Sky zooms into planning across the business

Sky, Europe’s largest media company and pay-TV broadcaster by revenue, “connects the work we do to the things that really matter for our customers.” That work includes planning in finance, and prior to implementing Anaplan, Sky did all of that planning manually, in spreadsheets. Then, the finance team manually created up to nine forecasts using spreadsheets for numerous partners across the business.

The process was cumbersome and counterproductive. “We didn’t think we were serving our internal customers or our external customers,” said Damian Scaccia, Head of Planning Engagement. That’s when they realized that they needed a different planning solution.

Sky’s new financial planning solution had to be quick to implement, easy to use, and intuitive for employees of all skill levels. Furthermore, Sky wanted to ensure that the finance team could operate the solution with only limited outside management after implementation. The team found all of this and more with the Anaplan platform.

Scaccia describes Anaplan as “a cure for all the issues that you get with [spreadsheets]: manual errors, reporting issues, all that kind of stuff.” Before Anaplan, Sky’s finance team spent roughly 90% of its time gathering data and validating that the information was accurate. With Anaplan, Sky has “real-time information to make real-time decisions,” Scaccia says.

Sky’s finance department loves the idea that, with Anaplan, everyone on the team can be a super user, and nobody has to rely on IT to do the work for them. That has enabled expansion of Anaplan into marketing, sales, and supply chain uses. “In a planning role, it’s difficult to make things sexy but I think Anaplan does that,” Scaccia concludes.