How a shared vision led to the Global Anaplan Implementation Network

Why the future of enterprise Anaplan implementations belongs to specialist alliances, not generalist giants

Tristan Colgate, founder of Fidenda, explains how a conversation with a fellow Anaplan consulting business leader in France sparked the creation of GAIN - and why it's changing the game for global Anaplan rollouts.

Sometimes the best ideas come from discovering you're not alone in your thinking. That's exactly what happened when I first spoke with Cédric Saïed, founder and leader of French-based Anaplan consulting firm Atkan, back in July 2024.

I'd been wrestling with a frustrating pattern that kept repeating itself with prospective clients at Fidenda. We'd be speaking with large, complex global organisations that genuinely valued the depth of Anaplan expertise our team could bring to their operations. They understood the importance of specialist knowledge for successful connected planning implementations. But when it came to rolling out Anaplan globally across their operations in different continents, they felt they needed local presence in their target markets - something a UK-focused consultancy couldn't provide.

It made perfect business sense from their perspective. These global system integrators (SIs) had boots on the ground in every market they needed to reach. They had the scale, the infrastructure, and the reassuring presence of a household name. Large SIs absolutely have their place in the enterprise technology landscape - they excel at complex, multi-system transformations and have the resources to manage massive, multi-year programmes.

But when it comes to Anaplan implementations specifically, there's a fundamental challenge. These firms implement hundreds of different technologies across their practices. Anaplan represents just one platform among many in their portfolio, and their consultants are necessarily generalists who work across multiple tools and platforms.

The expertise gap in specialised platforms

What we kept hearing from the market were stories of global rollouts where the technical implementation was completed successfully, but the business outcomes fell short of expectations. Organisations would invest significantly in connected planning initiatives but struggle to achieve the adoption rates and business transformation that make Integrated Business Planning truly powerful.

It was during that first conversation with Cédric that I discovered I wasn't the only one grappling with this challenge. He'd been having exactly the same experience with prospective clients in France. Large European corporations would recognise Atkan's deep Anaplan expertise and want to work with them, but when it came to expansion across multiple countries, they'd inevitably feel they needed to choose a global SI for the international rollout.

That moment of recognition - finding someone who'd been thinking about the same challenge in the same way - was genuinely energising. Here was a fellow Anaplan specialist, on the other side of La Manche, who understood exactly what we were up against and why it mattered.

The lightbulb moment: global reach meets deep expertise

Our solution, when we talked it through, felt almost obvious in hindsight. What if we could give enterprise clients the best of both worlds? What if there was a way to deliver global scale alongside the deep, focused Anaplan expertise that only comes from specialists who eat, sleep, and breathe connected planning?

The answer was a global alliance of dedicated Anaplan partners. Not a traditional consultancy trying to be all things to all people, but a network of specialist firms that could combine their geographic coverage with their collective expertise. Each partner would bring deep Anaplan knowledge to their region, but we'd all be working from the same playbook, sharing best practices, and ensuring consistent quality across continents.

We committed to building this network together, and frankly, we had no idea how much work lay ahead of us.

Finding like-minded partners across the globe

The biggest challenge wasn't the concept - that felt right from day one. The real work was finding like-minded partners in far-flung corners of the globe who shared our philosophy and our standards. We weren't just looking for competent Anaplan implementers; we needed partners who were genuinely focused on the platform, could deliver projects to a consistently high level of quality, and were as obsessively customer-centric as we were.

This is where Leila Boutaleb-Brousse became absolutely invaluable to the process. Having previously worked in Anaplan's Partner Success organisation, her knowledge of the global partner ecosystem is extraordinary. Leila helped us identify the candidates who might be a good fit and facilitated those crucial first conversations.

Each potential partnership required thorough discussions. We needed to understand not just their technical capabilities, but their approach to client relationships, their quality standards, and their vision for what connected planning could achieve. We were essentially asking firms to bet their reputation on partners they'd never worked with, in markets they'd never operated in.

From three to eight: building the network

We started with three founding partners: Fidenda in the UK and Netherlands, Atkan in France and North Africa, and Twelve Consulting in the US. The early proof of concept worked well enough that we gradually expanded the network, adding Zooss (Australia and South America), Venn Cubed (South Africa), and Planingo (Middle East and Caspian region). Most recently, we welcomed Solvento (Philippines) and ALC Consulting (Japan), bringing our total to eight partners spanning North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia.

What's remarkable is how much collective capability we've assembled. Between the eight firms, we have impressive coverage of both industry verticals and business processes. But it goes deeper than geographic spread - each partner brings unique intellectual property that strengthens the entire network.

Fidenda contributes EPM Fasttrack, our SAP to Anaplan integration tool, which has proven invaluable for enterprises with significant SAP footprints. Atkan brings their automated model diagnostic tool that can rapidly assess and improve Anaplan model performance. Zooss offers specialised sustainable business planning solutions that integrate environmental and social sustainability into traditional business planning. The list goes on.

This isn't just a referral network - it's a genuine collaboration where the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Proving the concept: real results for real clients

The validation came when we landed our first project requiring multiple partners. The client was in the mining industry, and the project demanded three different types of expertise: niche industry knowledge specific to mining operations, deep technical capability around SAP integration, and strong local presence in the target market.

In the old model, they would have had to choose: one global SI for coverage but generic expertise, or multiple separate consultancies with the coordination challenges that brings. With GAIN, they got all three: industry expertise, technical specialisation, and local presence, all working from a unified approach with a single commercial relationship.

The result was exactly what we'd envisioned: an efficient and optimal implementation that is delivering a better-adopted solution and genuine business benefits.

More importantly, it proved our core hypothesis that you don't have to sacrifice expertise for scale.

Beyond project delivery: building a true community

What's evolved since those early days has exceeded even our optimistic expectations. We're not just collaborating on client projects anymore - we're functioning as a genuine community of practice.

Our technical teams meet regularly to share knowledge on leading-practice technical considerations and discuss how to best leverage the rapid pace of new innovation on the Anaplan platform. When Anaplan releases new apps, features or capabilities, we're collectively figuring out the best ways to implement them across different industries and use cases.

We've seen particular momentum in the retail vertical, where several partners have collaborated on shared challenges around demand forecasting, inventory optimisation, and supply chain planning. The insights generated in one market are quickly shared and adapted for use in others.

This knowledge sharing extends beyond just technical best practices. We're learning from each other about different regulatory environments, cultural considerations for change management, and industry-specific planning challenges that might not be obvious to a generalist consultancy.

The competitive advantage of collaborative expertise

Looking at the GAIN value proposition today, three things make us different from the alternatives:

• Global expertise with local support. We deliver seamless global Anaplan programmes through a trusted network of local experts. This isn't about having warm bodies in different time zones - it's about having genuine Anaplan specialists who understand both the platform and their local business environment.
• Innovation and Anaplan expertise driving business transformation. We're advancing the state of the art in connected planning through thought leadership coupled with deep Anaplan expertise. When you work with one GAIN partner, you're benefiting from the collective innovation of all eight.
• Results that deliver business impact. We're results-oriented consultants who solve complex challenges to deliver meaningful business impact. Our track record speaks for itself: over 1000 projects successfully delivered across 400+ clients and 1000+ projects worldwide.

What success looks like

The early results are encouraging. We're seeing cost-effective excellence without compromising quality, and we've built a reputation for solving challenges that others simply can't tackle. Most importantly, we're trusted to deliver impact in situations where the stakes are high and the requirements are complex.

But we're just getting started. Moving forward, we're focused on supporting more and more global organisations to get the best out of their investment in Anaplan, whether that's in designing, implementing, or supporting global solutions.

Our ambition is straightforward: we want to become the first choice for enterprises that are serious about connected planning and understand that expertise matters as much as geographic coverage.

The future of specialised consulting

I think GAIN represents something larger than just another consulting alliance. We're seeing the emergence of a new model where deep specialisation doesn't have to mean limited reach. In an increasingly complex business environment, the old trade-off between expertise and scale is becoming obsolete.

The organisations that succeed with connected planning aren't those that choose the biggest consultancy or the one with the most offices worldwide. They're the ones that choose partners who understand their business challenges and have the specialised knowledge to solve them effectively.

That's what GAIN offers: the scale of a global systems integrator with the focus and expertise that only comes from eating, sleeping, and breathing Anaplan every single day.

For any enterprise embarking on a global Anaplan rollout, the question isn't whether you can afford to work with specialists. It's whether you can afford not to.

Interested in learning more about how GAIN could support your global connected planning initiatives? We'd love to hear about your challenges and explore how our network of specialists could help.  

Get in touch: info@gain-global.org

About GAIN

The Global Anaplan Implementation Network (GAIN) is an alliance of specialized Anaplan consulting firms providing end-to-end Connected Planning implementation services worldwide. Through its network of partners - Atkan, Fidenda, Planingo, Twelve Consulting, VennCubed, Zooss Consulting, Solvento Philippines, Inc., and ALC Consulting[JR3]  - GAIN offers deep technical expertise, local insight, and global delivery capabilities for organizations implementing Anaplan at scale.