Adopting Anaplan: Comparing Approaches and Best Practices
A planning solution is only as valuable as the way it’s used. When it comes time to choose a user adoption strategy for Anaplan, one essential question arises:
DiscoverConnected planning for
consulting and
services
With Anaplan and Beyond Plans, consulting and services organizations transform their performance management. Anticipate resource needs, control costs, simulate margins and secure your forecasts through a collaborative platform.
Why Beyond Plans?
In consulting and services, performance depends on optimal resource allocation and margin control. Beyond Plans combines business consulting, Anaplan expertise and on-the-ground adoption to secure your financial and operational processes.
Your challenges, our solutions
Consulting and services firms must manage uncertainty, talent competition and margin pressure. Beyond Plans and Anaplan provide a pragmatic and agile response to secure your strategic and operational decisions.
Key challenges
Talent war, margin pressure, portfolio complexity
Consulting and services organizations must deal with complex business models, workforces that need to be managed in real time, and fragile margins. The challenge is to align Finance, HR and Operations in order to anticipate and make informed decisions.
Our solutions
Integrated HR–Finance–Project planning with Anaplan
With Beyond Plans, you gain access to integrated models: staffing forecasts, payroll management, project margin tracking and what-if scenarios. The result: faster decisions and improved profitability.
Resources and margins under control
In consulting and services, margin depends on proper resource allocation. Teams must anticipate needs, manage HR costs, secure billing and align capacity, projects and finance to protect performance and profitability.
Beyond Plans, a proven approach
Beyond Anaplan deployment, Beyond Plans brings a tailored methodology: needs scoping, HR/Finance/Project model design, HRIS–ERP–CRM integration and change management. The objective: sustainable adoption and rapid value delivery.
A sector in search of agility
The consulting and services sector is characterized by high human capital intensity and increasing pressure on margins. Business models rely on the ability to quickly allocate the right profiles to the right projects, while complying with billing constraints, cost control and service quality requirements. The war for talent, economic uncertainty and rising ESG expectations further increase complexity.
Historically, services firms have relied on fragmented processes: HR teams manage headcount and skills in HRIS systems, Finance builds budgets in Excel, and operational teams manage projects and margins in separate tools. These silos slow down decision-making, multiply gaps between forecasts and actuals, and weaken overall visibility.
The Anaplan platform changes the game. By centralizing HR, financial and operational data, it enables the creation of a single, shared model. Management teams gain a consolidated view of headcount, payroll costs, margins by project or by client, and can simulate different scenarios. Rolling forecasts, what-if scenarios and sensitivity analyses become available in real time, delivering greater reliability and responsiveness.
With Beyond Plans, support goes beyond simple technical implementation. Our consultants bring dual expertise: a deep understanding of the challenges faced by professional services firms and strong mastery of Anaplan capabilities. This combination enables the design of tailored models: staffing forecasting, payroll management, project cost tracking and financial consolidation. We integrate your HRIS, CRM and ERP systems to secure data flows and ensure user adoption through Lemon Learning.
The benefits are tangible: reduced time spent building budgets, improved forecast accuracy, stronger involvement of operational managers and faster strategic decision-making. Testimonials from PwC, Solocal and the ADSN Group show how sector leaders have transformed their performance management with Anaplan and Beyond Plans.
Ultimately, connected planning becomes a true lever of competitiveness and resilience for consulting and services organizations. It enables them not only to better anticipate resource needs and margins, but also to attract and retain talent, improve operational efficiency and strengthen client trust.
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A successful project means selecting the right technical solution, having a committed project team on the client’s side, and choosing an integrator partner who understands and supports the strategic objectives.
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Beyond Plans has secured our financial management and streamlined collaboration. Thanks to their expertise and Anaplan, we have gained in reliability, responsiveness and accountability among operational staff.
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Beyond Plans has transformed our forecasting: a process that is twice as fast, reliable data, and finally the ability to simulate and analyse in real time. A real turning point for our sales forecasts.
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Discover our insights
Here, our consultants share their analyses, best practices, and feedback to shed light on key management and planning issues. A selection of articles to help you understand trends, explore the uses of Anaplan, and fuel your transformation projects.
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Managing Uncertainty in Pharmaceutical R&D with Dynamic Planning Powered by Anaplan
Discover how pharmaceutical companies can manage R&D uncertainty and optimize decision-making with dynamic planning in Anaplan. A strategic, data-driven approach to accelerate innovation and align cross-functional teams.
DiscoverAll our use cases
Explore all Anaplan use cases covered by Beyond Plans: Finance, Supply Chain, Sales, HR… Each project illustrates our ability to turn the platform into a business lever tailored to your industry.
Our other sector expertise
Beyond consulting and services, Beyond Plans supports many industries: manufacturing, retail, banking & insurance, luxury, real estate, and chemicals & pharmaceuticals. Discover how we adapt Anaplan to each business domain.
Banking and Insurance
With Anaplan and Beyond Plans, banking and insurance players secure their forecasts, control costs and anticipate regulatory impacts. Basel III, Solvency II or DORA: manage in real time and gain agility.
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Real estate
With Anaplan and Beyond Plans, real estate players secure their budgets, anticipate trade-offs and empower teams. Social housing providers, developers and property managers: gain clarity, traceability and sustainable performance.
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Retail
With Anaplan and Beyond Plans, retailers and brands unify their forecasts, budgets, and inventory plans. Anticipate trends, manage seasonality, monitor margins, and collaborate in real time on a global scale.
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