So what is Anaplan, well firstly Anaplan lives in the cloud. Your company will have a secure environment known as the Anaplan customer or tenant and the environment can be split into smaller areas known as work spaces, which are used to segment the outcome applications or use cases. Each workspace has its own security settings allowing for segregation of duties for the developers and end-users if you so wish. And finally within the workspaces the applications or models are created and this is what you're using Anaplan for. So when describing an Anaplan model we tend to think of three fundamental building blocks: Central Library, the Engine and finally the User Experience or UX. So looking at the Central Library first, this is where we hold and create structures or dimensions of the model. Within the Central Library itself there are three main areas. The first of these is Time.These are the settings we need for both range scope and granularity of the calendar needed within the model. The time within a model can range from daily at the lowest granularity all the way up to yearly. Second element is versions. In most planning applications we want to combine actuals with a budget or forecast ee might want a different number of forecasts or plans and these are generally versions within our Anaplan model. Finally, we look to the lists, these are the structures that make up the multi-dimensional nature of Anaplan models. They're the master data use within the business, so a list of products or a list of customers or a list of accounts. These lists or dimensions are combined in the next part the Anaplan environment: the Engine. At the heart of Anaplan is a hyper block in-memory engine which combines the cell-based flexibility of a spreadsheet, the scalability and querying capabilities of relational databases as well as the calculation and aggregation abilities of multi-dimensional cubes. It was specifically designed to utilize the collaborative nature of the cloud and to only calculate sales that have changed allowing enterprise scale calculations to be performed in a matter of seconds. To perform the calculations the relevant lists from the Central Library are combined with formulas and these are created without any coding or scripting meaning they're easily maintained by the business administrators using their logic and terms. The formulas are stored in nine items which are sell based on how to get house together in modules. Modules themselves are grouped together to provide a logical flow of inputs calculations and outputs within the model. A key advantage of Anaplan is the ability to link structures together this means only the appropriate dimensions are needed for certain calculations leading to increased efficiency. The lists from the Central Library can be reused and combined with time and versions as appropriate. The resulting modules are then tailored for the type of module be their input calculations or outputs, so a model will consist of lots of smaller modules rather than one big cube. The other advantage that Anaplan is when a new element is added to the list so a new product as part of a monthly update, this element is automatically made available within the model to the users as applicable. The same applies to changes to data entry and calculations these are instantly made available to ensure a consistent version of the model is used to route. And the final piece of the Anaplan jigsaw is the user experience or UX this is how end-users interact with the model. Modules and their associated data are presented on dashboards for end-user consumption and these can be tailored to the user's role. The data can be shown on multiple dashboards as grids of data, charts or graphs and all of the different elements linked together to provide a synchronized view as the user navigates throughout the model. And finally, security settings from a high-level structures or all the way down to individual cell levels are possible. Row-level security will restrict users access so they can read/write and view the data or not as applicable. So in a nutshell that's Anaplan.
