Intelligent forecasting solution with Amazon Forecast designed to improve prediction accuracy and accelerate time-to-value for customers

Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE: PLAN), provider of a leading cloud-native platform for orchestrating business performance, today announced the general availability of PlanIQ™, the company’s newest machine learning (ML)-based solution that helps everyday business users leverage advanced intelligence and data analytics to deliver explainable results and create more accurate forecasts.

PlanIQ helps businesses do more with their data

Today’s highly competitive and ever-changing business environment has put pressure on organizations to do more analysis, at a faster rate, to identify and act on new market opportunities. Many organizations are seeking to drive more agile decisions by finding new ways to extract meaningful insights from continuously growing volumes of internal and external data with artificial intelligence (AI) and ML. However, integrating a new AI and ML solution must be quick and simple to configure and embed within their day-to-day planning processes with automation.

Consumer goods companies are pressed to optimize their supply chain in the wake of uncertainty, and must consider environmental factors, such as weather and supply chain disruption due to external changes. Retailers that need to predict demand more accurately must examine new and emerging customer demand patterns. However, the process of collecting, preparing, and analyzing data to reveal meaningful insights can become quickly overwhelming as the pace and amount of data continues to accelerate.

PlanIQ helps democratize data analysis, making it easier for business users to leverage different types of data sets and sources—like historical trends, third-party data, market signals, and weather patterns—to inform strategic models, forecasts, and plans so they can make the next best business decisions, fast. And, since the solution is pre-integrated with Amazon Forecast, users can automatically test their models against cutting edge predictive algorithms to uncover new opportunities and predict future outcomes, driving more confident decision making.

“I often talk to business leaders who want to do more with the data available to them but feel they don’t have the right tools to effectively analyze and use that data to inform decisions,” said Ana Pinczuk, Chief Development Officer, Anaplan. “With PlanIQ, we are demystifying machine learning and data analytics to help ensure business users, as well as data scientists, feel empowered to leverage intelligent forecasting, which in turn helps businesses operate more strategically.”

Amazon Forecast integration delivers timely results

Some customers have already seen how PlanIQ can help optimize business outcomes. Built with industry-leading technology, PlanIQ can improve the accuracy of forecasts to drive top and bottom-line growth using Amazon Forecast—accurate time-series forecasting based on the same technology used by Amazon.com. The ability of PlanIQ to automate and repeat forecasting processes across multiple functions also makes intelligent forecasting more accessible to a wider set of business users. In addition, automation and simple configuration drives a more agile forecasting process, saving teams valuable time. As an end-to-end managed service, customers have achieved quick time-to-value with PlanIQ forecasting, leading to greater operational efficiencies.

Since implementing PlanIQ as part of Anaplan’s early access program, customers across industries—including healthcare, retail, and manufacturing­­­—have benefitted from increased time savings, operational efficiencies, and new levels of forecast accuracy. As David Webb, head of performance forecasting at South Central Ambulance Service notes, “PlanIQ makes generating precise forecasts easy, taking only 2.5 weeks to get up and running and delivering quick time to value.”

“Business leaders recognize that accurate, intelligent forecasting is critical to effectively meeting customer needs and achieving operational efficiencies, but may not know how to create accurate forecasts with all of the data available to them,” said Ankur Mehrotra, General Manager, AI, AWS. “PlanIQ and Amazon Forecast allow customers to apply advanced ML techniques to their data in order to generate accurate forecasts for their businesses. We’re thrilled to see the value these services are creating for organizations.”

Leverage PlanIQ across a variety of use cases

Businesses can effectively leverage PlanIQ across a range of functions and use cases to uncover new insights with more accurate, easy to use forecasting.

Teams who struggle to accurately forecast demand can use PlanIQ to process large volumes of data to deliver accurate predictions so teams can quickly analyze, align, and optimize inventory. Users can refine commercial revenue plans by using PlanIQ to quickly pinpoint at risk factors to build effective marketing strategies and maximize profit. In addition, PlanIQ simplifies financial planning processes with easy data configuration and fast OpEx forecast generation to speed business decisions.

Anaplan PlanIQ with Amazon Forecast is now available in the Anaplan platform. To learn more about Anaplan’s intelligence offerings, click here. You can also the PlanIQ solution brief here, or watch the demo video here.

About Anaplan

Anaplan (NYSE: PLAN) is a transformative way to see, plan, and run your business. Using our proprietary Hyperblock™ technology, Anaplan lets you contextualize real-time performance, and forecast future outcomes for faster, confident decisions. Because connecting strategy and plans to collaborative execution across your enterprise is required to move business FORWARD today. Based in San Francisco, we have 20 offices globally, 175 partners and more than 1,700 customers worldwide. To learn more, visit Anaplan.com

Amazon Forecast and Amazon.com are trademarks of Amazon Technologies Inc

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