The Government of Ontario will use products from Anaplan, a business planning software company, on a cloud platform to support improved financial processes across the Ontario Public Service (OPS).
The partnership with the Government of Ontario marks Anaplan’s first public sector customer win in Canada and its largest deal in the market to date. The Ontario government will use the Anaplan platform for multi-ministry planning across the OPS.
“Our ministries and agencies have highly diverse needs, but storing unique data in individual tools made it difficult for our planners to collect, validate, and report on insights from across OPS in a timely manner,” said Shannon Fenton, Assistant Deputy Minister at Ontario Treasury Board Secretariat. “We wanted to re-imagine our approach to streamline data across ministries and agencies, and believe the Anaplan platform will enable us to add greater visibility and flexibility to our planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes.”
Anaplan’s integrated planning platform on a cloud-scalable infrastructure will allow the government to automate a standardized framework, implementing the best practices as well as workflow processes. Anaplan’s planning platform will also connect with corporate systems for use by all ministries and central agencies.
With more than 60,000 public servants, 25 ministries and over 170 provincial agencies, OPS requires a tool that can efficiently streamline unique sets of data across ministries and agencies at a fast pace while also saving time that would be wasted on manual data consolidation.
The company will allow Ontario to develop and manage all ministry plans, budgets, and forecasts in one single place so it can spend more time on the overall management of its fiscal plan.
Anaplan has seen strong growth over the past year. An increase in the number of companies looking for ways to digitally transform their planning and processes and operations is one of the reasons for this growth, according to Karen Clarke, SVP and managing director for North America, Anaplan.
“We ended fiscal 2022 with over 1,900 customers, including half of the Fortune 50, and in Q4 we had the highest growth in annual contract value and net new annual contract value in three years,” she added.
Clarke said Anaplan is focused on growing its presence in Canada, and plans to help more organizations realize the value of Connected Planning.
“Think of Connected Planning as a total re-imagination of traditional business planning,” she said. “Instead of a patchwork of point solutions and spreadsheets that require manual input, and often result in siloed data, overly complex processes, and wasted resources, Connected Planning brings data from every corner of your business…into a single environment where decision-makers can collaborate on plans, forecasts, and budgets with one source of truth.”
Anaplan began using the phrase Connected Planning in 2017. Its platform is “purpose-built” for Connected Planning and helps businesses shift the focus from data consolidation to true analysis and scenario modelling.
“For the Government of Ontario, I think there is real value in being able to implement best practices and streamline workflow processes so teams can focus on modernizing the financial management processes across OPS – which ideally will lead to stronger financial outcomes,” Clarke said.