Anaplan in Malaysia: Leveraging Anaplan Solutions for Greater Growth in Malaysia’s Business Landscape

Ahead of the 34th edition of Exito’s ‘Digital Transformation Summit’, Exito shares that ‘Malaysia is currently one of the leading digital economies in Southeast Asia’ with the country’s digital economy set to contribute ‘25.5% to GDP by 2025’.

This is part of a wave of predictions that in 2025, Malaysia’s digital ambitions are set to flourish.

These predictions come as the country recently secured investments from global tech firms looking to expand into Southeast Asia. These investments, it is said, would bolster the nation’s digital capabilities and offerings.

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Malaysia’s Business and Tech Landscape

Business Standard reported in May 2024, that Google was to invest USD $2 billion in Malaysia to develop its first data centre and Google cloud region.

Google stuck to its promise. In October 2024, Data Centre Dynamics reported that the company held a ceremonial groundbreaking for its first data centre and cloud region in Malaysia located at the Elmina Business Park outside Kuala Lumpur. President and CIO of Alphabet and Google, Ruth Porat said, ‘Today, Google reaffirms its support for advancing Malaysia’s digital future with the groundbreaking of our data centre and cloud region in Selangor. Google’s investments in infrastructure, digital skilling, and sustainability represent progress on our joint efforts with the Government of Malaysia to create high-value jobs and bring the benefits of AI to local communities and companies.’

The influx of tech investments into Malaysia means that businesses in Malaysia need to evolve with the pace of digital change. Malaysian businesses would be wise to invest in Digital Transformation initiatives in order to stay ahead of the curve whether that’s Connected Planning, Business Intelligence (BI) or Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence (AI).

In the spirit of Malaysia’s ascension up the global value chain, this article focuses on Connected Planning as the first step of any company’s Digital Transformation journey. It explores how Malaysia based businesses can invest in Connected Planning solutions and what they can expect to gain as a return on their investment.

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What is Connected Planning?

Connected Planning represents a shift from traditional, siloed business planning to a more integrated and collaborative approach whereby businesses and organizations can connect their data to achieve greater efficiency and better data-driven decisions.

Instead of running separate and siloed planning cycles, with Connected Planning, your organization would migrate its organizational data from legacy planning systems like spreadsheets to cloud-based Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) tools like Anaplan that provide real-time insights and historical data analysis.

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Each of your business’ departments - Finance, HR, Sales & Operations, Supply Chain, Marketing and other Departments – would then be able to connect and consolidate its data tocreate a single source of truth. Once all your business’ departmental data is connected, your organizational teams can seamlessly coordinate its planning efforts and arrive at a strategic plan that is mutually beneficial.

Our Connected Planning Services include:

• Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A)
• Planning, Budgeting & Forecasting
• Integrated Business Planning (IBP)
• Financial Consolidation

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What is Anaplan’s Value Proposition as an EPM Solution?

The 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Financial Planning Software Report, positions Anaplan in the ‘Leader’ quadrant within the Financial Planning Software industry. Anaplan appears to be in good company as it shares this space with other industry leading Connected Planning Software solutions like Oracle, SAP, OneStream and Jedox, to name a few.

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In its 2024 report, Gartner goes on to offer insights into Anaplan’s strengths as a Financial Planning Software solution. Gartner reveals that Anaplan’s strengths lie in its Integrated Business Planning (IBP) functionality, Data Validation capabilities and Predictive Analytics Transparency. Read on to learn more about Anaplan’s strengths:

• Integrated Business Planning (IBP): Anaplan offers comprehensive Integrated Business Planning (IBP) support by integrating various data sources—strategic, financial, operational, and external—to facilitate planning across key business functions like Finance, Supply Chain, Sales, Marketing, and HR. This unified platform enables Connected Planning, leading to faster, more collaborative and more agile decision-making.
• Data Validation: Anaplan streamlines data validation through automated features, including real-time validation rules, comprehensive error reporting and dashboards used to take timely action on exceptions. This automation significantly reduces the manual effort required for data validation.
• Predictive Analytics Transparency: Anaplan's advanced predictive analytics goes beyond simple forecasting by providing "explain ability" and "impact scoring." These features help users understand the factors driving forecasts and how different variables affect their accuracy.

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Metora x Anaplan: How Metora’s Partnership with Anaplan Creates Synergy and Translates into Value

At Metora, our team of Data Scientists leverage the Anaplan platform to offer unparalleled Connected Planning solutions. Here’s why we decided to partner with Anaplan in offering our Connected Planning services:

• Shorter Time to Value: While Connected Planning projects take anywhere between 6 –8 months to implement, with Anaplan, clients can expect to experience value gains within the first 2 – 3 months of implementation. This means that companies looking to invest and implement Connected Planning into their processes don’t have to wait the full6 – 8 months to reap the benefits of their digital transformation efforts. They would be able to leverage 20% - 30% of the Anaplan solution within the initial implementation phase of their Connected Planning journey.
• More Focused Outcome Based Approach: Anaplan is an outcome oriented platform. This means that with Anaplan, clients can expect a Connected Planning strategy designed to help them achieve their ultimate performance goals. The functionality of Anaplan as a Connected Planning platform aligns with one of the core concepts we leverage at Metora, the SMART concept. What is the SMART concept? The SMART concept is essentially a goal setting framework. Accordingly, we adopt the SMART goalsetting framework to help guide our Connected Planning clients in arriving at ‘Specific’,‘ Measurable’, ‘Achievable’, ‘Realistic’, and ‘Timebound’ goals or outcomes. Once we’ve mapped out our client’s goals, we leverage Anaplan’s capabilities to seamlessly execute our client’s outcome led strategy.

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What are the Benefits of Connected Planning?

• Enhancing Decision-Making: Providing a holistic view of the business with real-time insights and scenario planning for more informed and strategic choices.
• Boosting Agility and Responsiveness: Enabling faster planning cycles, improved forecasting, and quick adaptation to changing market conditions.
• Fostering Collaboration and Communication: Breaking down silos, creating a shared understanding of goals, and facilitating better communication across teams.
• Improving Strategic Alignment and Resource Optimization: Ensuring plans align with strategic objectives, optimizing resource allocation, and enhancing accountability.
• Mitigating Risk and Ensuring Compliance: Identifying and mitigating potential risks, improving compliance with regulations, and ensuring data accuracy and consistency.

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Ultimately, Connected Planning is about transforming static, isolated planning processes into adynamic, collaborative and integrated system. This evolution empowers organizations to be more agile, responsive and ultimately more successful in today's dynamic business landscape.

By connecting data, people, and plans, businesses can navigate complexity and achieve their strategic objectives more effectively.

The Anaplan Enterprise Decision Excellence Report™ 2024, which surveyed 500 senior executives from the largest organizations in the US, UK and Canada, discovered a direct correlation between decision performance and organizational connectedness. It also went on to state that ‘improving decision excellence leads directly to increased financial returns, including Total Shareholder Return (TSR).’

In conducting its research, Anaplan created an Enterprise Connectedness Index and a Decision Excellence Index:

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The report goes on to state that ‘Companies achieving the most improvement indecision excellence out performed peers by 6.1% in TSR which equates to $4.3bnin market cap’.

Anaplan’s research also discovered the following insights:

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While Anaplan’s report highlights the relationship between connectedness, decision-making and financial performance within the top 1000 organizations in the UK, US and Canada, we at Metora believe that with the current climate of tech investments that Malaysia is experiencing, Malaysian businesses are well positioned to derive the same benefits from improved enterprise connectedness and decision excellence.

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Key Takeaways

Malaysia is rapidly becoming a digital powerhouse in Southeast Asia, with its digital economy projected to contribute significantly to its GDP by 2025, fueled by substantial investments from global tech companies like Google. This influx of technological infrastructure means that Malaysian businesses should embrace Digital Transformation to remain competitive. A key component of this transformation is Connected Planning, a modern approach that replaces traditional, siloed planning methods.

Connected Planning integrates data from all departments — Finance, HR, Sales, Supply Chain, etc. — creating a single source of truth and enabling more collaborative and data-driven decision-making.

Metora, leveraging the Anaplan platform, offers outcome led Connected Planning solutions that provide real-time visibility, predictive analytics, enhanced collaboration, faster financial reporting and a single source of truth.

Get in touch to leverage Anaplan to execute your Connected Planning strategy.