Why companies need Chief Planning Officers who can quickly connect the dots in fast-moving times

Business is no longer the same as it was. As constant change, volatility and fast-moving trends become the norm, companies find that they need leaders who can bring together and integrate the planning efforts of different business units.

Anaplan, the business planning software firm, sees an increasing number of C-suite executives placing a lot more value in connecting people, processes and plans across their companies.

The San Francisco-headquartered firm works with some 500 clients, of which many are companies in the manufacturing, energy, IT and telecommunications sectors that have undergone and will continue to experience rapid transformation.

A lot of these companies have multiple, connected planning scenarios or use cases within different business functions, and decision-making and implementation can be slow-moving, hampering their ability to seize market opportunities or avert crises.

Enter the Chief Planning Officer (CPO).

The CPO takes business planning out of the siloes of each department, connects the dots between them and extends insights back into the C-Suite.

"The CPO role is akin to a bridge that allows individuals to stay connected across their various functions," explains Mr Mark Micallef, Anaplan senior vice president and managing director for Asia-Pacific.

By being the link in an era when business is increasingly interconnected, the CPO aligns the company's different plans together to move them forward more congruously for the organisation.

"As an influential expert in planning, the CPO oversees holistic decision-making across an organisation and is the connective tissue that proactively integrates functions such as data flow up and down the company," adds Mr Micallef.

For example, if Finance makes budget alterations that impact Human Resource's hiring quota, the CPO will help ensure that both departments are aligned with the changes.

The role of the CPO is unlike that of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who makes decisions about where the company is heading based on insights of the different heads of departments, or the Chief Operating Officer (COO) who oversees operations to get the company to where it wants to be.

The CPO works alongside C-Suite peers like the COO, Chief Financial Officer or Chief Strategy Officer, to bring their respective plans onto one platform where the CPO will then make the necessary connections and then align the different plans for the company to move forward as one.

Anaplan has seen from working with its clients that there's a strong desire to use planning as a more strategic weapon in a turbulent, competitive world.

"Companies that plan better do better," says Mr Micallef.

But what Anaplan is also seeing from its clients is that connecting plans across their organisations was making those plans greater than the sums of their parts.

Additionally, digital transformations are allowing businesses to move away from 'traditional' methods of planning, budgeting and forecasting to a more daily, real-time method where decisions are made at the point of planning.

This is when a CPO speeds things up considerably for businesses to move forward, reducing a company's decision time from plan to action.

A CPO improves the business's efficiency by owning the platform connecting people and data to plans, allowing faster, cross-functional decision-making as a result of greater visibility, transparency, accuracy, accountability and collaboration across the organisation.

"In order to achieve efficiency in planning, we need to first ensure consistency from strategy to budgeting," says Mr Micallef.

Anaplan's clients generally look for 'Centres of Excellence' to start off at, especially when it comes to developing a connected planning initiative from ground up.

"Gone are the days when everyone plans in silos; we strive to be more agile, and it would be good to have someone own this Centre of Excellence that enables connected planning," Mr Micallef adds.

This is the job of the CPO who is positioned at the heart of the organisation's planning efforts.

"Having a CPO is akin to enabling such Centres of Excellence across the organisation, where a leader is acting as a central hub to ensure all relevant data can be accessed by the right individuals to get to work with," explains Mr Micallef.

What this translates into is a different level of insight and efficiency that an organisation would struggle to achieve without a CPO.

"Having one person oversee a continuously evolving community affords organisations ample dexterity to navigate shifting landscapes," Micallef says.

This is a substantial advantage for companies across all industries that have had to undergo massive changes due to unforeseen circumstances in recent years.

The pandemic, for one, has shed light on the importance of integration across all levels, according to Mr Micallef.

"We believe businesses would, more often than not, thrive with someone at the reins of planning."

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