For Anaplan CFO Hemant Kapadia, one of the more revealing measures of the company’s transformation isn’t revenue growth alone. It’s the fact that Anaplan has nearly the same number of employees it had when it was taken private in 2022—even as annual recurring revenue has grown from approximately $600 million toward $1.4 billion.
The company has also become materially more profitable, generating free cash flow margins in the mid-30s. That financial flexibility has helped fund a $500 million investment commitment spanning infrastructure, platform development, new applications, and artificial intelligence.
Yet Kapadia’s ambitions extend beyond Anaplan’s product roadmap.
Drawing on an engineering background and 14 years at General Electric, he has long viewed financial performance through an operational lens. Today, that perspective informs Anaplan’s internal AI Readiness program, an initiative he leads to identify opportunities for redesigning processes across the business.
Rather than treating AI as another cost-reduction exercise, Kapadia wants employees to reconsider how work gets done—and which activities deserve their attention.
“Our approach is not to say we’re gonna implement AI and we’re gonna cut, you know, thirty percent of the organization,” he explains.
There’s a similar philosophy behind Anaplan’s own financial operations. By connecting sales forecasts, customer bookings, workforce costs, and cloud expenses, Kapadia says he effectively has a daily financial close, allowing investment decisions to be made during a quarter rather than after it ends.
Looking ahead, his challenge is whether Anaplan can double or triple its business while keeping employee growth far below historical norms.
For Kapadia, AI’s promise isn’t simply doing the same work faster. It’s changing what the organization can accomplish.