I had the pleasure of attending Anaplan Connect London last week, where I spent the day with an inspiring mix of customers, partners, and the Anaplan team. The energy in the room was infectious, and the day was packed with insightful conversations and exciting announcements.
We learned back in February 2025 that Anaplan had committed an additional $500 million investment into R&D to accelerate innovation across the platform. At Connect, we began to see exactly what that investment is delivering across Apps, AI, and Data. Anaplan unveiled several impressive developments, and I wanted to take a moment to share a few reflections and highlights from the event.
While the event theme centred on Apps and AI, I left with three clear takeaways: Apps, AI, and Data.
Anaplan’s strategy for prebuilt applications was well-articulated, positioned as accelerators that embed industry best practices while offering flexibility to customise to exact client requirements. In many cases, Anaplan Apps now deliver an out-of-the-box fit of 60–90%, making them a fantastic starting point for organisations beginning their Anaplan journey or looking to reset.
It was also refreshing to hear Dayne Turbitt, Managing Director EMEA, acknowledge that these apps are not for everyone. If an organisation has already solved a use case effectively, there’s no need to invest further. This practical, no-pressure approach struck exactly the right balance.
AI featured heavily, and for good reason. The capabilities demonstrated felt grounded in real business needs, not hype. A few key highlights:
Anaplan CoPlanner is a native, context-aware conversational AI assistant embedded directly into the Anaplan platform—designed to give you instant, on-demand insights and streamline planning processes . The brilliant features offered by CoPlanner, which are currently only available and trained on Anaplan Apps, will soon be available to train on your bespoke models. This is a major leap forward.
The ability to build basic models using natural language felt fast, intuitive, and a potential game-changer. I see this changing how we at Profit& operate on client projects. Rather than reducing our work on projects, this will help us accelerate simpler tasks and focus more on business processes and methodology, unlocking value creation and driving better outcomes for our customers.
Watching workflows generated from text or even whiteboard diagrams was compelling. As someone who starts every project with a marker and a whiteboard, I found this particularly exciting. It could dramatically streamline how we capture and operationalise processes.
Anaplan Data Orchestrator (ADO) stood out as more than just another ETL tool. It’s evolving into a true orchestration layer—combining data movement, storage, and governance in one place.
Of particular note:
The ability to promote selected changes, rather than entire models, is a practical solution for real-world development needs, especially emergency BAU changes.
Polaris is Anaplan’s next-generation calculation engine, built to meet the demands of large-scale, high-dimensional enterprise planning. The big news for those interested in migrating from classic to Polaris was that a test case showed that only 2% of a model requires manual updates. That’s a huge step towards frictionless migration.
The next wave of UX improvements looks strong and aligns closely with customer feedback we hear across the board.
This case is a powerful demonstration of Anaplan’s impact in a complex, high-stakes environment. As a major public infrastructure project, seeing this use case delivered on time and budget was both impressive and deeply meaningful—proof that connected planning can drive real-world results, even under intense scrutiny.
Dany Krivoshey from Unilever was a standout speaker and a real highlight of the day. What resonated most was that he didn’t just speak about project outcomes; he shared the how behind the success. I always find these stories far more insightful than the end results alone.
His empathy, hands-on leadership style, and authenticity came through clearly, both in his presentation and during the panel discussion. It was especially refreshing to hear him speak candidly about the importance of aligning teams with the company vision.
His point about 'cutting the cord' with individuals who aren’t on board with the vision is refreshing. It’s a message we don’t hear often enough in transformation conversations. Sometimes moving forward requires making tough decisions, and Dany articulated that reality with honesty and conviction.
The pace and depth of innovation on display made it clear that Anaplan is not only keeping up with the industry—it’s helping shape where it’s going.
Congratulations to the Anaplan team for an excellent event and an exciting product roadmap. I won’t ask for delivery dates… but we’re very keen to know!
I'd love to hear your thoughts—what stood out most for you?
And for those who couldn’t make it, are there any specific questions you’d like answered about the event, the product updates, or what it means for your planning journey? Feel free to reach out or connect with me. Let’s keep the conversation going.