About Client
The client is a global event management company headquartered in Chicago, with a strong operational footprint across the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. The organization manages complex, multi-region financial planning processes that require timely, accurate, and secure data movement across systems to support budgeting and forecasting at scale.
Background
The client wanted to build a modern budgeting and planning solution on Anaplan that could support enterprise-grade security, reliability, and scale. A key objective was to design an Anaplan workflow that reduced manual intervention across finance operations. At the same time, the client wanted to introduce Anaplan automation to streamline data ingestion, reduce dependency on manual uploads, and improve the overall efficiency of the budgeting team.
Existing processes relied heavily on manual data preparation, Excel-based inputs, and point-to-point integrations. These methods increased the risk of errors, delayed budget cycles, and limited the finance team’s ability to load or refresh data on demand. The need was clear: implement a controlled, automated Anaplan workflow that ensured accurate data movement while maintaining strict security standards.
Challenge
The client faced several operational and technical challenges while moving toward an automated Anaplan-based budgeting model:
- Seamless integration of multiple upstream systems and importing all required data into Anaplan in a single run using a unified Anaplan workflow.
- Ability to load data from multiple sources, including industry-specific systems and Excel data sheets, without breaking downstream logic.
- Providing secure access to an external Oracle system that was hosted behind a closed network, without exposing sensitive finance data.
- Introducing Anaplan automation to move finance data consistently into Anaplan without manual intervention.
- Enabling the finance planning team to trigger data loads on demand, rather than relying on fixed schedules.
- Addressing data security and governance concerns while transitioning sensitive financial information into Anaplan.
Our Solution
Implemented enterprise-grade ETL error handling to detect, troubleshoot, and resolve failures efficiently, reducing operational overhead and simplifying long-term maintenance of the Anaplan automation framework.
Designed a centralized, automation-first architecture focused on reliability, scalability, and governance.
Used the existing enterprise data warehouse as the single source of truth instead of connecting Anaplan directly to multiple upstream systems.
Implemented daily ETL jobs to consolidate and refresh data from all disparate sources, simplifying the Anaplan workflow and reducing overall integration complexity.
Enabled Anaplan automation using Anaplan Data Integration tools combined with generic, parameter-driven scripts, allowing runtime configuration and easier extensibility for new data sources or actions.
Built a dedicated staging module within Anaplan to act as a buffer layer, where data is validated and staged before being loaded into core planning modules with applied business logic—ensuring consistency and preventing partial or incorrect loads as part of a robust Anaplan workflow.
Handled sensitive finance data using batch scripts integrated with secure network drives, with tightly controlled access to meet internal data security and compliance requirements.
Triggered internal Anaplan Actions and Processes programmatically within automation jobs to ensure all steps execute reliably without missing data.
