Insight

The next step in the Anaplan NUX

Anaplan's NUX, which we introduced in our previous blog, has a lot to offer. Did you know that a well-designed dashboard can drastically reduce the number of clicks on a dashboard, freeing up time for other things? End users often have good ideas for doing things smarter in Anaplan, but those ideas are not always acted upon. What we've learned after a few implementations is that it's perfect to make some improvements to your workflow and take advantage of the new features in the NUX. Read on for our experiences and the latest updates to Anaplan.

We have already helped a number of customers transition to NUX. What we notice in these implementations is that clients try to keep things the same. At Finext, we see this transition as a good point to evaluate your current way of working. Why is a dashboard designed a certain way, are we really using all of our dashboards? Could we be doing things smarter? With the new functionality in the Anaplan NUX, we have discovered that this is possible.

First, there is functionality in Anaplan that is not always used. However, these small functionalities can help end users become faster and more accurate in Anaplan. In our experience, customers often ask for a whole new dashboard if not everything is displayed the way they want it. Fortunately, this can be adjusted to personal preferences with just a few clicks. And the best part? You can save this view as a personal view and use it again in the future.

In the dashboard below, for example, you can see country-level data by month. If you want to see all manual corrections by country, you can do the following:

You can save the view on this dashboard and just enlarge it as needed, or discard your changes in the following way:

Note that the underlined icons mean that a selection has been made there. In this case, the pivot and line-item selection. Excel-style filtering is also possible on the grid. You can also export the view, with the exported view containing all selections and filters.

New functionality in the NUX

Anaplan is rapidly improving workflow capabilities. Compared to our previous blog, many new features have already been added (follow the latest releases here). Two new features we want to highlight are workflow related. The first is a data writing action. This action allows you to have Anaplan write a value to a Boolean (checkbox) line item. However, this is unidirectional. If you have configured a Boolean to turn on, you can only turn it on and not off with this action. This is perfect for setting up workflows.

In addition, it is now possible to select a driver for a button. This driver (a Boolean) allows you to use or not use a button.

Combined, these two new functionalities are a great addition to Anaplan's workflow capabilities, which are only available in the NUX. An example with these new functionalities is available below.

All in all, the NUX is not just an improvement in layout and design. It works more fluidly and adds more functionality. In addition, new functionalities are still being developed. But the biggest added value we see with our customers is that every dashboard is reviewed. We start by asking questions: How can we improve the current layout? Isn't there a more efficient way to do this?

With a transition to NUX, this is a good evaluation moment to think about these improvements or to use one of the new features in Anaplan to solve a problem you are currently facing. In our way of working, we always involve end users. This proves to be very useful when redesigning dashboards. Our goal is to work together to create new dashboards that are more intuitive to use, allowing the financials who use them to work more effectively. By challenging you to rethink your process in Anaplan, it provides a unique opportunity to keep your models relevant to end users and stakeholders.

Are you ready to make the switch?

We would like to show you more of the capabilities of the NUX. For a limited time, we offer an on-site session where we discuss one of your dashboards that is not currently performing well. We will transfer that dashboard to the NUX and discuss the capabilities and improvements of that dashboard with you.

Interested in getting the most out of your dashboards? Send me an email to schedule an on-site session!

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