Charlotte Tilbury Beauty

The Situation

Charlotte Tilbury operate across Europe, the Americas, Australasia and the Middle East with their headquarters based in London. They partnered with Heathcote & Herran to first carry out a model health check and then to overhaul their existing group FP&A Anaplan forecasting model so as to better serve the business as they continue to rapidly expand.

As a rapidly growing business with ambitious plans to move into more territories they needed an Anaplan solution that was more sustainable, flexible and yet robust enough to keep pace with them as they grew.

While the existing Anaplan model design had served them well they discovered as the business expanded the model failed to sufficiently scale at pace and grew increasing more dysfunctional as they grew increasing more complex.

As demand for financial insights grew, management of the model grew increasingly more time consuming. The model become increasing prone to errors resulting from missing or incorrect mappings and inappropriate overrides while calculation errors also become more frequent. Rather than aiding the team in their regular reporting and analysis the administrative burden become an unwanted and costly distraction.     

The Challenge

The existing Anaplan model contained several crucial design flaws.

Firstly, the flow of data through the existing Anaplan model was over extended being transformed, mapped and restated across an excessive number of interdependent tables. As the business demanded more reporting this data flow grew increasingly more extended, increasing the burden on management to audit and validate the data in the Anaplan model and increasing  model volatility. The group FP&A team grew increasing more concerned that any false move, formula, line item or list change would bring the model crashing down.

Secondly, Anaplan is a multidimensional planning tool where dimensions such as location, product, function and cost account can be combined to create multidimensional structures. These structures can then be mapped across an array of other properties allowing the data to be easily transformed across a vast number of different related dimensions. This is a defining benefit of Anaplan as a planning and modelling tool. The existing model was not fully exploiting this key benefit and therefore the business was not maximising the value of their Anaplan investment. The model resembled more of an elaborate Excel file than an elegantly coordinated, connected and multidimensional planning platform. As a result the existing Anaplan model contained an excessive number of mapping tables, line item subsets and duplicate reporting modules. All required consistent monitoring and only added to the administrative burden being experienced by the group FP&A team.  

With the pace of growth and change only forecasted to increase across the business it was vital these design flaws were addressed and resolved as soon as possible.

The Solution

While the business understood that the existing Anaplan model would soon not be fit for purpose they didn’t know why. Consequently, they decided to carry out an initial model health check to diagnose the root cause of the issues before committing to detailed re-development.

The Anaplan model health check carried out by Heathcote and Herran revealed the two central design flaws as detailed above along with a catalogue of other suggestions that would help future proof their Anaplan model.  

The existing Anaplan model focused solely on creating a single P&L layout, defining the GL mapping and then moving the data along a series of line item mappings. While the initial P&L report leveraged multi dimensionality subsequent P&Ls did  not. Instead they relied on the previous P&L report creating a series of interdependent tables linked each time my a unique mapping table. Here was a great example of ‘daisy chaining’, an obvious no-no in model building best practice.

Heathcote and Herran responded to this by designing a structure involving a single consolidated hub. Utilising the strength of Anaplan’s multi dimensionality the design brought together actuals and forecast data into a single module containing all relevant dimensions such as time, GL account, currency, location and versions. From this single structure data could be mapped into reporting modules acting as spokes to the consolidated hub.

The Outcome

Reports could be independent as they no longer linked and mapped across each other. Any number of other reports, P&L layouts and summaries could be created as the GL mapping for each report could be independently defined. The new design ensured the model would be able to grow and meet the increasing demands of the business for forecasting information.

It ensured that the model was robust enough to withstand future development, with simpler, shorter and more intuitive data flows. Changes, updates and enhancement could be applied in a more controlled way ensuring that business as usual functionality was not impacted by model improvements over the medium to long term.

This beauty and cosmetics brand has ambitious plans. With their leaner, more robust and intuitive core group FP&A Anaplan forecast model they are now equipped to meet these growth ambitions with tools that are fit for purpose, agile enough to change when required and robust enough the weather any turbulent times.

In addition to redesigning their Group FP&A Anaplan forecast model they now intend to engage Heathcote and Herran in the  enhancement of their existing demand management platform and in the design, build and deployment of a marketing forecast tool.

We are looking forward to a long and valuable partnership.