Twelve.EDU at The University of Minnesota
At Twelve, we “unlock potential with smarter data”, enabling our customers to create more dynamic organizations. Our mission at Twelve is to improve the lives and opportunities of our people, customers, and communities by empowering them with the latest technology. In the spirit of sharing our way of thinking, and inspiring continuous growth, we created Twelve.EDU.
Twelve.EDU is a new initiative intended to increase campus engagement and bring Anaplan into an educational environment. Our kickoff event, in partnership with the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, included a case study and Anaplan model created to provide students with perspective on how leaders leverage Anaplan models to create smarter organizations. Twenty-five Carlson MBA and MSBA students worked with our consultants to make strategic business decisions for a theoretical software-as-a-service company. Acting as company leadership, students worked in groups to understand the underlying connections between Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, G&A, and Engineering, and how department-level decisions impacted the company’s bottom line.
Students received a written case containing a business scenario and guidance around building multiple staffing scenarios for each department’s resources. Our Twelve CG consultants enjoyed helping student groups work through their Anaplan model to optimize results and learn more about the tool. By adjusting drivers and assumptions, students were able to see how revenue (driven by Sales and R&D departments), customer relationship demand (maintained by the Customer Success department), and new lead generation (influenced by the Marketing department) were heavily interconnected.
One of the biggest takeaways for all participants was that many business dependencies are non-linear relationships; a simple cause-and-effect relationship may have an impact throughout the organization! Even with a condensed, theoretical case, students had to consider many tradeoffs and make cost-to-benefit decisions by observing cross-functional relationships within their business. Twelve was proud to see all final presentations were created with a great deal of thought, not only around how interdependencies impacted final financial projections, but also what implications to overall organizational health might be.
With only two short hours, teams worked with their consultants to prepare presentations, including some terrific Anaplan dashboards, and deliver their results to a panel of judges. Our esteemed panel included Todd Hallett, VP Global Sales Operations and Enablement at Anaplan; Ashley Bowes-Johnson, Senior Associate Director at the Graduate Business Career Center; and one of our own fearless leaders, Josh King. Teams were evaluated based on overall process whiteboarding, Anaplan dashboard content, takeaways, future recommendations, and decision-making rationale. Presentations were incredibly well thought-out, and we were extremely impressed by the students’ innovative solutions and observations!
Todd Hallett was kind enough to close out the program with an engaging fireside chat with the students. Todd provided a unique, real-world perspective; the case study was actually very similar to what Todd and the executive team at Anaplan are currently going through as they look to continually build their high-growth, pre-IPO plan. It was an insightful, fun, and energizing learning experience for everyone who attended!
If you would like to see Twelve.EDU at your school we would love to hear from you! Case studies and company information sessions can be scheduled throughout the year. Please contact Liz Ward for more information if you would like to be included in our campus initiative in 2017. Special thanks to the amazing students and staff at the Carlson School of Management!
