Dana Therrien 0:00:06.4: 

Today I'm joined by Andrew Chow. Andrew, I'll let you introduce yourself and give us some of your background.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:00:11.5:  

Sure. Hi, I'm Andrew Chow, I have been working in the Anaplan space for about six-and-a-half years. The last three years at LinkedIn. Prior to that, I was at various partners like [unclear name 0:00:21.5], who I know is helping host this event and currently I lead the Anaplan development team for our LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Sales operations team. So I lead all of our developers to a pretty large sales operations use case we have here.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:00:42.6:  

All right. Well, sadly I've been in sales ops for almost 25 years now. So I have a LinkedIn story from 2005. I did a really super brief stint at a company called Monster.com. Have you ever heard of Monster?  

Andrew Chow 0:00:54.1:  

Yes. 

 

Dana Therrien 0:00:54.1:  

That was the premier job board back when job boards became a thing and I was there leading their SMB sales ops practice, and while we were just having a conversation with them about general competition, they said, we have no competitors out there. There is this company called LinkedIn. We just don't think it's going to make it.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:01:15.6:  

Thank God they did.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:01:15.0: 

I remember, I signed up for LinkedIn like two days later. I've been a member ever since. So it's pretty funny to see the difference in the two approaches between the two companies, where you had to make a big decision about whether or not you wanted to reveal your resume online at all and now we promote our resumes online, and there's no shame to it, because back then, when you put your resume online, it was an indication that you were thinking about leaving and making a change. Now it's just, hey, here's who I am and here's an introduction to the world. So it's been a wonderful company and a wonderful customer of ours. So for the audience, everyone just thinks of LinkedIn as being a single entity but I think you're broken into a couple of different business units. Can you just explain that?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:01:55.1:  

Yes, we break it up into a few business units. I'll talk about, we have a few products LinkedIn Talent Solutions for recruiting and Sales Navigator. I work in Marketing Solutions, which really represents all the ads you see on LinkedIn. Generally, our business is called the [?SaaS 0:02:10.4 ] side, which is Talent Solutions and Sales Navigator and LMS Marketing Solutions, which again is all the various ads you see on our feed when you go on LinkedIn.com or in the app. So we have two separate Anaplan instances. Well, it's really one instance, but two separate teams. There's a SaaS team and then there's my team in LMS. We mostly operate separately. However, we do meet every once in a while to try to share our learnings, especially when we talk about integrating with first party tools, as obviously those are things that we both have to do. So that's where we try to learn from each other and try to share tips as we navigate that.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:02:53.7:  

I was talking to Andrew about this before we decided to do this, but I just noticed on LinkedIn you barely, I barely notice the ads. There's some that seem a little bit repetitive, but you guys do such a good job of sliding them in there and making them look like content where they don't feel like as though I'm being sold to or it's been that [over speaking 0:03:08.4]. 

 

Andrew Chow 0:03:10.1:  

Yes, I think the product team has done a really good job of making them look good. Obviously, we want to be the leader in B2B marketing, so it's important to make sure that it looks good.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:03:20.2: 

So when Anaplan first started to work with LinkedIn, did we get into both business units at the same time or did we get into one and then the other one took off?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:03:30.5:  

It was a similar timing. I believe we started slightly earlier with territory and quota, but again, it was around the same time as really when we signed the contract and for both sides.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:03:42.4:  

Are there similarities in the way that you're doing things.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:03:46.7:  

Absolutely, yes, at the end of the day, we're both sales operations teams. So we both do relatively the same things territory and quota. Some forecasting use cases, on the LMS side we have some ICM use cases. Our SAS SaaS counterparts, their business is broken up a little bit more. So they have more territories and quotas and so that they're definitely consumed making sure that all their various teams are able to plan.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:04:18.4:  

Are you using similar models or is it radically different between the two?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:04:21.4:  

I wouldn't say it's radically different, but they're definitely not the same. We definitely have our own nuance in LMS. Again, compared to a SaaS business, our revenue is just slightly different. The way it gets calculated and delivered and recognized. We have to have separate upstream data and everything like that.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:04:38.7:  

Okay. So let's start, one of the primary use cases is what we would call territorial and quota. Territorial quota setting. So can you just walk us through that process and how you developed it and some of the some of the nuances of that.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:04:51.5:  

Yes, absolutely. So our territory and quota process, which I'll call planning, which is just what we call it. Our planning process really starts, we do biannual planning. So every six months we start again. It starts with segmentation, which again mostly happens outside the tool where we first do our first cut of accounts by segment. Then that's where the tool really starts to play a lot is where we start to bring that data to our users, our sales operations users, to help them segment even further and then help them in their book building process. As our implementation has started, we originally built it relatively simply. Right now, our planning process is there's a lot of exporting into Excel and Re-uploading. Then I think, part of the things as we're looking to the future is trying to automate more and more of it, but for now, we are able to get through all of our planning processes in Anaplan, through some uploads, throughout the process.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:05:57.1:  

So I've had a lot of conversations about segmentation with many different companies throughout the last couple of weeks, and it's an area of focus for us. We are developing an application. We're going to launch it, I think in March, on segmentation. So what's preventing you from putting segmentation into Anaplan? What's special about that process where you would [over speaking 0:06:16.6 ]. 

 

Andrew Chow 0:06:17.8: 

Yes, I think I think segmentation has been a challenge for us to put directly into Anaplan, just because of all the various teams and metrics that it requires. Every team just wants something different, nd they even want to take our existing metrics and create weighted combined metrics with them as they do their book building. So one thing we're looking to do is, is try to bring at least some teams in, try to create, pick a team to pilot a process with so that we can really understand the segmentation process and then use that to see what is scalable and what isn't, and then find out what's worth going after that.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:06:55.5: 

 

So when you say teams and this is within the LMS group itself okay. Can you just explain what a team is.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:06:59.9: 

Yes, a team is, so we have a number of regions right [unclear names 0:06:59.9]. Then we have segments inside of that. So we have roughly, we'll call them our largest enterprise customers. Then we have a segment of slightly smaller ones and then another one slightly smaller than that. So each segment, again they have their own rules. They have their own perspectives on how they want to, again, bring, go to market. So all of those coupled together makes their segmentation processes relatively different for each regional segment, even within a segment, each region can approach it differently, and we want to give them the flexibility to approach it differently.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:07:46.5: 

Yes, that's a really good observation there. I've seen with other companies like that, they try to find that balance between being too centrally controlled and then allowing some sort of a federated state where they still give people the flexibility to manage their individual geographies, let's say. When you talk about the different metrics that they're using, generally within segmentation, you're trying to figure out the value of an account. So the wallet share, ow much could they potentially buy from us. How much have they bought with us so far, and what's left for them to buy from us. Then based upon that size, you put them into a bucket. I don't know if I've oversimplified your process or not. 

 

Andrew Chow 0:08:22.6: 

No, largely that is, partner closely with our data and data science teams to help us provide metrics like that. We have metrics that try to do things like that, to try to evaluate potential spend, potential future spend. Again, to understand probability of hitting a certain number compared to potentially, maybe 99 percentile outcome is a different number.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:08:49.4: 

Yes, so I've seen a strategic account in [?AIPAC 0:08:52.0]. It might be a smaller account than what you would call a strategic account in North America, but the methodology would be the same. Just the cutoffs would be a little bit different. So are you using completely different methodologies or different cutoffs?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:09:06.7: 

It's a bit of both. You're right, in certain regions we use same metrics, different cutoffs and others in other regional teams, we have different metrics entirely where they use the segment. So yes, it's a combination of both where we absolutely have, yes, in certain markets, a cutoff for a large strategic account could be higher or lower than other markets.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:09:31.8: 

Yes, I really harp on segmentation because it really is the foundation of all strategy and planning. You have to figure out what your battlefield looks like. Then once you understand the battlefield, then you can start to deploy resources that go on from there. So do you do anything with capacity planning or what's your capacity planning process?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:09:45.7: 

Yes. So we've actually been working on a first party tool to help us handle, understand our workforce a little bit better. So that's something that we're looking for in the future, is to better understand how capacity can impact our plan, our goal and how moving headcount around can change that. So yes, things like workforce planning, evaluating how reps in different regions and different segments can help us hit numbers.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:10:17.1: 

Okay and then the next step would be territory and quota and this is where some of the large focus with Anaplan is with you guys. Can you just walk us through that process and what that looks like?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:10:25.4: 

Yes, largely again, it's a lot of evaluating what the data is inside of Anaplan. So again, pulling that data out and then doing analysis. Our various sales operations teams have various go to market strategies and different metrics that they look at. Ultimately, they import that data back into Anaplan. So Anaplan here plays a unique role of consolidating all these mappings as we integrate downstream into our CRM. Prior to Anaplan, it was incredibly challenging as we come from a lot of Excel files to consolidate and update our downstream CRM. Now with Anaplan, we're able to provide a single upload file, which again has saved our teams and our data teams huge, huge amounts of time. As we go through that process, really we're just trying to generate that file and generate that file most accurately. We have a period where managers will come in. So sales ops will run the first pass of account to book mappings. Then they'll partner with managers to better understand, oh, you know, this person would be well-suited for this account. Let's reshuffle a little bit. Then once they get approval from managers and sales ops it gets to again, what I'll call our output file. Then once that output file happens, we have a large upload process where we upload everything else and populate all of our other tools elsewhere, because now we have our new mappings for the new half. So once we have that, once we have our new mappings, we actually show reps their new accounts in Anaplan for the first time. So that's actually happening today actually, is where we have what's called our book distribution process, where we show reps their account for the first time. So that's really definitely not the end of planning but it's definitely a big milestone as reps now are coming into Anaplan. Again, they don't have any edit ability. They're purely just viewing their accounts in Anaplan, but again, to them, because of that, Anaplan becomes a really foundational tool for them, because obviously seeing your account list for the first time is a big deal.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:12:41.7: 

So how many times a year do you do this?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:12:44.3:  

Twice a year.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:12:45.1: 

Twice a year, so that means you're in planning mode almost the entire year.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:12:49.0: 

It seems like, it takes a quarter. So yes, it feels like all of, from November to December and from April to June, it's a lot of planning.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:12:59.8: 

Do your salespeople have half-year quotas?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:13:03.7: 

Some do, some go down to the quarter.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:13:07.3: 

Does that mean that they have the opportunity to earn into accelerators every single quarter or every single half? 

 

Andrew Chow 0:13:13.5: 

Yes, so they have most, I would say most of our business is on the half. Then with others at the quarter. So they're able to re-adjust those, so every half day they'll get a new number. So we're able to kind of react with the market in that way.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:13:30.5: 

Was there a time when you were involved in this when they were doing annual quotas at LinkedIn?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:13:34.7: 

No, I've personally never seen annual quotas, but perhaps before. 

 

Dana Therrien 0:13:40.1: 

I know I've spoken to executives at LinkedIn before, and they said they made the decision to go to half -year plans because the demand for their solution is so tied to market conditions that they just didn't believe it was something that was fair or equitable for their salespeople to put an annual quota on them when so many things could change. It was also some protections against a company too because things could end up taking off too and you would always want to have the flexibility to adjust. So you're doing half-year now and you said in some areas quarter, is there even more consideration to put more people in quarterly?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:14:13.1: 

Not that I'm aware of. I think that half -year, the current split we have now has been really working for us. So I don't think there is currently a plan, but I think the beauty of Anaplan is that it is flexible enough that if we were to move, if we wanted to move a lot more people into quarterly or into half, we have the ability to do that.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:14:36.5:  

So when reps receive their territories and quotas and account assignments in the in the new period. Is it day one or is it…?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:14:44.7: 

So it's actually day, I guess like day -20. Today is the 5th. So reps are receiving their first look at their territories today and then so our new half will start in January and then they'll receive quotas near the end, about the third week of January. So they'll see their accounts now, maybe three weeks before the start of the new half. Then they'll get their quotas shortly after the new half starts.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:15:12.8: 

Really, so I've worked with thousands of companies in the past. Has anyone here ever delivered their quotas before the beginning of the next fiscal year? I've never seen that. Well, you're getting your territory assignments and your counter assignments out there, and then your quotas are coming shortly after that and there's a huge benefit to that. Because then your salespeople start off in the next fiscal period motivated, understanding how they're going to get paid, understanding on which accounts they're going to get paid. So they're investing in these opportunities and these accounts.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:15:38.8: 

Yes, it also helps us with even like those transitioning accounts, right? The accounts transitioning between service tiers to make sure that there's a smooth transition from one half to another when an account may graduate to a different service level so that we're able to speak with each other well.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:15:53.0: 

Yes, and your salespeople, you said, are logging into the system and actually seeing these things for themselves right. 

 

Andrew Chow 0:15:59.3: 

Yes. 

 

Dana Therrien 0:15:59.7:  

Just tell me a little bit about the sales culture inside of LinkedIn and what that's done for the culture.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:16:04.6: 

Yes, I think it's a lot of transparency. I think salespeople really work, they really partner with our sales operations team. It's a really great relationship that we have with our salespeople. Again, just because they are able to see these things prior to the start and they're able to work with us, right. Sales managers are very close with us as we build those books and as we move through even quota setting. So it's all part of expanding that transparency so that salespeople can feel part of the process.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:16:36.7: 

Yes, it sounds to me like you've really invested in being totally open with them. So there's not this suspicion that you're trying to hold things back from them, and there's a game that's being played like, you know, you tell me what's going on, I'll tell you what's going on. It's pretty amazing to have created a culture like that. And I think your salespeople are fairly well tenured too, aren't they?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:16:57.1: 

Yes, a lot of them are. Definitely.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:16:59.0: 

Do you ever, ever had any big attrition issues because of dissatisfaction with quotas and territories?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:17:03.8: 

No, I don't think so.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:17:05.2: 

This is a unicorn of a sales organization, if you ask me, and I've worked with a lot. So what happens after the territories and the quotas and the account assignments go out?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:17:14.5: 

So after that all goes out, we enter the new half. So then things transition a bit, right? Our planning is all future looking, all looking towards the next half. Then we move into our in half use cases, specifically, one of them is forecasting. We do some bottoms-up forecasting. So this is again a rep-led activity. Every rep has access to Anaplan and they'll go in and enter in a bottoms-up forecast, that again, what it really services is a lot of reporting for various ops people and again a lot of weekly business reports, QBRs, MBRs, things like that in our forecasting model, because again, that's all in half activity. So that is what I'd say the main in half management. We also have a small ICM model. We call it our crediting model and what that really does is it assigns credits to reps at the end of every quarter. Largely this is what I'll call our most successful use case and it's very mechanical in that sense. It's just we have to have this accurate, rep to book Roster, book is what we call our territories. Then once we have that, obviously we have our revenue per book, then we just marry that together so we can get revenue per person. Again, this is been a big success for us after we launched. We launched this in 2022, early 2022, and we were able to really speed up the process with our sales comp teams and really integrate with their tools better so that we're able to have more accurate pay statements at the end of each quarter.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:18:57.6: 

So we just hit about on forecasting and then also the crediting process but before we go there, for compensation, you divulge the territories and the quotas and the account assignments in Anaplan to your sellers. Do they also receive a compensation plan at that point?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:19:13.6: 

Yes. So they'll receive a compensation plan shortly after they receive quota and that comes from our sales comp team okay.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:19:20.8: 

In the compensation plan, does it mention the territories and quota assignments or is that a s completely separate process? 

 

Andrew Chow 0:19:26.9: 

Yes, that's all separate. 

 

Dana Therrien 0:19:28.8: 

 I'm a huge advocate for that. I like to see them combined at some point in time but I work with so many compensation teams where they do the territories, they do the quotas, they do the account assignments, they hand it over to the compensation team. Then the compensation team delivers a compensation plan with the territory and quota and account assignments. Then if there's an issue with territories, quotas and account assignments, they have to go back to the comp team to get back up to the sales operations team. So they end up being the last mile of the process, but they're taking the brunt of all the problems that might have occurred upstream. So I think it's wonderful that LinkedIn is divulging that information in advance of compensation and kind of keeping these two things separate, because your team is in the position to be able to answer and correct those problems, whereas the compensation team doesn't get frustrated.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:20:11.7: 

Exactly. The comp team never wants to answer questions about why my quota is this or what account is assigned to my book. The comp teams wants to be in the business of comp and not any of that.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:20:20.7: 

Yes. So anyone that's contemplating making any kind of changes in their process I would always recommend that they do some sort of a two-step process where they do confirmation of territories quotas and account assignments. Then once those are confirmed, hand them over to compensation, and compensation can deliver them that way because it holds people accountable for what they're responsible for. Then you mentioned that you're doing forecasting on a global scale. So can you just give us a little bit of detail about what that looks like? Are you forecasting opportunities inside it? 

 

Andrew Chow 0:20:49.9: 

No, well, we're forecasting projected revenue. So we have some analytical data in our models that will try to forecast what your projected revenue is at the end of the quarter and end of the half. Reps can use that. They can just use that number and use that for the forecast. Obviously, they can also override it. From an Anaplan build perspective, it's relatively basic right, we're just adding but I think for our sales users, it's really helpful and it's really helpful for them to have conversations with their managers when they're going through that process in half, in quarter, and they'll say, oh, I expect, I think I'm going to beat my quota or like, hey, I'm concerned, I think I'm pacing towards, 80/90 per cent of quota, we should talk about how to get there. It really helps us realize any potential gaps as early as possible.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:21:41.7: 

So your salespeople, are they compensated on revenue?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:21:45.1: 

Yes.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:21:46.4: 

Okay. So that's an important distinction too. I'll just take off my, my comp hat. There's generally five areas where you can compensate salespeople. It's lead identification, lead qualification, which would be what an SDR, order creation which would be booking, cash collection. I should say revenue recognition and then cash collection and then you can do something on CS, customer success but compensating them on revenue means that you're given a baseline of revenue at the beginning of your period. You've got to go out there and sell enough and kick off enough new revenue inside that period to grow it to a new level in order to achieve the objectives that the company set for you. So you're using Anaplan to help forecast that revenue based upon the sales activity that they've been through now and then roll it up. How accurate?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:22:36.1: 

I think we've tried various forecasting strategies where maybe it's not at the rep level. Maybe it's at the managers do the forecast. We found that forecasting is actually more accurate when the reps themselves are doing it. As much as that pains me to have to maintain a model with a thousand plus users in there every week, but we found that forecasting is more accurate than anything. That's a little bit more tops down.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:23:04.2: 

Are you providing them intelligence to help them forecast more accurately? Like here's the new deals that you close. Here's the churn that's happened? 

 

Andrew Chow 0:23:10.4: 

Yes, we provide them various integrations from our CRM. Things like pipeline, weighted pipeline, things that we expect. They also have various metrics like some of our data science metrics continue to get updated even mid-half and are put in there, so that they're able to see what are some expected spend based on our intelligence. So that all those are our inputs into their forecast.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:23:35.5: 

So it's all provided to them inside of Anaplan. They have the ability to go in there and do their own analysis and make their own projections. Then in the end, it's their judgement for the forecast. Then you roll that up and that that happens on a global basis. How often do you do that?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:23:51.0 

So reps are in there weekly. They have to enter in a weekly forecast and managers probably, in their weekly, we have all the way, director plus in there viewing all of their directs and their forecasts. 

 

Dana Therrien 0:24:04.0: 

Wow, that's pretty amazing. Then the last step in the process prior to compensation crediting is the crediting rules. So you've got all these hundreds of thousands of maybe even millions of transactions that you associate with the right individual so that they get credited for their work and then they get compensated in the calculator. Is that right?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:24:25.5: 

Exactly. Yes, there's a lot of effort. We have a whole work stream and some data folks that are dedicated to helping us make sure that our crediting data is as accurate as possible. Then there's a lot of work as well on the on the Anaplan side to make sure that our Roster is as accurate as possible. I'm sure maintaining Rosters is a challenge and obviously Workday doesn't always give us the data we need. So there's a bit of manual work to make sure that our Roster is as accurate as possible. Again, because on the Anaplan side, the Anaplan side is for us, very consistent. It always credits who we tell it to. So we just want to make sure that we're telling it to do the right thing.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:25:06.7: 

You glossed over Rostering but Rostering is probably one of the most complicated things I've seen in sales ops is, who's working for us, right?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:25:13.7: 

Yes, and I think we're working with a first party tool to help us with Roster. We recently launched a tool internally for almost for this purpose just to help us with Roster because yes, you're absolutely right. Roster has been an incredibly big challenge for us historically.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:25:33.6: 

You're not using Anaplan for incentive compensation management. We're not your calculator, but you're using us for the crediting rules in front of that. Why not just do it in the compensation calculation engine?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:25:43.7: 

Yes, I think there's a fair point. We just have to partner with our global sales comp team and work with them. I think they historically have had a different tool for their calculations. So what they need from us, and really every line of business at LinkedIn is just that assignment file.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:26:03.4: 

So we don't have to say exactly who they are but I would say one of the challenges that I see with a lot of the customers that we have is that there's a team that's gone down the path of, let's say, Anaplan, and that they see the value in connecting all these different processes like we just talked about with you, where we're talking about territory and quota planning and the book building and then capacity planning. Not so much capacity planning, but crediting and forecasting. Then there's a separate ICM tool because that's made that decision is made by a separate team and they're holding steadfast to what it is that they're doing. Do you ever have conversations about the value of trying to align these things, or are you just kind of let them go on their own?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:26:41.3: 

Yes, we've briefly spoken about it. I think one of the things that we have to do as our ops team is to make sure that Anaplan is as always, as accurate as we say that it is. So I think in order to move our comp teams potentially into a different system, what we'll really have to prove out that this is as accurate as any tool out there.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:27:06.2: 

It's a pretty incredible deployment of Anaplan. Now let's talk about you and your team and how you're managing the scale of this. How are you organized, how many people are on the team, and how do you guys figure out what to do and assign work? 

 

Andrew Chow 0:27:19.4: 

Yes, so I manage a team of three amazing solution architects and builders. The four of us really manage the entire ecosystem ourselves. We used to rely heavily on partners, but about a year-and-a-half ago, we made the decision to move all that talent in-house. Just because we believe that with how quickly our business changed, we thought that moving that talent in-house would help us be more agile without relying on partners as much. Then we partner very closely with a product team that helps us understand the business, gather requirements, understand what the best strategic next play is for Anaplan to tackle as we try to expand and try to really help our sales, operations and sales users do their jobs.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:28:06.5: 

When you say product team, does that product team inside of LinkedIn, how does that work?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:28:10.1: 

Yes, it's a product team, or can also call them product owners in that sense. They're all product owners of Anaplan and they work, they really understand the business and what the models do. So they're able to go out and understand new processes and figure out how we can integrate those into our existing ecosystem, or potentially build out new features.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:28:33.4: 

So they're in addition to the people who are on your team and who are these product owners report into?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:28:39.3: 

Yes, they would report into my manager. So they're peers of mine.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:28:42.8: 

Okay, so you're managing Anaplan like a product inside of the organization, and you're constantly looking at ways to improve it, and you've got almost like a product release schedule where you're thinking about enhancements that you're going to make and maybe new features and functions.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:28:58.5: 

Exactly, yes. We've got a whole team helping us roadmap and talk to the business. With just three solution architects and model builders. It's a full-time job to operate and build all these models. So it's a huge help from a product owner team to really go out and understand what the business is looking for and not just future releases, but even our existing product to help us improve it.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:29:20.8: 

Do you ever just make a responsive model? Someone comes to you with a problem, I need this solved next week. And then you stand up a model and next thing you know, it's deployed.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:29:27.7: 

I think inevitably that happens, but obviously we would like less of that to happen. Sometimes it just has to happen.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:29:36.1: 

I've done a lot of work with the CEO at AWS, and it's one of the things they pride themselves on is the short duration between problem identification, standing up a model and then providing value to their clients. One of the downsides to that is you end up with all these little models that are sitting all over the place that nobody owns, and you can't keep track of it, and no one's really maintaining the thing.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:29:56.7: 

Yes, absolutely. It's definitely, it can be challenging. I think building is easy. So it's really understanding what the problems are and I think we rely heavily on that team to help us with that.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:30:10.5: 

Well, you've been doing this for a long time. You guys have been incredibly successful. What advice do you have for the members out here in the audience today and things that you wish you'd done differently, things that you would do differently if you could? Things you would keep doing. 

 

Andrew Chow 0:30:25.2: 

I think being really quick to understand the problem and then building models to address that problem is, I think the best advice. I think often we spend too much time trying to perfect requirements. I think often, I think building begets clarity. I think we're working to try to be, not, I wouldn't call it engineering-led. Not developer-led but really trying to understand, I don't want to let the pendulum swing too far the other way where we're building all these things that aren't being used. I don't want to put so much pressure on our product owners to have these perfect requirements that, again, it takes so long to generate where I think we can get by with 80 per cent of the requirements and then figure out the rest and then really try to decrease that time to value.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:31:22.3: 

It sounds like just advice to be more agile in the deployment of new things, and don't be so... [over speaking 0:31:27.0].  

 

Andrew Chow 0:31:28.3: 

Yes, right, and I think that's a big benefit of Anaplan is that again, it's relatively straightforward to do, in a lot of use cases. So I think we're trying to work and make sure that we're not afraid of building when and finding out through building.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:31:46.0: 

I've worked with a lot of Anaplan customers. I can name a couple like Meta would be one, and maybe Cisco and then Autodesk where they've got a pretty robust center of excellence and they're probably eight years into an Anaplan deployment and they're looking at these models and they're like, I think we're just going to scrap all of them and start over. So they don't view that necessarily as a defeat or a waste of time. It's, we're a different company than we were eight years ago. We've learned a lot going through this process. We've developed a nice baseline, and we think we could do it better. So we're just going to go and do it again. There's a lot of cost effectiveness in that. Like you said, you learn as you're building.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:32:23.9: 

Exactly, yes. 

 

Dana Therrien 0:32:24.6: 

So I would say if you've got Anaplan models that are out there and they're no longer serving you, then potentially think about replacing them with new ones based upon everything that you learned.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:32:35.1: 

Yes, definitely. I think that's something where we're constantly evaluating. Our oldest models are getting to be five years old, and we're trying to, we really understand that, a lot of it we don't need. Then what would a more streamlined experience look like and also help unlock for us. 

 

Dana Therrien 0:32:49.8: 

One of the big concerns, I'm sure people have out there is now just talent management. How are you finding talent to join your team and keeping them engaged and looking for these people who have these abilities?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:33:01.2: 

Yes, it's challenging and I went through the hiring process about a year ago. It's challenging to find and especially keeping them engaged is just… I think at LMS, we have a unique situation where we have all these different use cases. It takes a long time to really grasp all of it. So it's keeping, definitely keeping everyone engaged for now as they as they move through our different cycles of all of our various models, all of our various use cases. So I think as we continue to expand, we're going to keep adding new use cases, right. So now that we have the team wit, these three people to help us build, there's always going to be new stuff coming. So I think in that sense it's always engaging because there's always something new coming. It's not just operating and kind of maintaining existing models. There is a lot of new builds still happening.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:33:49.3: 

So here's a philosophical question. Is it better to have an incredible Anaplan model builder and teach them the business, or to have somebody that really knows the business and teach them Anaplan?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:34:00.9: 

I guess as someone who knows Anaplan, I think I'd prefer someone who knows the business really well. I think the Anaplan part is not that hard.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:34:14.0: 

Oh, there you go. Maybe if you had a combination of people on the team, it's always good to have somebody that really knows the business. Then bring them in and augment them with some really smart Anaplan builders. Then they can learn from each other, I think. Then there really is a cool career path. So what do you think the career path is for somebody that's used Anaplan as a profession? Where do they go from here?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:34:37.3: 

I think it ties well into, like further like technical leadership. I think Anaplan can go so many different direction. Also, in another sense, through Anaplan you're able to see so many parts of a process. Like, within LMS, I'm a close part of really like the four main things that happen in a cycle. So I really understand what sales operations, and what we're doing with it. So there's, I think a lot of different ways and places to take it.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:35:09.5:  

Well let me just open up for a couple of questions if there are any. Does anyone have a burning question for Andrew or anyone? We got a lot of experience right here. This guy's been through a lot of pain and suffering.  

 

Audience 0:35:34.5: 

I was surprised that you haven't mentioned Microsoft during your presentation today. I work with a lot of companies that are operating companies or subsidiaries owned by a much bigger parent. So does Microsoft just leave LinkedIn alone? You kind of get to do your own thing, or do you have to conform to their B2B sales planning practices?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:35:56.2: 

I think generally we are left, left alone. Obviously, we get plan numbers from Microsoft. lot of our FPNA pieces have to go through them, but largely when it comes to things like, sales operations, sales strategy, really, really left to us. So we're fortunate in that way that we're still able to operate as LinkedIn with some [unclear word 0:36:18.9] target guidance from Microsoft.  

 

Audience 0:36:25.3:  

My question is, when you guys were working with the partners, were you co building together? That's one. Then secondly, how was this transitioning from the partner to in-house?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:36:37.2: 

I can tell that story a little bit differently. So I was actually brought in because our implementation with the partner wasn't going so well. I think the original strategy was to be more partner-led. I think the lessons learned from that were, , if you don't have really any Anaplan talent, it can be challenging. I think with our partner, what ended up happening is that it was a little bit too guided by our product team. So it was a little bit, there wasn't enough pushback from the partner. So the build ended up being kind of bananas in that way. So I was brought, as I was the first in-house hire. So I was brought in to help stabilize. So while we were trying to stabilize, we took about a year for us to find center and then we were able to start moving towards the in-house. Then the transition honestly was, we worked closely with a partner actually during the transition itself. We worked with [unclear name 0:36:37.2] and that was really helpful as they were ramping off, we were starting to ramp on our own resources. That was incredibly helpful for us. So I think it really it was really helpful that I was there for the transition and then hiring the new people. Obviously, I would have all the context for onboarding all of our new people.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:38:02.4: 

Well, the autonomy must be nice too, right? Like if you guys want to do something, you just do it.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:38:06.4: 

Yes, and I think that's another great thing.  

 

Audience 0:38:15.6: 

I was hoping you could go back to the product team and developer team structure that you guys had a little bit, because I think that's really special in the way you guys do that. Could you just provide any insights or details around what kind of planning goes between those two teams? What's the communication like, especially at the beginning of the implementation, before something gets kicked off. Are you guys involved heavily in the estimation, the requirement documents. Does leadership sign off on BRD documents that everyone's on the same page about. Just any insights into that I think would be really nice.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:38:46.6: 

Yes, I think I think our relationship with our product and our team is, is really great. I think over time, when it was just me, it was a lot more unstructured, honestly. There was not a lot of sign offs, not a lot of requirements documents. As we've grown, as we have dedicated product owners, as we have model builders, solution architects, it's gotten a lot more... There's been added a lot more rigor, which I think is really able to help us scale as we have, again, not just like one implementation happening. We kind of have four going on at all times of like new build or updated build or site enhancements. So we're able to keep all that together through those documents and really tell the story to the business like, hey, here's what's coming, and here's how it's going to be delivered. So do have those requirement documents. We do get sign off from there. We do require that leadership sign off as we move through it. I think a more interesting part is during our planning. So every half, especially at the start of our new fiscal year, we have our year-long planning where we try to figure out, okay, what are the what are the things we want to try to accomplish this half or this fiscal year. So using all that, I work closely with my manager and who also leads the product team to really understand, how are we going to do all this and then ultimately it's there's a lot of ballpark estimates. Obviously, I'm trying to estimate things that don't even have requirements yet, but I can give rough estimates, rough ideas, as like the things that we're doing rarely totally new, right? They're always something that we've talked about once or twice before that we're like, oh, it would be great to do one day. So I'm able to give some sign of, a t-shirt 0 size estimate for us to really plan out our fiscal year and our half. So yes, it's been a great relationship with them and they're really who helps us accomplish a lot.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:40:43.2: 

Well, Andrew it sounds like you're doing some amazing things. Thanks for sharing your story. Is it safe to assume that if people want to connect with you, they can do it through LinkedIn?  

 

Andrew Chow 0:40:49.2: 

Sure.  

 

Dana Therrien 0:40:53.3: 

I'm an easy person to connect with there too and plus we'll both be around for the rest of the day. Just pull Andrew aside and ask some additional questions. We really thank you for your time and thanks again for sharing so much.  

 

Andrew Chow 0:41:03.8: 

No problem.