Anaplan announced a new suite of artificial intelligence tools and 12 business planning applications, expanding the use of predictive, generative, and agentic AI in enterprise planning.
New products include Anaplan CoModeler, Custom Analyst, and Agent Studio for customers building and using planning models across finance, supply chain, sales, and workforce management. According to Anaplan, the tool combines a large-scale language model with an existing planning engine to support calculation, analysis, and workflow tasks within the platform.
Anaplan also adds 12 pre-built applications for specific business functions. These span finance, supply chain, retail, human resources, sales, marketing, and IT, with products focused on areas such as project cost planning, profitability analysis, software spend optimization, assortment planning, and sales forecasting.
These releases reflect a broader push to incorporate AI into daily planning tasks, rather than treating it as a separate layer of assistant. Anaplan’s platform has long centered around scenario planning, where companies test different assumptions and model the impact of decisions before committing resources.
Adam Thier, chief product and technology officer at Anaplan, outlined the company’s view on how AI should be used in business planning.
“Mandating the deployment of AI has created significant new challenges for business decision-making. AI must not only search for answers, but also calculate answers accurately and reliably,” said Tier. “That’s why we designed our platform to be a computational engine that connects every operational choice to financial outcomes. This allows our customers to fully understand the impact of their decisions before they are made, allowing them to respond quickly to market changes and take advantage of opportunities that others cannot see.”
Anaplan’s approach combines deterministic computation with machine learning and language model inference. The aim is to address the core concerns of large organizations using AI for planning and finance. The output should be traceable and auditable, not purely conversational.
new tools
CoModeler is intended for model builders and planners who create and maintain data structures behind enterprise planning systems. Anaplan says this will allow users to more consistently create, extend, and refine planning models, and that Custom Analyst and Agent Studio are designed to help customers build their own AI assistants based on existing models.
These assistants can be managed within existing planning frameworks, giving customers a way to query models in natural language and extract insights from their own data. The focus on governance suggests that Anaplan is targeting large enterprises looking for greater control over how AI is applied to sensitive planning and operational data.
Users in the two communication groups described the impact on internal planning teams.
“CoModeler feels like an extra set of people when building complex formulas,” says Gary Loveday, planning systems and BI manager at Sky. “This saves our team a lot of time and allows new modelers to work faster and with more confidence.”
Virgin Media O2 also explained the usage of the product.
“CoModeler consistently provides comprehensive implementation plans for common tasks in minutes, uncovers optimization opportunities that might otherwise be missed, and creates clear, role-specific documentation that does the heavy lifting, allowing you to focus your time and expertise on higher-value, more complex build tasks,” said Lucy Crampton, Head of Planning at Virgin Media O2. “It also suggests alternative approaches to complex solutions and helps accelerate delivery more quickly and reliably.”
Application push
The 12 applications represent another part of Anaplan’s strategy. Rather than asking customers to start with a blank-slate planning model, the company offers packaged products built around common use cases in functions such as finance and supply chain.
Financial applications include project cost planning, profitability analysis, subscription revenue planning, consensus margin planning, and software spend optimization. New products in supply chain and retail include trade facilitation management, spend analysis and forecasting, assortment planning, allocation and replenishment planning.
Anaplan has added contact center planning, project resource planning, and sales forecasting for workforce and commercial teams. The company says these products leverage planning patterns developed through years of customer deployments to reduce deployment effort and help teams get up and running faster.
EJ Tavella, vice president and general of integrated business applications at Anaplan, said the application is intended to encode business-specific planning logic into the software.
“Our applications are optimized for the age of AI and are based on decades of deep functional expertise,” said Tavera. “Each application reflects the complex relationships and trade-offs that define how modern businesses operate. By combining domain expertise and AI, we provide our customers with more than just insight, giving them a clear path to making fast, informed and effective decisions.”
Anaplan says more than 2,500 global brands use its platform. He added that major technology groups such as AWS, Google, NVIDIA, Microsoft, OpenAI, ServiceNow, and Salesforce use the company’s scenario planning and analysis software for internal decision-making.
