Ed Keane 0:00:09.3

I'm Ed Keane. I head up FP&A at Everest Group. I've been with Everest for about five and a half years. Kyle and I came to Everest - or I came before Kyle. We worked together at Enstar, which was another insurance-type company, for a few years. So this is our second go around with Anaplan. We implemented it at Enstar about eight years ago at this point. Time flies, right? Then we implemented Anaplan at Everest back in 2022. So I have about 25 years of experience in the property-casualty industry. Again, five years here and all sorts of different experiences along the way. Kyle?

Kyle Sakowski 0:01:05.2

Yes, so I'm Kyle Sakowski. I'm the director of our Center of Excellence here. Like Ed said, I came from Enstar. That's really been my Anaplan journey. I've been a Master Anaplanner now going on six, seven years, so it'll be… I'm sorry if I ramble, once I start talking about it, I get excited. [Laughter] But yes, looking forward to talking to you guys.

Kasha Thorkildsen 0:01:31.9

My name is Kasha Thorkildsen. I joined Group FP&A a little over four years ago. I've been part of this implementation since day one for the HR model and have worked closely with all of our partners in FP&A and HR to implement this model across our group.

Ed Keane 0:01:51.3

Okay, a little bit about Everest. I'm sure a lot of people haven't even heard of Everest before. We are a reinsurance company that's recently expanded our insurance book in recent years. We've always had an insurance book, but it's more of a focal point of our growth going forward. We have about $18 billion in premium. About 70 per cent of that comes from the reinsurance part of our business and 30 per cent of it is insurance, which is the growth engine, and that's an important piece of our story today. So you can see, 3000 employees. That's an important number and we'll get to that in a second. When I started at Everest, we were about 1500 employees. So we've doubled in size in a little over five years and that's what the impetus of this model was formed. We had an issue with growth and we weren't controlling it, and that's some of the things that we'll get into in a second. We are a global company, 115 countries across 6 continents. So we are truly a global company with employees across 35 offices. Here's our honeycomb that people have put together for Anaplan. We started off with a traditional approach to our planning models. It was only used for the annual operating plan initially, and then you could see the highlighted model, which we called the HR model. Really original there. The HR model is our integration with Workday. So that's kind of what we're talking about here.

Ed Keane 0:03:34.0

This model is what happens after the plan is done. So our annual operating process starts in July, ends in December, January period. So it's what happens after that period, after the planning process closes. We load the plan into this HR model and it fully closes the loop. I'm sorry, Kyle, stole your line there. It closes the loop, so we go from planning to tracking to reporting, and then the next phase of our Anaplan journey is more on the capital side and the balance sheet side and that's our journey for the next year or two. Okay, so here's the growth, the headcount growth, and what really was the impetus of our model. So back in 20 - let me reverse. So we had a new management team in 2019. New CEO came in 2019. 2021 is when our new CFO came. In that, our new CEO wanted to expand internationally with our insurance book of business, and as you can see there, with the expansion was a ramp up in headcount. So 25 per cent in 2022 and then 19 per cent in '23. Our CFO came in and we were seeing a lot of unbudgeted positions added. We weren't able to track who was being added, what was in the plan. Our CFO came to us and said, 'Fix this.' He's like, 'I have no idea what I'm approving. I don't know if it's in the plan. I don't know if it's within our budget.'

Ed Keane 0:05:13.6

So we worked with HR and we started looking at Workday and if it was something we could do in Workday. The Workday team, the HR team didn't want to include those positions in Workday because it would start showing up in people's org charts, and that could have been just because we didn't have the experience on the Workday team. Workday was a recently new platform for us as well during that period of time too. So we brainstormed and we said, okay, why don't we just do this in Anaplan, and had the process start in Anaplan. Anaplan demoed their own model for us, and it was a lightbulb. It was like, okay, if they can do it outside of Workday or their HRIS system, we can do it outside of Workday. So we formed this, we created this model, and it was a true collaboration between HR and FP&A. So what it solved - or the problem it was going to solve was we weren't involved in the approval process. Finance was not involved at all. So if a hiring manager wanted to hire somebody, they would go straight to HR, and HR would start the recruitment process. So the segment FP&A teams and group FP&A was just not - we didn't have any clue what was going on until the person was on board and we started seeing the salaries flow through the P&Ls, and then we started seeing some unfavorable variances that we weren't catching. No audit trail. So we had no idea who was approving the plan, the position in the plan, or if it was even looked at by anybody.

Ed Keane 0:06:48.6

On the back side of this, the reporting end of it, we just didn't have - everyone had their own spreadsheets. So HR would have their own spreadsheets. Finance would have their own spreadsheets, and then we would be presenting this to our CFO or CEO and there was no consistency. So we needed one source of truth, which this model solved. So not only does HR use this model, finance uses this model. We're all in one platform now. The other end, and I don't think we realized this as we were doing this was, okay, when the plan starts and we load the plan in July, there was no way of updating the plan throughout the planning process. So now the HR model is tapped into - and Kyle will get into this in a second - the HR model is tapped into our planning model. So if there's any mid-year promotions or if there's anybody who resigns, it's automatically feeding our plan. So John Smith resigns or retires, the HR model creates a placeholder for that position, and that position is fed into our plan. So we're not losing positions as we were in previous years. So it's what we were saying, it all closes the loop. Now I'll pass it to Kasha to talk about the solution and what the HR model does.

Kasha Thorkildsen 0:08:08.8

Thank you - and apologies if I do cough. I do have a bit of a cold. So as Ed mentioned, with all the challenges that we had with headcount planning and reporting, our solution was to integrate the HR system, which is Workday in Everest, with Anaplan. We did that for a number of reasons. So finance can have control over the approval process of positions. We also wanted real time HR data in Anaplan so that we can have accurate reporting, and for it to help our headcount planning process. Since the implementation in July 2023, we've seen a number of benefits that using this model has helped us tremendously. For one, we have an automated reconciliation process. So we no longer need to use Excel spreadsheets to track position by position. We actually apply a unique identifier during our annual process for each position, and that unique identifier tracks through the position during the recruiting phase and onto the hire, and that is how, once it feeds back into Anaplan, that hire is then applied to the position and we're able to track filled roles. So that's helped us tremendously for reporting.

Kasha Thorkildsen 0:09:21.8

We also can maintain an audit trail now. That position from the beginning in the plan, we follow it through a life cycle through workflow stages. So depending on where it is, whether it's still waiting for finance to approve or whether it's in recruiting with Workday, we always know the status of the position throughout its life, which has actually been very helpful for our HR partners. We've also enabled finance to have the full approval of any positions that are released. So unbudgeted replacements, plan positions, and finance actually is involved on the front end of releasing these roles, and then they're also involved right before they flow back into Workday so that they can have final approval on any changes that have happened since the plan. One, I guess, major benefit of this model has been that it's become the one source of truth of headcount across both Anaplan and Workday. Anaplan houses all planned positions, as well as all active employees that are feeding in from Workday, and that has enabled our business leaders to have a holistic view of all headcount in a cost center hierarchy view, which has been helpful for actual versus plan reporting as well. It's created data consistency and headcount reporting at the group level, Segment level, and the cost center level. We've also built - and Kyle will touch on this a little more - we built a quarterly forecast in the model for staff expenses. So our FP&A partners are using the forecast as well, and we're able to report on headcount forecasts based on active and vacancy counts. I mean, generally, this model is mostly used for its reporting capabilities now across finance with executive management and with our HR partners.

Ed Keane 0:11:18.9

Good?

Kasha Thorkildsen 0:11:19.5

Yes, we can go on. So our approval workflow process starts with our annual planning. So in our annual headcount plan, we ask the cost center owners to go in and plan by position. Like I said, we then apply an Anaplan ID which is our unique ID to each position. We then, once we roll over on one, we feed all of those planned positions into our HR model and that becomes the baseline for the next year. Once all those positions are in, then there's two roles involved in the approval process. We have FP&A and HR that are a part of the approvals. The hiring manager will request the role. Finance will get the okay to release the planned position. They will go into the HR model, release it, which then goes into the workforce manager's hands, which is actually an HR role. The HR role will have the updated approved data from the headcount committee, and they will update the detail of the position, which is usually pre-populated in the HR model. So if there's any changes to salaries, cost centers, if the position's been repurposed, location changes, currency, and so on. So that's actually an HR role. They will make the update in Anaplan and then pass it back to finance. Finance does a final check based on any changes that have occurred between the original plan and what's been updated, and then if that's approved and it's within the threshold that we're expecting in FP&A, then we just click a button and it gets sent to Workday. We do have a four-hour feed that sends all the positions into Workday daily.

Kasha Thorkildsen 0:13:06.7

Then we also have a process for unbudgeted and replacement positions. We do monitor replacement positions closely. We attach unique identifiers to those as well. We actually have a placeholder process that we receive roster feeds from Workday, they create placeholders for those positions that aren't ready to be recruited yet for backfills and these placeholders will sit in our reporting just to make sure that the cost centers always have a full view of their headcount and there are no positions missing. So once again, the approval process works the same. The replacement or unbudgeted will go to the workforce manager. They make the updates and then FP&A reviews and approves and sends the position to Workday for recruiting, and once the hire is made on those positions, like I said, the unique identifier is attached to the hire and it flows back from Workday into Anaplan. Reporting, like I said, has been one of the greatest benefits of this model, and the vacancy report, I guess, is one of our most popular. HR actually uses this report the most, our talent acquisitions teams, our HR business partners, it gives them a status of where every position is, not only planned roles that haven't been acted on, but ones that are currently being recruited for.

Kasha Thorkildsen 0:14:27.8

We bring in the Workday data for each one of those vacancies, such as Rec IDs, anything else they may be looking for, as well as the salary data, the job titles, and so on. We use this vacancy report also for our annual plan. It's loaded, when we start our planning process in June or July, this vacancy report is essentially loaded into our plan as a baseline for next year's headcount plan. Essentially, those are the open roles that are still open and rolling over into next year. Once again, this model enables us to do actual versus plan reporting, which we provide to the cost center owners via an expense dashboard that we manage in Anaplan. We have forecasted headcount reports, which are able to project out what the headcount will be at year end, given any active employees as of today, plus projected headcount with the vacancies that are open, and any unbudgeted. Then recently, we've started to develop a lot of management reporting. There's headcount tracking based on targets that are provided for management. There's annualized actual versus planned salary reporting and so on. I'll turn it over to Kyle now and he'll go more in depth on the integration.

Kyle Sakowski 0:15:48.4

Yes, I didn't expect you guys to get that technical, so I'll try to figure out what to say here. [Laughs] So I'm going to try to focus on the HR model and the evolution since its initial kick-off phase, and then I'll touch on the lessons learned. When we originally implemented this model, we had the plan model set up, static plan. Once it was done, we'd take that, import it into to the HR system, and we really used it, in my opinion, as the last slide went through, all the different types of reporting that we use, and I thought knocks it out of the park. I wish we could show, just because I really do think the HR model we have in place is one of the most intuitive and user-friendly apps and models that we actually have in our platform. The benefit once we had this HR model in place, we get our annual feedback from different planning, workforce planners, and all the feedback was just like, we have a model operating with up-to-date information. So we were getting feedback from just like mid-year promotions, like Ed was pointing out earlier, mid-year promotions that weren't coming through the planning cycle with the updated salaries and information. So what this was able to do was bridge that gap and go back to saying that, close the loop essentially, once the planning is done, publish the HR model, have all our position management, one source of truth that's being housed in Anaplan and sent into Workday for that automated loop feed that we're currently doing on - and I'll try to get a little more technical, we load in every four hours from Workday in and out.

Kyle Sakowski 0:17:32.1

Within those Workday feeds, what we're doing currently is we're loading in just active employees, active on leave, we have REC feeds, if we're producing RECs, and we have vacancy feed that just basically identifies any transfers or terminations, and then we have just a position feed, just for our sake, just full position management tracking because that was requested through the HR team. Now what I love about it is the way it connects to the plan is more than just updating the latest and greatest with active employees. What we're able to do, and I think you touched on it, Kasha, is when a position's opened in our workforce plan, it's budgeted for, all of a sudden we're actively recruiting in our HR model. As that position is filled, you see that integration flow back into the plan, where that position will then get removed from the open position section and placed in your active headcount and all the KPIs, everything gets up to date. We do have audit logs that track basically, okay, this person filled what position, for any backdating purposes to track and see what were they hired at, and we have that in our HR model too for the actual versus plan section.

Kyle Sakowski 0:18:45.8

So that that integration piece back in, I think we received a ton of feedback on that and it really focused or allowed the end user to focus on new positions only rather than the open positions, and really just like minor adjustments on their end. So that was really the benefit. Now there's always little nuances with workforce, whether we have transfers coming through, did they transfer during the year? Do we know they're transferring? How do we plan it? The Workday model actually, we allow them or we tell them - what is it? - not to transfer them in the plan until they're caught in the feed just because it's a loop through. But however, if they do transfer them to the other call centers and transfer it, the model actually identifies it and notifies that this duplicate employee is coming through, and you're able to just identify it through our admin process to clean that up on the front end. I think another huge benefit that we have is the forecast model that I built out in the HR model. Basically, what we have in there is the fact that we're able to have a live tracking through every position, all the vacancies, all the placeholders that are basically flowing through. We're able to actually see an active list of where we're projected for the end of the year and what we're able to actually do through that model is we're also able to highlight if we want to do different scenarios, if we want to freeze position planning or if we want to push out start dates. We're able to identify those.

Kyle Sakowski 0:20:21.8

We're able to move by position type, however you want to handle it, by region. You're able to move those start dates out, and you're actually able to see your financial impact to the calendar year based off what you plan for, to where you're at with the adjusted dates or adjusted compensation components as well. So the HR model, in my opinion, has just been a huge win for our team at least, and that really - and I can talk more about that, if there are questions, on the technical side of things, if I have left anything out. But really what that leads us to is more of the lessons learned that we've had. So with the lessons learned, I think one of the top lessons we've learned, and this is reiterating any of the breakout sessions you go to, the data accuracy is crucial. I think that was one of the most complicated pieces within the integration piece from Workday. Just all the nuances of how the data was getting pulled out. Timing was a big factor, and basically, what we're really hoping for, it's really just trying to dial in on what data is needed and trying to iron that out before you go live. Now that's always the issue, because you always want to add stuff and add more to what's in the process. But that's really, I think, the most crucial, and as you can see, the lesson learned, the data validation is the vital.

Kyle Sakowski 0:22:02.9

I think the next piece to touch on is just the flexible modelling changes. So this all goes into what I was just saying. The back and forth between the HR model and the forecast and the HR model and the planning portion. The integration between this is super challenging. Just because of all the different types of positions and different scenarios within workforce. So that was a huge thing to take into consideration, because this is our HR model, one of the flexible modelling things we had to account for was confidential hires. So we were trying to hide confidential hires from HR employees, so they didn't - or whoever - couldn't access that. So that was another big piece, and again, the flexible modelling piece, you can always touch on the DCA access, the dynamic cell access within Anaplan. The security behind it is second to none, I feel like, you're able to do so much, and I think that's helped us out with our modelling portion, and that just leads into the real time updates, the real time updates for accurate forecasting. I'm really trying to gain more traction on this across different departments and getting users or end users in here to leverage it because it is just a tremendous tool, but I think the flexible and the real time updates go one on one. It's been nothing but beneficial to our planning process and allowing for quicker analysis.

Kyle Sakowski 0:23:45.5

The collaboration across departments, this is key across any implementation, I feel like. I think this is one of the more tougher ones, between collaboration and user adoption, I think those two really fell hand in hand with one another. Just because you're sitting here with your department, where we're trying to get them to use a new tool and adoption of a new tool is always different. So that was really one of the larger pain points is trying to get the HR team to realize Anaplan is really doing - the reporting side of it is doing everything they're asking for. It's a constant repetition just trying to get them on board, to adopt and see the true value in it. I think that was really a real large pain point, which we're still battling with them on and off.

Ed Keane 0:24:44.4

Yes, to reiterate what Kyle's saying, that's probably our biggest pain point in this whole thing. It's almost two years old this model at this point. HR still sees Anaplan as a finance tool. We started with the plan, so everyone assumes that Anaplan is the planning module and FP&A owns that. We always reiterate this was a collaboration between finance and HR, right? Finance and HR had a seat at the table, and we were both in this together developing this model. Now the senior staff among the HR professionals was on board with this. It's the HR VPs, they're the ones that we're having to struggle with getting into this model and using. We're slowly getting there. It's just a matter of time, right? They want to work in Workday. They say, 'Anaplan is a finance tool, you guys go to Anaplan, we'll go in Workday,' and we're trying to reset stigma where we're both in both models, right? We go into Workday sometimes and they go into Anaplan sometimes, and we have to figure out a way to make this work, because we're not going backwards. So they're going to have to slowly get there. Kasha, anything else on that one? Sure.

Unknown Speaker 0:26:08.1

Thank you, guys. That was very insightful. I really appreciate the level of detail that you've gone into the story. It's phenomenal.