Unknown Speaker 0:00:08.6:

Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for sticking around. You're in for one last treat, one last great promotion. I'm excited for this session with Allitix and BIC talking about what they've been doing around trade promotion planning, around pricing and supply chain best practices. So much to learn to really wrap our day up. Please help me welcome this great group of speakers.

 

Drew Dalziel 0:00:36.1: 

Thank you. So, as we get started, we'll just go through some quick introductions so we can get a feel of who we are. So, I'm Drew Dalziel. I'm a director here at Allitix. With me is my colleague, Russell. I'll let him go into a little detail about himself. Allitix is one of Anaplan's partners focused on all the use cases that Anaplan provides to its clients as well as a variety of different industries. Today, we're focused on the consumer industry here with Kelly. So, Russell, do you want to give a little intro to yourself?

 

Russell Gummelt 0:01:09.2:

Yes. Thanks, Drew. My name is Russell Gummelt. I run our sales performance management practice. So, any use case involving salespeople or CEMs or AEs, I'm involved in at least the sales cycle, and then with BIC and some of our larger clients, I'm involved day-to-day with the project as well. I've got nine years of Anaplan experience and a lot of familiar faces in the crowd, so thanks for coming out.

 

Kelly Rolader 0:01:33.2:

All right. I'm Kelly Rolader. A little bit about me. First and foremost, I'm a mom. I have two grown daughters. One who lives here in Chicago, works for Molson Coors, and one who lives in Atlanta, where I am based, who is an attorney. I have a very proud and loving husband who is my number-one cheerleader, and I'm an avid sports fan. Braves first, Appalachian State Mountaineers second, and third come the Bulldogs. So, that's a little bit about me. My day job after all of that is I lead revenue growth management for BIC globally. I've been here four-and-a-half years and prior to that, 20 years with the Coca-Cola company. 

 

Drew Dalziel 0:02:14.3:

All right. So, before we get started into some of the Q&A, Kelly, do you want to give some introduction to BIC, what you guys do, what your role is, trade promotion, RGM, and then how you got started with your journey at Anaplan?

 

Kelly Rolader 0:02:30.3:

Absolutely. So, BIC is a global manufacturer of pens. So, stationery products, lighters. In the United States, the number one market share in lighters and razors. So, disposable razors globally. We got our start with the iconic crystal pen which is now in the Modern Museum of Art, and I joined BIC to actually start the revenue growth management function. The function's responsible for our assortment, our pricing strategy, promotion and our trade investment with customers. So, our journey at BIC and with Allitix started with trade investment management. We identified Anaplan as a partner or a platform for us because we had three other systems already on Anaplan. We had demand planning, we had FPNA, and one of our acquired companies, Rocketbook, was also on Anaplan. So, with the vision of it all being interconnected someday in the future, we took the jump to Anaplan as well. It is my third TPM installation in my career and none of them are easy. So, I'll talk a little bit about that because that's how we ended up partnered with Allitix on our journey.

 

Drew Dalziel 0:03:59.0: 

We got started later in your Anaplan journey. Would you mind just discussing a little bit as to how that came about and some of the challenges you guys were facing prior to us being involved?

 

Kelly Rolader 0:04:10.7:

Absolutely. So, we selected Anaplan. We started on our use case and what was trade investment management going to look like at BIC, and it wasn't going well. All of our sales planners were planning individually in Excel. We didn't have any visibility to it. So, Anaplan seemed like the best way for us to go, but it wasn't going as smooth. We weren't getting the speed. We weren't getting the quality or the user experience out of the tool that we needed. So, we took a tactical pause, and I reached out to Anaplan and their partnership team to help us identify a partner that could help us optimize the platform, that could help us drive some efficiency and really help drive some change management. That's how we identified Allitix.

 

Drew Dalziel 0:05:05.6:

Yes, and obviously, as an Anaplan partner and any of the clients we work with, we strive to make models as optimized as possible within the bounds of what Anaplan can do. A lot of times, clients will go through a journey, whether by themselves or with other engagements, and it may not always go as smooth, or there may be challenges with the model and you're just not sure why or what's happening. Obviously, the first thing a lot of clients do is they blame the product, right? 'It's Anaplan's fault.' As Allitix, we often are brought in to help optimize models. Russ, do you want to expand a little bit on why Kelly and the team chose us and the Model Advisor?

 

Russell Gummelt 0:05:51.3:

Yes. Thanks, Drew. With Allitix, we offer what we call our Model Advisor services. Basically, it's an Anaplan model that consumes the blueprint of other Anaplan models. We have about 28 checks that it goes through and points out best practices. Particularly with BIC, in a lot of retail CPG customers, we're at a weekly grain, and with Anaplan, you could make huge skew dimensions by customers, by week, but obviously, the model is not going to perform well. You're going to run out of space unless you have Polaris, and really have issues. So, we approach these models very tactically and go through, can we concatenate these lists together to make them smaller, where you only have the SKUs that you sell into certain customers? Really taking an approach of, how can we build this model not just for this year, but sustainably, right? We're coming up with BIC on their year-over-year rollover now, and last year was our first year to do the rollover. There was a lot of build that we had to explain to Kelly and team of, we have to build this so that it can be expanded for this year and then beyond. There's a lot of considerations you have to take into account to be able to grow a model like that and save the size and be able to add on as we go with features and functions.

 

Drew Dalziel 0:07:11.6:

So, with that, Kelly, do you want to expand on the lessons learned and success that's come out of what you're now able to do and some of the ways that you have expanded within RGM?

 

Kelly Rolader 0:07:25.5:

Yes, so from Model Advisor, one of the things we were able to do is really optimize the platform that we're on. It allowed us to expand from the United States to Canada. So, that was a big plus for us. Our whole North America revenue is under one platform and all of our trade is under one platform. So, no more Excel. All the salespeople are in one tool. Change management was really important in the process. So, Allitix helped us on that journey. We had the salespeople actually in with us building the user stories and making sure that they were adopting as we went along the way. The other thing that I would tell you that we learned along the way was the flexibility of Anaplan. We weren't taking advantage of it because we were trying to fit within the rigid structure of the BIC IT systems and rules and regulations and all of that, that you have to fit within. We weren't taking advantage of the flexibility of Anaplan because of the rigid process we had to follow at BIC. So, I partnered with our CIO to help him understand the flexibility we could take advantage of, and they actually put in a new process for our Anaplan system so that we could leverage the flexibility of Anaplan and marry up - they're still using the ServiceNow and the ticketing system that that we have at BIC for our users, but not have to go through the waterfall process, but have a more agile process.

 

Drew Dalziel 0:09:06.2:

I'd be interested in just polling the audience real quick. How many of you out there that are current clients have had to deal with IT constraints and processes?

 

Russell Gummelt 0:09:17.3:

Maybe how many haven't. [Laughter] 

 

Drew Dalziel 0:09:20.2:

Yes. It's no offense to any IT folks in the room. I think the agility in which you want to try to develop Anaplan doesn't necessarily sit inside the bounds of the way that the typical IT structure or the legacy IT structures exist and the processes they like to follow. So, I think it was a huge win for BIC and the CIO, the new CIO, that you guys had come in and really set a new example of, we see this is… I think a lot of it was leading to the fact that it was costing big money, because as a consulting partner, or even internal resources, time is money and if you're constrained with a lot of these red tape issues, you're just costing yourselves more money unnecessarily. I think that was a big driver in the argument as to, we can speed up Allitix's implementation time if we just let these things go, and that was a big win, I think, for them and us as we moved forward. 

 

Kelly Rolader 0:10:22.1:

Yes. The other thing I would add to that, I mentioned that we had four different instances of Anaplan. We now have brought all those owners together. We talk about pain points. We talk about talent and making sure that we have model builders in-house to help us grow the talent. We've talked about developing our internal COE for Anaplan in all of our instances, and it's a regular routine. We also evaluate our partners, such as Allitix through that process, across the four owners of the platforms.

 

Russell Gummelt 0:10:55.1:

Yes, and to expand on that, we're going in now and doing Model Advisor on these models that have been built in Europe and by other partners. We're looking to drive the same value there organization-wide, and be that implementation partner that does new use cases and does cleanup and help out on those sides.

 

Drew Dalziel 0:11:16.1:

It drives into my next point here. What elements could you give advice for, or do you look for as you want to expand forward and achieve more value from the Anaplan platform?

 

Kelly Rolader 0:11:29.9:

So, advice on getting started. Somebody in the room asked about data. I would tell you crap in and crap out. So, make sure you get your data right first. I think it's really important, and it's also really important, if you're doing a trade investment system, like I have, to teach your salespeople the guidelines of what the data going in and you're planning for, so they can understand the data that comes out and how you're going to evaluate that. We've transitioned from using Excel for our reviews with our sales teams to using Anaplan and our dashboards with our sales team. So, if they've put bad data in there, their metrics and their KPIs are not going to look right, and that's a reflection on them and their planning team. So, data is critically important. The second I would tell you is change management. We started with trade investment because it is one of the largest line items in our P&L after people and cost of goods. We would like to take it to the other RGM function. So, price modeling our assortment and our promotion planning. We are using another system to actually help us test promotions and learn whether or not what promotions are working well for us in what promotional timeframe and bringing that data into Anaplan would help us make even the trade investment program that much stronger.

 

Drew Dalziel 0:12:58.5:

Could you just expand a little bit on the benefits? I know we're still in progress with some of the development here as we go forward, but what are some of the ROI that you might have realized and some of the benefits you've received thus far?

 

Kelly Rolader 0:13:15.0:

Absolutely. So, before, we could see our trade dollars and our investment at a total level, the salesperson could see it, what they were spending, and they could probably manipulate that before they went into their regular meeting with their FPNA person or their finance person. We couldn't see that on a regular basis. We can now see promotions by skew at a weekly basis or at a planning level basis, and we can also allocate based on whether or not the promotion is doing well and reinvest with that customer, where we couldn't do that before because we only had the 10,000-foot view. We now have a very granular view, by product line, by customer, and it allows us to be more efficient with our dollars. We've also seen, as a result, year-over-year improvement in the ROI of our investments and our promotions. So, partnered with the promotion testing system that we have and our trade investment system, we've really been able to improve our promotional effectiveness with customers.

 

Drew Dalziel 0:14:19.3:

On that note, you touched on pricing, and I know we're getting ready to kick off the price exception modeling. could you touch on that integration there and how you see that impact, what you guys are doing in trade promotion? 

 

Kelly Rolader 0:14:32.2:

So, our salespeople interact with now Anaplan for all of their planning. The only piece that's outside of Anaplan is our price exception piece, and so that's in our ERP system. So, in an effort to get our salespeople into only one platform, we're bringing price exception into Anaplan so that the salesperson interacts with one platform. They have one dashboard to see their information and their KPIs on, and so that's a journey that we're on now. We've done some objective setting. We've done some, here are some use cases. We're in the process now of moving the business forward to build user stories with Russell and team. 

 

Russell Gummelt 0:15:15.6:

Yes, and price exception in Anaplan, it gives the other side, because they can give the promotion dollars and then the actual pricing discounts that they give. They can see both in the same place with it coming in. So, it makes a lot of sense to pull in, and we're definitely excited to move forward on that one.

 

Drew Dalziel 0:15:32.2:

I actually skipped over this one, Russ, but just to go back to the Model Advisor and some of the success that BIC has achieved. Can you just talk through how that improved their model within the first six weeks of our engagement?

 

Russell Gummelt 0:15:46.2:

Yes. So, when we got brought in, I think BIC was at about 150 gigs on the TPM. Y'all had had to purchase HyperModel which was an extra line item that I think was unexpected. I think initially, we saved about 70 gigs, so we went from 150 to about 80 and saw a lot of ROI from that. Then on top of that, we were able, like Kelly mentioned, to bring Canada in, and right now, we're able to do multiple years. So, we've got, right now, 2023, 2024, and here in July, August, we're going to open up 2025 and be able to see year-over-year how those promotions lap. Next year, we'll have the painful conversation of, let's lop off 2023 and just get '24, '25, '26 going. But there's a lot of value in that, right? There's something that we go through with every client of, Anaplan can do that because it is a flexible tool, but should it? BIC is a good example of where, if we're trying to do extra functionality in Anaplan that's not really fit for, we as advisors and trusted advisors, we have to go in and say, is this really the best fit for Anaplan, or should you be doing this somewhere else in and not in Anaplan?

 

Drew Dalziel 0:16:58.5:

I know we have an integration to Power BI. I don't know if you want to touch on that.

 

Russell Gummelt 0:17:02.8:

Yes. So, Power BI within BIC, they already had set up a lot of reporting, and [?Myriad 0:17:06.9] on your team is really good with Power BI. They're utilizing a direct connection to Power BI from Anaplan, and we've made the exports available, and she's built a lot of really robust reports off of that. Then also, we export the data out into their data lake and they're able to build Power BI reports on that, that are repeatable and that their team is able to go in and access. What we try to do reporting-wise in Anaplan is what's necessary to complete the planning process, but there's a lot of reports that people are used to where, I can have 20 dimensions and I can filter on the skew 20 different ways. There's tips and tricks that we can use in Anaplan, similar functionality on concatenated lists, but really having a robust reporting system on top of it just helps out, because every bespoke request, we don't have to figure out how to fit into the Anaplan box, and they're able to really do that just based on the data and the attributes of that data.

 

Kelly Rolader 0:18:06.4:

Yes, and one of our key KPIs is called trade investment effectiveness. That is our net sales growing faster or ahead of our investment dollars, and so by leveraging our KPI dashboard, which is in Power BI, which all of our markets have globally, they can see their trade investment by customer. We also have a calculator in it. So, if my net sales were to grow by this much, or my investment were to grow by this much, would I be reaching my target? So, it's been very helpful. It's also the platform that we use across the entire company for executive reporting.

 

Drew Dalziel 0:18:42.8:

So, last question here, a two-part question. We have begun this journey and you guys have expanded to Canada. We talked about pricing, and I know the other areas in demand and FPNA Rocketbook have Anaplan. Where do you see this journey going for you guys over the next 12 months to 24 months? Then I know recently, the data science team has come under your responsibilities. How do you see that team playing a role into the future planning within just RGM?

 

Kelly Rolader 0:19:12.2:

Yes. So, I talked a little bit about where I'd like to see it go within the RGM space. So, price modeling, assortment, and adding on to our promotion capability. In the price modeling space, would really like to bring in my new data science team and think about how scenario planning and even machine learning there. We've got a real opportunity to integrate our demand planning and improve our forecasting so that the salespeople, when they're planning at the planning level, are using a sales forecast that makes sense to them versus a production demand planning forecast. So, that's a big opportunity for us. We are moving to one ERP system globally. We're now on four. So, as we move to that one ERP system, integrating with our Anaplan system and then taking what we have built in the United States and Canada to other markets would be my vision.

 

Drew Dalziel 0:20:13.4:

Alright. We'll open it up for any Q&A.

 

Unknown Speaker 0:20:18.9:

Alright. Let's go right over here.

 

Audience 0:20:23.0:

So, with how large I assume your data set is, do you experience any lags with when you're trying to open up models within Anaplan? How many years of historical data do you keep in your system? Just out of curiosity.

 

Russell Gummelt 0:20:45.3:

Yes. So, lag-wise, it's a complicated model. It's around 160 gigs now that we have in there. They use Cloudworks to call it every hour, right from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm in the US, basically to keep the model awake and so that nobody goes in there at 8:00 am. and says, 'I've got to wait five minutes, go get coffee,' before this model opens. So, that's the first strategy that we use. Then as far as data sets go, right now, we've got '23, '24 year to-date and we're opening up '25. So, it's a year-and-a-half or so. The data hub eats most of the SIN, I would say, where basically in the data hub, we take in a lot of data that we don't need and that we might just need to do lookups and all that, and we get it to the right grain to be able to send it to the spoke model without messing it up with all that data. Then the other big tip that Anaplan gives us for speed, since it is weekly data, is land by a concatenation of just product and customer by real-time, right? There were times when we used to land time, customer, product and ran into a lot of speed issues. Even though this may take up a little more size, we see a lot of speed gains just by moving to that method.

 

Audience 0:22:10.2:

You described some of the challenges in the space limitations and how you had to alter some of the hierarchies, whether it was on the customer or the product level, and then trying to sell that into your sales team who are very accustomed to probably planning at a specific customer level or a specific product line level, or even at the SKU level. How did you overcome some of those objections, and what were some of the tricks or tips that you could provide in terms of getting over that hump, in terms of changing their way of thinking and making sure it fits to the Anaplan model that you've now been using?

 

Kelly Rolader 0:22:51.0:

Yes. So, we didn't change the level that they plan at. The forecast is coming in at a different level right now, so they have to go in, and actually, the model allocates the forecast down to the level that the sales planners plan at. So, that's probably been our number one challenge with getting the salespeople accustomed to that and looking for anomalies in that year-over-year. We have a great, I would tell you, training and inside the model, like Q&A that you can click on things to answer your questions, and then we have videos and all that stuff. Our annual sales meeting, we dedicate a large portion of time to the salespeople being able to have time with our Anaplan experts to make sure that they're planning right for next year. Change management, I would tell you, is number one. This is the third TPM system that I've done, all three on different platforms, and without a doubt, it's change management, bringing your sales team along with you.

 

Unknown Speaker 0:24:03.2:

Okay. Over there.

 

Audience 0:24:06.8:

You mentioned twice now that this is your third TPM implementation. So, without mentioning the other two, how does it compare from a cost standpoint, resource management? 

 

Kelly Rolader 0:24:20.2:

You learn lessons time over time. The first one I was with Coca-Cola and they're probably on their second or third, and they're using Anaplan now. So, the first one at Coca-Cola, we brought in, and every company thinks they're better, special and different, and we highly customized it to the point that it was not usable. So, when we brought Anaplan in, I wanted to understand, what can the model do? What is standard and what are best practices? So, we've really leaned on Allitix to help us understand best practices. That's also one of the reasons why we moved away from our old partner, because we weren't getting that from them, because I was very gun shy to over-customization. So, that I would tell you would be number one because you have to do the change of management, no matter what. So, if you don't over-customize it, you're still changing what the salesperson is doing in Excel. So, change them to something that your Anaplan partner can use the upgrades that Anaplan pushes out to the system, and not break your tool that your sales teams are using. Does that answer your question?

 

Audience 0:25:34.4:

[Inaudible 0:25:34.4] say from a cost standpoint and then a resource use standpoint, and even the length of implementation. How does Anaplan compare? 

 

Kelly Rolader 0:25:48.0:

Costs, I would say were a little bit less than the prior implementations. Speed, I would tell you we're about the same. The reason I would tell you that, if I take out some of the customization that was done prior to implementations, the heavy lifting, I would tell you, goes into the data and the use cases and the process. So, if you get the process down first before you build the tool, you'll be ten times more successful, other than building the tool and then hoping the process comes along with you. So, we focus on data and the process that we want to implement and then build the tool.

 

Unknown Speaker 0:26:38.3:

Alright. Was there another question over there?

 

Audience 0:26:43.7: 

From my experience, we had very much resistance from the sales team. They were very reluctant to use another tool, to enter data to follow the process. Did you feel the same resistance from your sales and how did you overcome that resistance?

 

Kelly Rolader 0:27:02.7:

Absolutely. Every time. [Laughs] Without a doubt. It was a must-do; not a nice to do. So, it was required. Then our head of sales transitioned all of their sales meetings to the data, and the way that we're running our sales meetings is coming out of that information, that's coming out of Anaplan. So, there's a vested interest from the salesperson to get that data right, to get those promotions planned right, because their incentive is based on it, right? So, their incentive is based on how much they're selling. Are they meeting their RGM KPIs, and trade investment's one of them, and if the data coming out of it at mid-year and end of the year is telling me that your KPI is off and your sales aren't where you forecasted them to be, then you're probably not going to get the bonus you're looking for.

 

Audience 0:27:55.9:

I guess you have a close integration with the demand planning tool. 

 

Kelly Rolader 0:27:59.9:

We do. I would tell you, and Russell would tell you as well, there's a lot of opportunity still there because the forecast comes in at demand level and we plan at a business planning level, a business planning unit, and so the tool allocates down to that, and the salespeople have to then validate it.

 

Audience 0:28:21.7:

Okay. Thanks.

 

Audience 0:28:30.2:

You mentioned Power BI. We're a Power BI shop. So, can you go a little more into detail about, is it just reporting on top of Anaplan, or are you pulling data via Microsoft Fabric or whatever?

 

Kelly Rolader 0:28:39.7:

So, we built our Power BI platform for my capability before Anaplan came in-house. So, all of our KPIs, all of our reporting is in Power BI and it's advanced over the years. So, the organization is accustomed to Power BI. That's what everybody's trained on. That's what everybody gets classes on. So, it was, for me, a must-have that they integrated. So, we use the plug-in, and you can probably talk a little bit more about that.

 

Russell Gummelt 0:29:09.5:

Yes, so we've got a few views that have exports that they can use the plug-in to get, and then also we output the results to their data lake, and basically, they can build anything on top of that that they want to. The advantage of the plug-in is that it's live and the data lake might happen nightly or weekly, but they're able to pull live data and be able to report on it every day, every hour.

 

Unknown Speaker 0:29:38.8:

Any more questions? I'm actually curious. Your sellers, they're working from one place. The forecast is one place. How have they approached their jobs differently with that at their fingertips? 

 

Kelly Rolader 0:29:53.3:

How have the sales organization approached their jobs differently? Well, first, there was resistance, and second, there was learning to understand what is the allocation and how is the system working. They have a KPI for forecast accuracy as well. So, ensuring that their demand forecast gets cleaned up and improves along the way helps with the allocation down to the sales. So, they have that outside of the KPIs they have for revenue growth, and so it's an education process, I would tell you, and it's one that we're learning along the way.

 

Unknown Speaker 0:30:33.7:

Perfect. Well, thanks so much for sharing your story and your journey. 

 

Kelly Rolader 0:30:38.7:

Absolutely.

 

Unknown Speaker 0:30:39.3:

Third time around the sun. If anybody has more questions, I'm sure they'll be sticking around and maybe you'll catch them during the happy hour just outside. Thank you so much.

 

Kelly Rolader 0:30:49.6:

Thank you.