able to deal with, not just your internal management. So like your budget and your forecast, but also being able to run stress tests, which - I know not everyone in the room is from financial services or banking, but stress testing is an incredibly complex, very high sensitivity activity, would you say, and how do you see this kind of backbone across finance really enabling you to do that in a way which is servicing all of your stakeholders? 

 

William Luk 0:27:18.3:

Yes. I think I have like one example in mind. I remember when I did budget in one of my previous companies. We had this huge Excel system. We basically had 30 or 40 Excel files interconnected with each other, and I was sitting in the global chair, so I had to constantly open all these 40 Excel files, press F9, and hope that everything would match and no errors would appear, but in reality I basically spent most of my nights until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning trying to spot the mistakes. 

 

Nick Carter 0:27:47.4:

You must have been hating your job then! 

 

William Luk 0:27:49.3:

Yes. It was challenging, but it was exciting at the same time. But these were the things that we shouldn't be doing, and these are things that can really put the business at risk. So in terms of having Anaplan and the proper guide rails in place, it makes me go to sleep in a much better way because, yes, we need to protect the business, we need to make sure that inputs are right, and I think Anaplan has also AI tools to help us validate the data that is coming in. So I think things like creating a single source of truth, making sure that the KPIs are sound, and everyone that is doing planning work can rely one hundred per cent on the KPIs, on the financials, is something very important for the integrity and the right decision making in our company.  

 

Nick Carter 0:28:35.6:

I think there's a tagline in there: Sleep better with Anaplan. Yes? 

 

William Luk 0:28:38.7:

I agree! One hundred per cent I agree. 

 

Nick Carter 0:28:40.7:

[Unclear words 0:28:41.4]. I guess reflecting on your experience, because obviously you did this with Nubank. So you saw firsthand probably similar challenges to what some of the people in the room here, or I guess maybe the opportunity to actually use technology for forecasting, planning processes, decision making in a way where you kind of run that, obviously, program, with Nubank, and now you're doing an extra version of the same with maybe a bit of a greater toolkit, let's say. For the people who are in the room, what would your advice be, because some of us have done this multiple times, but also some of which is maybe your refined to what you see and learn at the conference rather than necessarily learning from others. I mean what advice would you have to others going on this journey? 

 

William Luk 0:29:29.7:

Yes. So in terms of background, at Nubank we implemented Anaplan back in 2020. It was around COVID time, so it was a very challenging scenario in which everyone was working from home for the first time ever, and we basically didn't have lots of support, because we decided to do most of the things internally. I think this is one of the things that Nubank prefers to do, which is build things internally, but we did have like three or four modelers from external consultants, and I think that the challenge was that we didn't have the proper knowledge of how, or maybe what were the best practices towards implementing Anaplan. So we basically trained 80 people in the FP&A team, and we just… 

 

Nick Carter 0:30:13.4:

Eighty model builders? 

 

William Luk 0:30:14.6:

Yes, 80 model builders doing things at the same time in the same workspace. So you can imagine that the environment was going to be frozen at times, sometimes for like 10 minutes, sometimes for 30 minutes. So it wasn't productive, but I would say that it was a good test for us, and by then we were able to identify our weak areas, which was we didn't have a proper team or a center of excellence to make sure that all the modeling was done following best practices. So this is like the first learning that we have, so get great support. I think Deloitte is doing an amazing job supporting us here at Monzo. The second thing is, I think that, if you think about implementing solutions, you need to have a very clear why in mind. So we are not just implementing Anaplan because we find it cool, we are implementing Anaplan because we find it's going to be key for our future success in the FP&A team. So as long as you know where your company is headed to, and where your team of finance is headed to, then I think understanding your why makes the sell internally much easier, and it's even better if the analysts can come up with these ideas, because it doesn't have to be a top-down decision.  

 

William Luk 0:31:26.4:

Monzo and Nubank, they are companies that are very democratic, which is good and bad at times, but I would say that if you think about innovation or the huge transformations within the business, it makes sense to get the buy in of your analysts, and the teams who will be working or piloting the models on a daily basis. Because of they don't understand why, they will basically be not engaged with a solution, and everyone knows that Excel is more flexible, Google Sheets is more flexible, you can work in real time for colleagues, but sometimes you just need to make sure that we have the proper guide rails in place, and I cannot reinforce this enough. This has been my biggest challenges from my FP&A career. We basically need to make sure that all the inputs are correct and sound, and then also the data that's coming in, that should be validated by AI tools or even by humans. There's a word in Japanese that I learnt when I was implementing Anaplan, which is poka yoke. So it's a manufacturing term in which the Japanese people say that, all the processes that involves human interaction, they should be error or mistake proof. So we need to make sure that every step of the way that we have humans interacting with tools, spreadsheets, models, we should be able to create ways in which we minimize or at least identify the weak areas, because I think this is going to be crucial for the longevity of the business. 

 

William Luk 0:33:01.5:

Maybe final advice, I'd say, understand really well why. What's the end state of your planning tools? Have a vision of how it's going to be, and don't ever stop investing in the tools that you choose, because at Nubank we implemented successfully back in 2020, and to this day, they continue to make improvements, so they are taking advantage of the new tools that Anaplan has been deploying. They are redefining some of the things that they did in the past, in the same way they are doing things here at Monzo. We implemented Anaplan in 2019/2020. We continue to make continuous improvement towards this tool, because I think that the finance team and the finance dynamics are only going to get tougher and maybe more complex, so we need to make sure that all of our tooling they are able to scale in the same place. 

 

Nick Carter 0:33:58.9:

I completely agree. I definitely echo, yes, senior sponsorship, exec sponsorship. The programs that I've worked with, that we've worked with at Deloitte, the most impactful ones have got sponsorship at the top because, let's be honest, transformation is hard. It requires choices around investment, around decisions and you're all in, I think, with Anaplan, as that kind of finance architecture, which is fantastic, but if you're not, then typically it's hard to get off the ground, in terms of value. 

 

William Luk 0:33:58.9:

Yes, and I think in terms of like change management, this is a super important topic as well. Implementation is tough, but change management is also equally important, and make sure that the proper stakeholders are well advised or what's going to be the end state, how users are going to be able to interact with Anaplan. We need to think about the UX as well. So here in finance, for example, the same way that we treat our best personal and business customers and try to wow them, it's the same thing that we try to do with finance towards our stakeholders. So we need to make sure that whenever we interact with the people team, the operations team, they are just like, wow, finance was able to build something was so easy that makes my life so much easier, and therefore I'm going to be much more engaged, much more happier when having to work on budget, strategic plans and other projects. 

 

Nick Carter 0:35:19.6:

Yes. We've got to make them love it? 

 

William Luk 0:35:20.7:

Yes, exactly. 

 

Nick Carter 0:35:22.6:

Thank you very much for sharing your story. I know Luk is going to be around at about 3 o'clock, so if you want to grab him, feel free to come and get him at the Deloitte stand, and yes, really appreciate your time.  

 

William Luk 0:35:32.1:

Thank you very much. 

 

Nick Carter 0:35:33.1:

Thank you.