The Best Practice

Steven Barry is a proven mentor in the Anaplan community, but not only that, he brings so many other qualities to the table, both technical and strategically.

Steven currently works for an Anaplan Partner, where he focuses on training and developing new Anaplan talent through structured learning content, advice and insights, and case study exercises. When he isn't teaching, he is helping drive growth for the Anaplan practice at Cervello.

Season 4 is here! To kick things off we host Chad Pyke from “The EPM Show” and CoThryve.

In Chad's day-to-day, he strives to help companies build winning teams by connecting them with the right talent in the EPM Space as a Talent Partner at CoThryve. In this episode, Chad gives us insight into how to market yourself vertically in your career, what characteristics hiring decision makers look for, and much more!

However, don't let first impressions deceive you. Once his daily work at CoThryve is done, Chad and his business partner Blake put on their super suits and host “The EPM Show” with the goal of giving Anaplan and EPM professionals an unfair career advantage. Don't miss the insights they have there either, as our discussion is just the tip of the iceberg!

Stay tuned for Episode 2!

This week on "The Best Practice" we meet with Cyrus Sullivan, a good friend of ours from Anavate Partners.

Cyrus is one of the founding members of Anavate and currently holds the title: Director of Partnerships. In this episode, Cyrus walks us through Anavate's contribution to the Anaplan Community through their college outreach program, Skill Factory training, and willingness to mentor new entrants to the connected planning space. If you are interested in how to get involved with Anaplan, this is quite the insightful episode for you!

Enjoy!

For the first time, FSF welcomes a guest BACK to the podcast! David Smith joins the FSF team once again to discuss agnostic planning practices and share insights on the industry as a whole.

This time around, David walks through when and how to choose your next planning platform, why Excel has stuck in the fight so long, and what his new adventure, Kaleidoscope, is up to these days. Always a pleasure to have the great, David Smith in our presence. This may become a yearly occurrence!

Enjoy!

FSF is excited to announce a new partnership with Datarails!

Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users. It automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

Join us as we introduce Annette DeYoung, a highly experienced FP&A Solutions Consultant at Datarails,and discuss how Datarails can address so many of your company's planning and forecasting issues with ease.

There are a ton of Anaplan customers out there, but few have the internal talent that our next guest has in regards to Anaplan knowledge and experience.

Will Lederer is the FP&A, Business Technology Director at Okta. On top of architecting everything Anaplan related, last year Will led a technology tranformation project as his team and him were tasked with merging Okta's newly aqcuired company's (Auth0) data into their existing architecture. If that doesn't sound challenging enough, this was all required to be done while maintaining both finance team's ability to report consolidated basis... Needless to say, we are grateful to have someone with this experience on the podcast!

Join us as Will walks us through that experience and outlines the approach/strategy he implemented to devise a solution to this problem and how Anaplan's flexibility made it the perfect tool for the challenge.

For the FIRST TIME on "The Best Practice", FSF Consulting Group invites one of their very own clients to the podcast! Geoff Lyn and Naomi Chan of MarVista Entertainment share their journey to Anaplan, the difficulties faced along the way, and how FSF Consulting Group assisted with model optimizations and overall user adoption for MVE's use of Anaplan.

The relatability within this episode goes without mentioning. Many customers feel the same hesitancy and anxiety when choosing to switch from the familiar over to Anaplan, which can be complex especially in the early days. However, when it comes to achieving results for a use case as unique as the Entertainment Industry demands, Anaplan stands up to the test and delivers, as long as your implementation was designed to succeed.

Enjoy this inside look into FSF as a Partner to an amazing Client!

Season 3 of "The Best Practice" podcast is finally HERE!!!

We kick this season off with an amazing guest by the name of Luke Komiskey. Luke is the CEO and Founder of DataDrive, an organization dedicated to helping companies gain their ‘data advantage’ of actionable insights - without the hassle of managing data teams & tech.

In this episode, Luke discusses:

• Data Strategy and when to get one
• The different data tools that can assist in your data journey
• His adventure around the world with his wife prior to starting DataDrive
• And much more about Data!

Join in to learn more about Luke, Data, and how you can elevate your company with new insights!

Welcome back to "The Best Practice" podcast for Season 2, Episode 10!

This week, we go behind the scenes with the podcast host, Zack Fennessy to hear his journey to Master Anaplanner and what this new title means to him in the greater Anaplan ecosystem.

Tune in to hear a little bit about Zack's personal side as we continue the "Behind the Brand" series with FSF Consulting Group!

What does it mean being a Master Anaplanner in one of the most innovative companies today?

Meet Jerry Wu, Product Manager at Snap Inc.

Tune into hear Jerry’s journey across the Anaplan Ecosystem, from customer; to partner, to customer!

Are you a new Anaplanner? We’ve got a great guest for you today!

Welcome Jessica Medrano!

Jessica is a Teaching Assistant with the Correlation One program. She also recently started her career in the Anaplan Ecosystem as an Anaplan Consultant at Vuealta.

Tune in to learn about Jessica’s story from Correlation One, to getting her first Anaplan job, to now being an Anaplan Consultant.

Our guest this week is a current Master Anaplanner, she is a former Anaplan COE Lead with American Airlines and Docusign - and has particular expertise within the Sales Performance Management use case. Recently, she launched her new independent consulting company Double10 Consulting.

Meet Clarissa Hassfurder!

Tune in to learn more about Clarissa’s background, her road to Anaplan, her time in consulting and as a customer, her view on the Sales Performance use case, and her return back to consulting!

What’s better than 1 guest on the “Best Practice” podcast? 2 guests!

We are excited to share our conversation with Nusreth Baig and Greg Nishihira. Nusreth and Greg are both Majors Account Executives at Anaplan.

Hear from them about their backgrounds, their journey to Anaplan, learn about what the Anaplan sales process is like, the value proposition of Anaplan, and managing Customer relationships post-sale.

We are excited to bring you a special guest this week! He is a Supply Chain expert with over 30 years of experience in the field. He is also an Anaplan thought leader.

Please welcome Joe Cheng, Business Program Manager and Solutions Architect from Microsoft! 

Tune in as we discuss Joe’s professional background prior to Anaplan, his learning journey, and unique modeling challenges in Supply Chain.

Anaplan hosted their annual conference June 21st - June 23rd, 2022 which included Anaplan customers, Partners, and of course Anaplan Employees! This was the first in-person conference for Anaplan since 2019.

Tune in to hear the FSF team breakdown our Anaplan LIVE experience, our thoughts on important hot topics, and what we have in store for next year’s conference!

This week, we are joined by one of the more unique minds within the Anaplan Ecosystem. He is a finance subject matter expert, former Anaplan employee, customer, and now runs his own Anaplan consulting firm OpenVale Group, Caleb Maxson!

Tune in to hear Caleb address some of the more unique challenges around Anaplan implementations, talent management/retention, and tight finance cycles

Welcome back to Season 2 Episode 2 of The Best Practice podcast! This week we sit down with Master Anaplanner, Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan holds a degree in industrial engineering and currently works as an independent contractor specializing in Anaplan implementations. Jonathan also has over 2 years of data visualization and analytics experience, such as Tableau and PowerBI, as well as experience in SQL and Python coding languages.

Join in the conversation to hear how Jonathan was asked to learn Anaplan early on in his career, which led to him quickly becoming one of the "best kept secrets" in the greater Anaplan ecosystem!

WELCOME TO SEASON 2 of "The Best Practice" Podcast!!!

We are very excited to kick things off once again for you, the Anaplan Community! To help us bring in the new jammed pack season of The Best Practice, we have special guest Mitch Aist.

Mitch is an inspiration to us here at FSF Consulting Group and his story of triumph through unexpected injury that left him unable to complete his normal day-to-day Anaplan model building tasks is anything but short of amazing!

Join us in this episode as we learn how Mitch tackled RSI and leveled up his expertise and teaching capacity to accomplish great things in the Anaplan ecosystem.

Enjoy!

What do we think about the Anaplan and Thoma Bravo acquisition? Why are Centers of Excellence valuable? What are some best practices with mergers and acquisitions use cases?

Tune in to hear Zack Fennessy, Jon Ferneau, and Daanish Soomar discuss these topics on the latest episode of the “Best Practice” podcast!

Anaplan India - we are excited to release Episode 10 of The Best Practice podcast! We are joined by the number 1 Master Anaplanner on the platform today, presenting the amazing Misbah Ansari!

You may know Misbah from all of the work he is doing on Anaplan Community where he serves as a moderator and ranks number 1 in kudos and solutions or from his efforts with the Anaplan India user group!

Tune in to learn about Misbah’s journey to Anaplan, his career story, his early struggles which led him to where he is today, and what his thoughts are on how Community plays such a big role!

Guess who’s back? We are excited to return to you this week with Episode 9 of the “Best Practice” podcast!

Joining us this week is one of the more influential people behind where Anaplan Model Building stands today. Meet Nathan Price. Nathan has played key roles at Anaplan as an Anaplan Solution Architect and as a Model Optimization team manager!

Tune in as we learn about Nathan’s story of perseverance, his insight into Anaplan best practices, model optimization strategies, and how to approach model building. We also will touch on the cool work Nathan is doing with space exploration!

(Note: episode was recorded before Nathan started at NASA in early February)

We are joined by one of the most well-known names in the Anaplan Ecosystem. He is a co-author of the Planual, a Community Moderator, and THE Master Anaplanner, Rob Marshall.

Rob is one of the top Anaplanners in the world today, however, as you will learn, it was not an easy process to earn that distinction.

Join us as Rob talks about his early trials and tribulations with the Anaplan platform, his learning journey, his advice for new model builders, best practices on Anaplan modeling, his advice for Anaplan Customers, and the evolution of the Planual!

Grab your popcorn and ENJOY!

We are joined this week by the 2019 Master Anaplanner of the Year, Brittany Deaton!

Brittany currently is a Master Anaplanner working in the actuarial industry. Join us as we explore Brittany's path to Anaplan, her learning journey, her experience with Centers of Excellence, what she is doing now in her new role, and her advice to new people entering the industry.

Enjoy!

Welcome back to Episode 6 of The Best Practice Podcast. We are joined this week by FP&A guru Sourjya Rudra.

Sourjya currently is an independent Anaplan Solution Architect with a background in Finance. Prior to Finance he spent time in the Education industry.

Tune in as we explore Sourjya’s journey to Anaplan, how some of his prior experiences translate over to Anaplan, his insights from working with many different Anaplan clients, and what advice he has for new Anaplanners joining the Ecosystem.

As always, Enjoy!

We are joined this week by one of the best leaders in our space, Stephanie Weiland!

Stephanie is a leader in Finance at her organization within the Healthcare industry. She has been an Anaplan customer for 6+ years.

Tune in as Stephanie discusses her road to finding Anaplan, the importance of change management, her advice for Consultants from a customer perspective, and the principles by which she leads within her role.

This week, we bring you David Smith! To say that David is well known in the Anaplan ecosystem would be an understatement.

David has worked with various planning platforms and through those experiences has developed core best practices, including most recently, The Planual for Anaplan.

The Planual is THE Best Practice handbook for Anaplan. It has quickly become the source of truth and inspiration when setting out on a model building journey or even a model optimization task.

This episode is full of best practices that aren't just Anaplan related; they're technology agnostic! David uses various analogies (including one about a car) to describe why best practices are important, and how implementing them can both save you time and your sanity.

If there ever is an episode of "The Best Practice" podcast that you DO NOT want to miss, it WOULD be this one!

Sit back, take notes, and ENJOY!

Welcome back to Episode 3 of “The Best Practice” podcast. We are joined this week by end to end extraordinaire, Matt Budd!

Matt is an independent consultant focusing on end to end implementations, providing services from Data Warehousing, Data Transformation, and Data Integrations all the way to Anaplan and Data Visualization. 

In this episode, Matt talks about each area’s role in successful Anaplan implementations and in high functioning organizations generally. Tune in as Matt shares his wealth of knowledge and insight into the EPM and Anaplan Ecosystem.

In this episode, you will get to hear from hosts Zack and Daanish, as well as the behind the scenes producer, Jon Ferneau as we share our background and journey to the creation of FSF Consulting Group.

We will give a high level overview of what's to come in the future for The Best Practice podcast and why we are excited about the idea of giving back and paying it forward to the Community.

Chris is currently a Principal Program Manager at Anaplan. Prior to his time at Anaplan, Chris has been both a Customer of the Anaplan software, as well as an implementation consultant for an Anaplan Partner.

During this episode, Chris discusses his implementation experiences, training resources, how to get involved with Anaplan, and his optimistic outlook on the software for the future.

Enjoy!