Episode Details

If you work in HR, you know the drill: Finance runs the headcount models in their system, you submit a request via email or a spreadsheet, and three weeks later you get back a scenario that's already out of date. Anaplan's Workforce Analyst AI agent is built to fix exactly that — by embedding a conversational AI analyst directly inside the same connected planning platform Finance already uses. With the Workforce Analyst agent, HR business partners can ask natural-language questions — "What's the financial impact of adding 15 engineers to the APAC team in Q3?" — and get real-time answers drawn from the live planning model. No waiting. No version-control confusion. The numbers HR sees are the same numbers Finance is using right now. Anaplan significantly expanded the agent in March 2026, adding Agent Studio for governance and custom AI analyst creation, two new HR-specific planning apps (Contact Center Planning and Project Resource Planning), and a CoModeler capability. The governance toolkit is especially relevant for regulated industries where headcount decisions need a clear audit trail. In this episode, we break down what the Workforce Analyst agent actually does, how it compares to rivals like Visier, Workday Adaptive Planning, and Pigment — and what HR leaders should be asking if they're tired of waiting on Finance to run a scenario.