Heya, how have you been? 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻
In the last four or five months, I haven't been as active as before here in Hive. I define active by the number of posts I publish and the time I spend skimming through and reading other people's posts. In the metric I set for myself, I definitely failed. The culprit? No other than my demanding job. I mentioned this before but in case you missed it, I handle the Demand and Replenishment Department of one of the Philippines’ biggest players in the processed meat industry.
October last year, I shared with you that after talking with almost all Demand Planning Module application/software suppliers/providers in the market, we finally decided where to get the help we badly needed. Our decision matrix pointed to the direction of a web-based connected planning platform called Anaplan.
The ber months in the Philippines are usually the busiest season for us in the FMCG industry so we put off the implementation until 1st quarter of 2023. Despite this, my boss was keen on maximizing whatever time we have prior to implementation. The last quarter of last year was spent finalizing statement of works (SOW), master service agreements (MSA), project schedules, and training. Yes, even prior to implementation, we went through technical training already. This is one of the best things we did for this project; it helped me and the rest of my team understand what we are getting ourselves into before the real trouble begins. I could say I'm more confident starting the project with the basic knowledge of what Anaplan is and what it's capable of doing.
The project kicked off last January 11, 2023, and in just a matter of six (6) weeks, we finally had our 1st waves of User Acceptance Testing (UAT) for key users of the application. At first, I was hesitant to believe it was possible to deliver something given the lean lead time our implementation partner set at the onset of the project, but they did! It's not my first time handling projects, but this is my first time handling a technical one so I really don't know what to expect in terms of workload. It's overwhelming to manage the project, learn Anaplan Model Building, and manage my team and the business as usual every single day, but I guess I had to keep up with the pace my job requires of me. It pushed me to my limit; it might not feel amazing at times but I know it'll be all worth it one day.
Anyway, going back to the UAT, we got valuable insights and comments from the key users of the application. It might require mjor structural change but I'm confident that our implementation partner could do just that. At the moment, we're stuck with data cleansing and validation but I can say we're 80% done with the project now. Can't wait to write another post about our Go Live. ☺️💪
Wish me luck! 😁