Joe Kontak 0:00:12.4: 

We already had brief introductions, like [?Ashley] was mentioning, Joe Kontak and Shane Betlinski from Spaulding Ridge, so an implementation partner working with Whirlpool. We'll go in a little more detail with the role and background. But I think that's the starting point because it seems like every time I talk to Martha, there's a new team under her or the team continues to grow. I think it'd be good to walk through both the existing team, what that looks like on your end, and then also all of the different areas that you've touched with Whirlpool in the past. Then we can get into the Anaplan journey from there. It'll be a little bit of a before Anaplan, during Anaplan and then what's next moving forward as well?

 

Martha Bertsch 0:00:52.4: 

Yes, do you want me to give a brief overview of my role, then? We'll start there?

 

Joe Kontak 0:00:56.4:

Yes, please.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:00:56.6:

So, I've actually been with Whirlpool for 18 years. All of those 18 years have been within integrated supply chain in some form or fashion. I've worked in transportation, customs, compliance, but for the last since 2016 I've been within our planning organization. So, within that I've had the opportunity of working as a production planner, a demand planning manager, forecasting our finished goods and then moving up. Now I am the director of planning and execution, so within my current function or what I lead, I have our demand planning. Like I said, working with our commercial organization on the forecasting of our finished goods. Production planning, so they're working with those commercial teams and manufacturing to ensure that we're building the right goods. Inventory management rolls up under me, so that's really the execution of getting those units out into our network so that we can better serve our end consumer. I also have material strategy, and that's really implementation and enhancement of tools to get our components to our manufacturing.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:02:01.8: 

Then most recently, I have our supply fulfilment team - and they're really order management. That's how we're scrubbing our order data to make sure that we can best fulfil supply and demand and better overall conversion to our end consumers. So, really tried to build this true end-to-end planning. Then going back to your question of my journey within that: because I've had the opportunity to be kind of a doer in so many of the different orgs that roll up to me, I've seen us within Google Sheets and Excel and Microsoft Access databases. All of these different modules where we've done planning and some of those different functions, and they didn't really have the ability to be connected or talk to each other or drive efficiency. So, I've seen that before, and then I was in planning whenever we started this journey together. That's my overall function and then where I've seen us evolve over time to the connected planning where we're at today.

 

Joe Kontak 0:03:03.2: 

Thanks. With some of what you described in terms of the different - the disconnect between some of the offline systems that you mentioned, can you talk a little bit about the common challenges that have come with that over the tenure and the time between both the existing functions that you work with, but then the different places that you touched previously as well?

 

Martha Bertsch 0:03:24.5: 

Yes, I think any time you don't have true connected - and what I mean by that is an ability to see data in a tool as you go through the various functions - you have opportunity for error. You have inefficiency or waste within the way that your data are travelling or communications within the various functions. So, really just a lot of inefficiencies and waste. Whirlpool is a big organization within continuous improvement in the fundamentals that belong within that. So, any time you can find waste or inefficiencies within your planning - which really, when you don't have connected planning, it is within that - you have essentially more individuals doing the various functions because they are trying to make up for those inefficiencies that you've created when you're siloed. So, just a lot of waste.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:04:11.1: 

Then one thing we've learned over the five years of working with you is, we want to create boards and capabilities that are highly tailored to your business process, that are easy to use. We've learned to work with your team and have them guide us on the boards. We have them put the instructions in and have them add notes, so it's not from a technical perspective as it is. I'm a planner, I'm going in, this board tells me exactly what to do. The big unintended advantage of that we've seen is, as people are new to role, they can just hop right into the boards and it just tells them how to do their job. We have videos that are filmed by your planners, so they can hop on to the board. It tells the planner how to use the board, but also it's a really good insight into how that new planner should be doing their job. So, it really helps with that onboarding process a lot, we've seen.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:05:06.2: 

That's a great point and something that I was just thinking about that. We have a really large pool of talent training throughout my org, especially as it has become bigger. We're trying to do a lot of knowledge transfer, and exactly what you're speaking to is so beneficial. When I can have a production planner that wants to go to demand planning, and they somewhat know the business and the tools and they can use some of those applications that you're talking about, it makes transition so much easier.

 

Joe Kontak 0:05:32.5: 

With that, I think there are a bunch of different teams and, I think, models that you guys are referencing. So, I do want to highlight the journey that they've had. You guys have probably seen quite a few honeycombs so far. We're not going to go through model by model, but I do want to reference and show the breadth and scale that we've seen in some of the connected planning journey over the last few years with Whirlpool in particular. I think it's important to note that some of this was from a defined roadmap from 2018 on in terms of the specifics against particular functionality or against particular business units in regions that they wanted to grow. A lot of that - 30, 40, 50 per cent, probably - is just because they've got value from the tool. They've seen other needs come up and it's just been organic growth from there. So, see a need, see the value from past experience and maybe a bit of a, 'Hey, we want that thing, too.' Whether it's business unit, whether it's region, trying to replicate that functionality as well. Just again, I think we'll touch on some of these models and part of the honeycomb as we go through the discussion here. But it does frame up what that journey has looked like and then the breadth of it as well.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:06:44.1: 

I love that we can't quite see it so it's just like off reference. It looks like a lot, though.

 

Joe Kontak 0:06:49.4: 

Yes, the green one, the top right, yes, if you could memorize that and then have all the models down, that would be…

 

Martha Bertsch 0:06:52.8:

Perfect, I like it.

 

Joe Kontak 0:06:54.2:

But I think on that note I do want…

 

Shane Betlinski 0:06:58.1: 

We started about six-ish years ago with just one model and an Anaplan champion, and worked with them, developed a roadmap with them. Now you have this beautiful collage which I'm about to fall out of my chair to look at.

 

Joe Kontak 0:07:14.2: 

But let's start with one of those. I know we've talked about BPT or POS forecasting. We've talked about PLM a little bit previously as well. Do we want to start with that starting point, what we saw the need for, and then the journey from there?

 

Shane Betlinski 0:07:30.5: 

Yes, so I'd say we started with the BPT, which is just a business planning tool, so like a demand forecasting tool. From there, we also created a production planning tool to do level planning, inventory planning, all that kind of stuff. What the planners were doing was also managing new product introductions, production lifecycle management in a separate group of tools. Some people were using Excel, some were in Google Sheets. Some were I think in Smartsheets. But you had just dozens and dozens of people in all their roles, going to different places for the same set of data. So, when we talked about doing the PLM tool, it wasn't that it was hard capability. None of the formulas were challenging. It was all rather simple; it was just using Anaplan for the right purpose. It was a perfect fit for it because it could easily connect all of your tools. It could help force everybody to use one tool, one central source of truth. It was a phenomenal fit for Anaplan. It was great that it came along later because we were able to create the PLM tool and then pretty much instantly link the data from that into your downstream tools, your production planning tool, your demand planning tool - all that. It was really nice. There were a lot of benefits in that.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:08:54.1: 

I think one of the things that you've said there that's really important is that central source of truth. That is something that we hear within the business right here all the time is: create that single source of truth so that there's no confusion in your data. As you're speaking to your business partners, you're really centralizing or creating a foundation off that single source of truth. So, the PLM was an excellent showcase of, we had created this connected planning journey, but we were really enhancing. We were going one - we were levelling up to our connected journey because we had this true enhancement to the system within the PLM. We are creating that central source of truth.

 

Joe Kontak 0:09:32.2: 

I was going to have this more so for the watch-out session, but we'll hit it on it now because you're talking about the consistency. A single source of truth, it wasn't without fault or issue in terms of the data completeness and consistency for Whirlpool as you guys went through that as well. So, Shane, Martha, talking about some of those hurdles - and I think for the rest of the group either about to embark on that same journey or maybe thinking about it as well, maybe talking about things that have helped from a data quality standpoint in that approach with integrations and what's actually going into and out of Anaplan. Can you speak to that a little bit?

 

Shane Betlinski 0:10:07.2: 

Yes, I would say - as I previously alluded to - a roadmap is very important. So, when we first started working with Whirlpool, we were actually the second partner in there. We were brought in and there was no Data Hub, there was no integration strategy, not as clearly well-defined of a roadmap. It made it very challenging. There were multiple files being randomly ad hoc manually loaded into the system. That was the very first thing we did was help to design a landscape, design a future. It really helped make sure that we were set up to scale into other use cases. We have so many times seen talking to people and they say, 'Oh well, I want to do this in Anaplan. We just don't think we have the data' or, 'It's so hard in my tool.' Their tool is always a Google Sheet. 'It's so hard in my tool,' and then I can usually say, 'Well, let me check your Data Hub, see if it's in there.' It usually is, and it's rather easy to mock it up for them and get it spun up really fast. So, there've been a lot of advantages in that.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:11:17.5: 

Shane's being kind because I'm sitting right here, but I will say - and just as a watch out - it is very eye-opening when you go into a partnership like this. We talked about that with the PLM: it wasn't a huge lift, right, to create this enhancement tool - which is exciting. Then when you get into the data aspect of it within your organization, it can be kind of frustrating. It can feel limiting in the speed that you're able to execute and what you're trying to implement because of that. So, it's a watch out to just make sure that you understand you need to clean up those data, as Shane's alluding to, before you can maybe jump into some of these enhancements. But long term, it's very worth it, so stick with it. It's an important part of the journey is to try to make sure that your data are in a spot where you can then continue these enhancements as you're going through the connected journey.

 

Joe Kontak 0:12:09.3: 

Shane, you referenced that you would check to see if there were data that were available in the Data Hub and try to mock something up pretty quickly. I think that gets to what you see on the screen in terms of the different business units and regions that may be taking the exact same functionality, or trying to take the same functionality. Sometimes it may seem like it's as easy as a copy-and-paste. Hey, they have it; why can't we have the exact same thing? Or how easy is that? Can we talk about the journey from a templatization and replication with different business units and regions and where it works easy, where it's really easy to convert that same functionality over - and where sometimes it might be a little more difficult.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:12:45.6: 

For sure. A great example would be the US and Canada. They are both countries that are under the Whirlpool umbrella, but they almost operate as different businesses in a lot of ways. Whirlpool Canada and US, they both had different pain points. So, Canada, their most immediate pressing pain point was territory and quota modelling, having challenges, making sure that they were aligning their website territories properly, doing multiple quota adjustments, flowing them down to the territories correctly - all those kinds of things. What we were able to do was, we were able to address Whirlpool Canada's issues. We created a pretty flexible territory and quota model. Then we were able to go to the US later on and say, 'Hey, we built this for Canada. You guys both sell the same widgets.' So, we were able to show them the model and say, 'What do you like from this model? What do you think makes sense for your sales org, for your product structure?' All those kinds of things.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:13:54.9:

It definitely was not an exact lift and shift, but it allowed us to quickly move all the capabilities that Whirlpool Canada had into Whirlpool US. Also, when we were talking to Whirlpool US and scoping it out with them, show them almost exactly what we thought their future state would be. So, it really expedited the discovery foundations process.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:14:21.0: 

Something beneficial if you do have different business units under the same corporate umbrella, when you're looking at a business-owned tool like Anaplan or you're talking about some of these different enhancements or modules that a different business unit is using, think about how powerful it is to be able to benchmark within your own organization. Really ask all of those questions that you maybe wouldn't have the ability to do if it was an outside entity. I think that's a huge benefit that we've seen. Whether it be with a different business unit or whether it be HR talking to planning of how we're utilizing the tool, there's a little bit of power within that. So, it's a benefit with that as well. While - like you said - it's not a complete copy-paste, it was something that the conversations could be very open and a really direct dialogue about it.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:15:16.2: 

What we are starting to see, too, is a closer alignment between the US and Canada because they are using the same tool. We see planners in the US or Canada asking for something, and then we can put that in place for the US. Then we can speak to the planners in Canada and say, 'Hey, we did this for Canada. It's really easy to replicate this for you. Would you be interested?' Generally, they are happy with most of the enhancements that are suggested.

 

Joe Kontak 0:15:43.5: 

A lot of, it seems like, built-in process infrastructure with those tools, then. There's been a decent amount of - there continues to be across all businesses - a decent amount of resource movement. So, having a central point to have, whether it's a rulebook or a standard operating procedure - or literally just a video of a planner that said, 'Here's how I use this and here's the benefit on a daily basis.' I think that's helpful. In terms of challenges, watch-outs from an Anaplan journey standpoint, we were talking earlier, Martha, about product ownership and the importance of it. When we say Anaplan is marketed as a business-owned tool and a business planning tool as well, what does that actually mean? How is that? How did that start out with Whirlpool? Where are you guys at now?

 

Martha Bertsch 0:16:27.3: 

I think they're entering into it. The onus on the business of what we would need to put in as well maybe wasn't - I wouldn't say that it wasn't made clear to us; that, I'm sure, was the case. But really understanding what we…

 

Joe Kontak 0:16:42.3: 

You can throw us under the bus if you want as well. It's okay.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:16:43.3: 

No, it's true. Because it is a business-owned tool, what we would need to do with our resources internally, and maybe as you're hiring for roles going forward, understanding the skillset that they would need to do and really putting some of the onus back on us - which I would say we transparently didn't always do in the beginning, just to make sure that we had people in-house that were model builders and that were able to work within the tool efficiently and drive improvement. Even when you look at resourcing going forward, if you have someone on team that can work on some of that break-fix or maintenance of business, and then you can properly allocate resources and funding to really - enhancements within the tool. There's so much power within that. So, from our side, it was just really understanding what we needed to put into the tool to maintain it and make sure that we were getting the full benefit of it that we had designed within partnership.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:17:39.1: 

Yes, that's a great point. I've seen a lot of partners try and do a big bang approach where they try to do four different use cases at the same time across many countries at the same time. That is very, very challenging. The evolution of Anaplan at Whirlpool started with one model in the US and it grew organically. Because of that, we were able to grow with Whirlpool and learn your business process. You were able to learn, bring on people to learn Anaplan, to become model builders. It was a rather smooth journey compared to trying to roll something out across the whole country, across the whole world, across every single business unit. That's very, very challenging but the journey at Whirlpool was relatively smooth because it was kind of an organic growth and a partnership.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:18:33.1:

Yes.

 

Joe Kontak 0:18:34.3:

I think something that highlights that with the growth and development from an ownership standpoint along the way, when there would be - or when there are - issues, I think previously there was an era, maybe a year or so of, 'Hey, your tool isn't working, Anaplan's tool isn't working. Spaulding Ridge's tool isn't working for a particular reason.' I feel like now it's much more, 'This is our tool, this is owned by Whirlpool and driven by us moving forward.' I think that's been super-helpful even as new resources come on as well. I think, Shane, the one other… Before we moved to the what's next, I think in terms of another challenge or watch out, so one other area that we've seen and talking about is from a demand forecasting standpoint, both with their stat algorithms and then with PlanIQ as well. Do you want to go into a little bit of detail there?

 

Shane Betlinski 0:19:25.1:

Sure, I think it's definitely no secret that the COVID times, the supply chain issues made forecasting based on historical data near impossible. I have not heard of a company who has said it was easy. That has been a challenge for us. We've done multiple workarounds around that, but what we have also seen is the data from the past year and more recent history starting to become more correlated. At Whirlpool, obviously it's a heavily promotional-driven business. So, we've seen promos that have been done during 2023, some in 2024, being able to use those as drivers of volume. Previously, we were in 2023 trying to forecast based off of 2022, 2021 data. That was very challenging and frustrating for everybody. But I'm very optimistic that the data are less erratic and it's going to make everybody's forecasting jobs a lot easier and more accurate.

 

Joe Kontak 0:20:31.2: 

All right, then the next piece I want to talk about, I think, is with what's next, really. I think everyone is generally being asked to do more with less. I think that fits the talk track pretty well here, it's true. I think as your team has expanded, that's a direct example of where that's happening, so let's talk about that. I think what your plans are from an expanded team standpoint in terms of other areas that you can leverage this and connected planning to help with that.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:21:00.2: 

I'll talk about it in a few different ways, maybe. What I see next, so that inventory management piece of it that I spoke to of how we deploy units into our network, I would really like to see with stats and location-level forecasting and how we can optimize within Anaplan to hold less inventory on hand. I think that's what everyone's kind of - not everyone maybe - but a lot of organizations right now: how do you do more with less from what you're holding in inventory? For me, that's a next-phase evolvement of what I would love to see from a connected planning perspective. To the other piece of that of doing more with less, I've really started to think a lot about how we look at - like I said - the break-fix, maintenance of business and true enhancements within the tool, and how we are really pitching what we would like to see, and understanding what those enhancements are and how we present those to leadership. 

 

Martha Bertsch 0:21:54.6:

So, maybe efficiencies from a staffing perspective. Efficiencies from how you do more with less from an overall inventory. Do you improve your forecast and you get an improvement to such extent that you're holding less inventory and that savings can be correlated to enhancements? Or is it that you are powering the tool so much, with even more connectedness, that you have the ability to look at that from a staffing perspective? So, there's a lot of what's next but I think within all of it is efficiencies and how we really are able to depict that in true savings.

 

Joe Kontak 0:22:31.2: 

The in true savings piece, I think, is one of those that there are a lot of - with the connective tissue that's above or on the screens there, there are a lot of inherent and qualitative benefits that come with that. I think trying to take all of the disparate but connected use cases by all of those different areas and regions and then pull out and try and group the sum of its parts to make more of a compelling statement for what that saving is and what the actual - the quantifiables are against that. That's something that we've been trying to work with, starting to work with the business a little more actively to help define baselines upfront and be more intentional about defining those baselines upfront so that we can come back and measure a little more accurately afterwards. Sometimes when you have an immediate pain point, then it's very easy to just jump in and try and solve it and then figure everything else out afterwards. Being a little more intentional about making sure that we're going in and measuring that baseline ahead of time, I think, will also be helpful.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:23:32.5:

Absolutely.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:23:34.4: 

In addition to that, we have had the segmentation concept in place for a little while. The high touch, low touch, no touch. I do expect we're going to start to expand that capability across more of your models. Obviously, saving time, helping your planners know where to focus more.

 

Joe Kontak 0:23:52.5: 

Yes, we were talking about that a bit, but I think the high touch, low touch, no touch, the percent for us, I think the metric is the per cent of overrides for each intersection from whether it's demand forecasting planning, whether it's on the supply and level planning side as well. I think having a picture that Martha can take and then be able to decide where to spend time and then where to push your team and how to communicate to leadership as well, is something that having the visibility for we're just starting to build out, should be helpful.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:24:23.4: 

It's a huge enhancement, yes.

 

Joe Kontak 0:24:26.1: 

With that, any other Shane call-outs, Martha call-outs on your end as well, before we go to questions?

 

Shane Betlinski 0:24:34.0: 

The thing that I'm looking forward to most in the future at Whirlpool is the AI/ML buzzword PlanIQ, right, where we previously weren't able to really leverage the power of PlanIQ because the historical data were just not right. There were no true correlations between promotional pricing and volumes because there were supply chain issues. The historical data were erratic and made no sense. So, how can you expect an AI tool to make sense of something that's historically crazy? We now have a stronger history of reasonable data; data that are driven by promotional pricing. So, we're going to start to really see more no-touch, low-touch scenarios. We're going to start to be able to do scenario planning with promotional pricing. Really excited to start to see how our guesses at GDP, interest rates - those future macroeconomic factors - can drive more accurate volume. I'm also curious to see how good we are at forecasting economics, but that's a different topic. Really excited to see how we can use PlanIQ to guide a more accurate volume forecast and really make some powerful what-if decisions.

 

Joe Kontak 0:25:51.3: 

With that, we do have a microphone we can pass around. Thank you, Katie. Any initial questions? Yes, wait a second. Thank you.

 

Audience 0:26:07.2: 

Thank you, and this is a great presentation. Super-excited to see this honeycomb and your journey here. A question from a resource management strategy from when you launched your first use case to where you're at today. How did you balance the defects that you may've had with the first use case versus the next future item that you wanted to do with enhancements on things that are already built? Curious to get your insight there.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:26:32.4: 

Do you want to start and then I'll…

 

Shane Betlinski 0:26:35.5: 

Sure, yes, so it's always an evolving team structure. You start with one model. You're fine with the team. Two, three models, you're fine with a larger team or a couple teams. Then when you get to something as massive as this, you can't have 20 teams. That's when you start to switch to more of a center of excellence, ticketing process. So, in that situation it was really, really challenging to get the business to stop contacting people one on one and saying, 'I have a problem, I need help,' and then to have our model builders or whoever just immediately fix it. So, you have to train the business to start putting tickets, prioritizing those tickets. Then you need someone kind - like Martha - to communicate that the business's priorities are not really a priority this week, and they're going to get to them next week. Or that we want to focus on this issue this week, and we're going to get to that build in a couple of months. But really it's just ingesting the new workload, transforming it into tickets and then working with the business to figure out where you get the most value for your work.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:27:46.1: 

There's a little bit of that that's dependent on the business as well. 

 

Shane Betlinski 0:27:49.5:

Absolutely. 

 

Martha Bertsch 0:27:50.0:

Like you said, to truly come in and try to prioritize what you're working on, who on your team is working on that as well, because what we talked about before: we have within each of the groups - at least within my team - that work in each of the different production planning, level planning, demand planning. We have different subject matter experts within our Anaplan environment that really work closely with the Spaulding Ridge team. Then they're working with the rest of the team too. There's prioritization on both sides, and just making sure that top down, we know where our true priorities are within the business, but it does. It evolved quickly.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:28:26.5:

Yes, very quickly.

 

Joe Kontak 0:28:29.5: 

With Whirlpool, I think they have an intentional strategy of not having any model builders from an Anaplan standpoint internal. So, their CoE is mostly external, and then they have the model owner experts from a business standpoint that have a lot of the knowledge. But they're not hands on keyboard with the actual model. There are also many examples where, again, it being a business-owned tool as well and something that doesn't need to be driven by IT, those CoEs that are currently more Spaulding Ridge in this example, can be internal to your team and resources as well. Or hybrid models that are a little bit of both. But there's also the hybrid when it comes to the same team that does the tickets and the maintenance of business and the enhancements, or being more intentional about splitting those out. I think it depends on the extent of the roadmap, the focus and priorities, and then capacity of the team available as well.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:29:18.2: 

Sorry, one second. The largest advantage, in my opinion, of that ticketing process is, obviously we know the most in terms of how long it's going to take. We're still very well aware of the business process, so we'll take a stab at arranging them in a priority and LOE. Then we'll present them to the business and we'll say, 'Here are the pros and cons of making this ticket first, this one second.' But ultimately you all know what should happen first. You know what you need to do right away, and if you override us, we will do it.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:29:54.5: 

There just needs to be transparency and communication - and that's really key to all business partnerships. There's one right there.

 

Audience 0:30:03.5: 

James O'Leary of Anaplan. VP of customer success.

 

Joe Kontak 0:30:04.2:

Hold on one second, sorry. Thank you.

 

Audience 0:30:10.5:

I'm with Anaplan. I'm the VP of customer success. I'm curious. I think you mentioned the organic growth; you start with a model and you end up with quite a cluster. How did you go about deciding what was next, or evaluating a potential set of priorities and picking what's next - not from enhancements - but just actually building the solutions out? How did you think through that over the years and manage that over the years?

 

Shane Betlinski 0:30:39.5: 

Those are your predecessor?

 

Martha Bertsch 0:30:41.3: 

Yes. I was a doer then, though. I was, yes, there.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:30:44.9:

You were a doer, yes.

Joe Kontak 0:30:46.4: 

Well, that perspective will also be interesting, so don't worry.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:30:50.5: 

Actually, when we were brought on board after the first model had been built, we aligned with an individual named Michael Chamberlin at Whirlpool. He had a vision already. We talked with him about his vision, where he felt the pain points were in the business. We talked about how long we thought it would take to do specific models. So, it was really just kind of a balancing act of pain points of the business and [unclear words 0:31:17.5] to complete, and then just playing with honeycomb to get them there as fast as possible.

 

Audience 0:31:23.9:

I assume you didn't have all of this figured out on day one, though, so this was an evolving data?

 

Shane Betlinski 0:31:29.3: 

Yes, so it started with a strong roadmap and then just…

 

Martha Bertsch 0:31:33.5: 

I would assume [?Level Plan 0:31:34.7] wasn't even in the initial roadmap.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:31:37.6:

No.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:31:38.5:

So, a big piece of that was that forecasting, that demand aspect and then being so connected, and then under the same leader at that point in time, really seeing again that connected journey and how there is such benefit of being within the same tool. This is what we were talking about earlier: consider the connected piece of it, the fact that demand planning and production planning on my team are both within the tool. Then a true enhancement of that connection is the PLM model that is within that tool. That's how they can talk to each other. So, it started to layer on itself because there are true benefits of that.

 

Audience 0:32:18.4: 

Would you say that it sort of revealed itself? As you started to put the pieces in place, the next one started to reveal itself?

 

Martha Bertsch 0:32:23.8:

It did reveal itself, but also transparently as you're looking at just new tools and ways to work within your organization, if you're within a business-owned tool already you're going to obviously evaluate that and the benefit of that and the benefit of the connected nature. There are savings within that.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:32:45.5: 

Another interesting aspect was how [interruption 0:32:48.6]. Do I need a microphone?

 

Joe Kontak 0:32:51.0: 

No, keep going. She was about to hand it off for another question. 

 

Audience 0:32:53.6:

You're good?

 

Joe Kontak 0:32:54.3:

Continue.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:32:56.4: 

Okay, so one other very interesting aspect was how the US and Canada grew differently, but they both wound up in very similar states. We build pricing and promotional capabilities for US. We build territory and quota for Canada. Then they'd hear about it or we'd ask them if they wanted to see it and demo it for them. They generally liked it and it was an easy value-add for them.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:33:19.2: 

There were pieces of it ,too, when we did the PLM. They weren't at the same point in the journey, but we knew that they would use the existing tools. So, kind of benchmarking with them or talking with them through the process so that it was easy to bring them on that journey when they got to that point.

 

Audience 0:33:38.1: 

Hey. Dave from Ferguson Enterprises. Just curious. You've had an eight-year journey. What made you not want to have a CoE and outsource that from a model-building perspective?

 

Martha Bertsch 0:33:55.4: 

Not really.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:33:56.4:

Yes.

 

Joe Kontak 0:33:57.5: 

I can give some… That seems like that's been more of a GIT - their global IT team - at the Whirlpool site that's been their strategy for the majority of technology, not just Anaplan but other technology as well. I think for any company it's like an all or nothing. In that case, it's in all from - in terms of outsourcing those services, and Anaplan is included in that as well. There've been a couple examples, like [?Rob] in Canada. There are a few examples here and there where there's one resource that might be dabbling a little bit and do a little bit of that work. But I think their strategy as a whole has been to outsource that work and then go from there.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:34:41.4: 

Another thing I've seen - this is not currently the case at Whirlpool - but in the early stages of development at companies, they will need a model builder very heavily for three months or during the budget cycle or during the beginning of a planning cycle. They don't really need that model builder again for another six months. Then that person sits idle or their skills get rusty. It's really challenging to do something for three months and then not do it for nine and then hop back in. So, it makes a lot of sense to have us come in, because we do it all the time - every day - and we never get rusty, in theory.

 

Audience 0:35:24.0: 

I guess that creates that opportunity for the next one as somebody said, 'Great, I can jump on that, two weeks' and start building up that again, right?

 

Martha Bertsch 0:35:34.4: 

Yes.

 

Joe Kontak 0:35:40.4: 

Any other questions?

 

Audience 0:35:50.5: 

Dave [?Hobbs], Anderson. I'm picking up a little bit of a theme as we go to the different sessions and talk to different people. Having high-integrity, accessible data is something that's easy to take for granted and actually really critical to model building. Looking at it from my role in the business is, it obviously requires some involvement both from the business to understand where the data comes from and what the data mean, and from the IT side to understand how you build and query and access those data. As you were trying to improve that process at Whirlpool, how did you structure the work? What were the roles in how to get yourself in a position where the data were coming through Anaplan in the way you needed it to?

 

Shane Betlinski 0:36:40.3: 

Go ahead, Martha.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:36:43.4: 

I would say it varied over time, but we had - again back to the GIT - we had specific resources that were working and dedicated to that journey. I can think of a few individuals that have worked on every aspect of that with us. Within Whirlpool, there were specific resources that were a part of that journey. Then there were also business users within what is now my team that were a part of that journey as well to try to work through the data. But we had this team with us to try to ensure we were looking at it the right way and to work through those data issues with us to get us to a healthier spot, I would say, within our data - to oversimplify it. We still do have dedicated resources that are looking at the data on our side and working with Spaulding Ridge on that.

Joe Kontak 0:37:31.1: 

I think there are a couple of lynchpin resources that are business and IT conduits that know the business and know the data. I don't know how any of this would be possible without the Zelmers and those folks of the world.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:37:46.4: 

That was the name that was in my head as well.

 

Joe Kontak 0:37:47.3:

Yes, I figured. Yes, that both have a very good understanding of both sides. I think we see that pretty often where, if you don't have those resources that know both and can communicate both, then it's more of an uphill journey.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:38:03.5: 

I would call that out as a huge risk. Transparently, you should always be process-driven and not people-driven. The fact that we sit up here and we think of a name, that for me - just as a business owner - says there's risk there. So, I would say that that's not… While I think it's fantastic that we have individuals that know the business and the data that much, there should be processes driven around: how do we make this repeatable data cleansing process, where you're working through it, not maybe so people dependent? You should always have those individual internal resources, from my perspective, that are dedicated to it and may be a little bit more repeatable.

 

Shane Betlinski 0:38:49.5: 

Then many years ago, we did sit down and work on a data strategy, an architecture for environment, what data sources we would bring in, what we would want to make sure we brought in to make sure we were scalable across the business so that we weren't just bringing in enough data so that they could only do supply chain and not be able to do territory and quota. We figured out what was appropriate to bring in, and made sure that it would also be able to scale. We really put a lot of thought into it in the beginning, and that set us up pretty well for success. We spent three months plus on an integration, like [?UI 0:39:31.2] Informatica, Dell Boomi, an integration tool selection process. So, we put a lot of time in the beginning - and it paid off.

 

Joe Kontak 0:39:41.4: 

I know we're at time. Martha, I really appreciate you coming in and talking with us.

 

Martha Bertsch 0:39:44.7:

Yes, absolutely.

 

Joe Kontak 0:39:45.6:

Shane, so-so. I'm kidding. Thanks everyone for the good questions and engagement as well. I think we'll be around for the rest of the day, so please ask more.

Martha Bertsch 0:39:57.2: 

Thank you.