Bob Debicki, Sr. Director of Global CPG and Retail Industries at Anaplan – provider of a cloud-native platform for end-to-end planning – took the stage with customer SEPHORA to discuss the inventory hurdles retailers have faced in recent months and how the leading beauty retailer is leveraging Anaplan to crack the code on merchandise planning, budgeting, and inventory optimization despite inflation, tightened spending, chaotic planning cycles, and a challenging market. Bob shared, “A connected planning solution can help buyers make better decisions about what to buy and how much to buy ultimately minimizing the ‘damage’ and being as efficient as possible in the supply chain apocalypse.”

Pierre Chambe, Director of Consolidation and Reporting at Sephora North America, discusses how consumer behavior has shifted due to the pandemic, leading to changes in Sephora's strategy, forecasting, and store openings. To improve their forecasting process, Sephora transitioned from disconnected planning using Excel spreadsheets to connected planning using Anaplan. The connected planning platform helps Sephora to improve their forecasting process, allowing for more visibility, simulation of assumptions, and automatic calculation of costs. He discusses how this change improved finance's role as a business partner, allowing them to spend less time on data crunching and more time analyzing the data to drive better decisions. The benefits of the platform include efficiency, accuracy, and speed, with the ability to run multiple scenarios in parallel, compare them, and decide where to open stores.