About the Client
The client is one of the largest Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in the United States, managing tens of thousands of single-family rental homes across major metropolitan markets.
Operating at significant scale, the organization relies on accurate and timely financial planning to manage portfolio performance, guide investment decisions, and provide corporate and property-level leaders with visibility into budgets, forecasts, and actual results.
Background
Each year, the client’s Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) team develops a comprehensive financial and operating budget across its property portfolio.
Anaplan is used to model projected revenues, expenses, and forecasts, while actual financial performance is maintained within the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). Bringing these datasets together enables teams to compare planned performance against actual results and provide meaningful reporting to corporate leadership and property managers.
While the architecture was designed to support an integrated planning and reporting process, the connection between Anaplan and the EDW relied heavily on manual workflows.
As the portfolio and planning requirements grew, this process became increasingly time-consuming and difficult to scale.
The Challenge
Budget and forecast data had to move through several manual steps before it could be used within the EDW.
Analysts were required to export data from Anaplan, reformat and clean files according to EDW requirements, validate the information, and manually upload the final datasets.
For an organization managing tens of thousands of properties, this created several operational challenges.
Slower Planning Cycles: Repetitive preparation and loading delayed the availability of budget data and downstream reporting.
Increased Risk of Errors: Manual file manipulation, formatting, and data transfer created opportunities for inconsistencies and inaccuracies.
Limited Analyst Productivity: FP&A professionals spent valuable time preparing and reconciling data rather than analyzing performance and developing forward-looking insights.
Delayed Budget vs. Actual Reporting: Leadership had to wait for the manual loading process to finish before gaining a complete view of planned versus actual performance.
Scalability Constraints: As new properties, entities, and investment structures were introduced, the manual workflow became increasingly difficult to maintain efficiently.
The client needed a reliable way to automate the flow of planning data from Anaplan into the EDW without compromising data quality or existing reporting requirements.
The Solution
The client partnered with Supply Medium to automate the end-to-end budget and forecast data integration between Anaplan and the Enterprise Data Warehouse.
The solution was designed to eliminate repetitive manual work, strengthen data integrity, and make planning data available earlier in each budget cycle.
Automated Data Pipeline
Supply Medium developed a secure, automated pipeline to transfer budget and forecast data directly from Anaplan into the EDW.
This replaced the manual export, formatting, and upload workflow with a consistent and repeatable integration process.
Built-In Data Validation
Validation rules were incorporated throughout the pipeline to verify data structure, completeness, and consistency before information reached downstream reporting systems.
Automating these controls reduced reconciliation effort and minimized the risk of errors associated with manual data handling.
Immediate Budget Data Availability
The integration was designed to make budget and forecast data available within the EDW at the beginning of the planning cycle without requiring analysts to manually prepare or upload files.
This gave reporting teams earlier access to planning information and accelerated budget-versus-actual analysis.
Scalable Integration Architecture
The automated workflow was built with future growth in mind.
New properties, entities, and investment structures can be incorporated into the process without recreating the underlying integration, allowing the solution to evolve alongside the client’s portfolio and planning requirements.
The Outcome
Automating the Anaplan-to-EDW workflow delivered immediate improvements across FP&A operations, reporting, and data quality.
Reduced Manual Effort: Hours of repetitive budget preparation and loading work were eliminated from each planning cycle.
Higher Analyst Productivity: FP&A professionals could redirect their time from data preparation and reconciliation toward financial analysis, forecasting, and strategic insights.
Improved Data Accuracy: Removing manual formatting and upload steps reduced opportunities for errors and strengthened consistency between planning and reporting data.
Faster Reporting: Budget and forecast information became available in the EDW earlier, enabling reporting teams to deliver insights to leadership sooner.
Earlier Budget vs. Actual Visibility: Corporate and property-level stakeholders gained faster access to planned-versus-actual performance, supporting more timely financial decisions.
Greater Scalability: The automated integration can accommodate new properties, entities, and investment structures as the organization continues to evolve.