Driving business value for CoE leaders
- Štěpán Zechovský
- Feb 12
- 3 min read
Updated: May 13
If you run an Anaplan CoE, stop measuring tickets and do this instead
Here’s something I see very often with Anaplan Centers of Excellence.
They track:
number of active users
number of tickets closed
Those numbers are easy to get. They look reassuring. And they are almost always the wrong place to start.
I’ve worked with many CoEs where usage was “good” and ticket volumes were “under control”, yet the platform was slowing down, trust from the business was eroding, and value was hard to explain.
The issue wasn’t effort.
It was focus.
Why tickets and users are misleading
User counts tell you who logs in.
Tickets tell you who has problems.
Neither tells you:
whether planning is getting easier
whether decisions are happening faster
whether the platform is stable
or whether the CoE itself is sustainable
In fact, some of the most problematic CoEs I’ve seen had:
high usage
low ticket volumes
Because users had simply stopped expecting improvement.
If you want real control over your CoE, you need to look elsewhere first.
Four areas CoE leaders should actually focus on
When CoEs mature, their metrics usually shift away from activity and toward outcomes and health. In practice, this means focusing on four areas.
1. Adoption that reflects real usage, not just access
The question is not “How many users do we have?”
It’s “Are people using Anaplan the way we intended?”
That means looking at:
which UX pages are actually used
whether key personas are engaging
how deep usage goes beyond basic inputs
High login numbers with shallow usage usually point to training, UX, or process issues that tickets will never reveal.
2. Platform health before users start complaining
Platform health problems surface quietly.
Integration instability, slow models, or long stabilization times for new use cases don’t always generate tickets right away. What they do generate is hesitation. Manual workarounds. Side spreadsheets.
Metrics like:
integration reliability
incident trends by severity
stabilization time for new use cases
tell you far more about future value than ticket counts ever will.
3. Business value, even if it’s imperfect
Many CoEs avoid value metrics because they feel hard to define.
That’s a mistake.
You don’t need perfect ROI models. You do need to be able to say something meaningful about:
cycle time reduction
forecast accuracy improvements
decision latency
planning process reliability
If the CoE cannot articulate where value is created, someone else eventually will, and not always in your favor.
4. CoE health as a first-class concern
This is the most overlooked area.
A CoE can only deliver value if it is itself healthy. That means tracking:
delivery capacity and utilization
backlog size and throughput
self-sufficiency of the business
governance and decision clarity
A CoE that is constantly overloaded or stuck in reactive mode will slowly degrade everything else, no matter how good the models are.
Why this gives CoE leaders real control
When you focus on these four areas:
problems surface earlier
trade-offs become explicit
conversations with IT and the business improve
You stop reacting to symptoms and start managing the system.
This is the difference between running Anaplan and owning the platform.
How SKU Point supports CoE leaders
SKU Point works with CoE leaders who want to move beyond operational reporting and take real control of their Anaplan landscape.
That support typically includes:
adding reliable delivery capacity when demand spikes
helping define or refresh CoE strategy and operating model
supporting CoEs in translating metrics into concrete actions
The goal is not more dashboards.
It’s better decisions, better prioritization, and a CoE that can scale without burning out.
A simple takeaway for CoE leaders
If you want your CoE to be taken seriously as a value driver:
users and tickets are lagging indicators
platform health shows problems before adoption drops
business value needs to be made explicit
CoE health determines how long value can be sustained
control comes from seeing the whole system
If you’re setting up a CoE, or rethinking an existing one, start there.
About author
I help Anaplan and Pigment partners secure and deliver larger projects without staffing delays, bench risk, or long-term hiring commitments.
My work is guided by clarity, trustworthiness, and speed - helping clients and partners achieve maximum ROI through fast, reliable delivery backed by deep hands-on experience.
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