BY: JOCELYN BELL, CONSULTANT AT TWELVE CONSULTING GROUP
Driven, problem solver, collaborative, team player, and dedicated are just a few words that describe Jordan Hardy who is one of Twelve’s first five employees and a respected leader both inside and outside of Twelve. Jordan graduated from the University of Iowa, where she was a member of the Division 1 gymnastics team (go gym hawks!!) while earning a degree in engineering. After college, she took a role as a sales engineer at a large organization, and learned that she wanted to be a part of a company that had a great culture, where she could make a difference and grow and develop her career – which is why she took the leap to join Twelve! Over the past 4 years Jordan has been a part of the growth of both Twelve and Anaplan – and has been instrumental to the success in many of Twelve’s largest commercial planning customers. Jordan’s passion for growing and developing people, solving complicated challenges, making her clients happy and giving back to the community is evident. I had the pleasure to talk to her about her career growth, the changes she has been a part of at Twelve and what she is focused on today!
Tell me about yourself and your background. In what ways has your non-traditional background prepared you for working with Anaplan as well as clients?
“I attended the University of Iowa, where I majored in Chemical Engineering and was a member of the gymnastics team. These experiences prepared me for working with Anaplan and clients in different ways. My background in engineering was integral because it taught me to identify different methods to approach solving problems as well as how to be a processes thinker. Being a gymnast helped me learn more about teamwork, collaboration, how to be a leader, never to give up, and how to manage time!! All of these things helped prepare me to work with clients and lead them through implementing Anaplan!”
As one of Twelve’s first employees, what are some of the differences you see between when you first started and now?
"One of the biggest changes I have noticed between when I started at Twelve and now is that we have a lot more processes set up around new employee onboarding, customer enablement, and internal collateral. For example, now when we hire new employees, we hire them in classes so that they are all going through the same onboarding experience at the same time. This helps them to develop their Anaplan skills because they can ask each other questions about areas where they are struggling instead of going directly to someone with more Anaplan knowledge. One thing that hasn’t changed from the time I have started until now is Twelve’s commitment to client success through our implementations, as well as the company’s culture and core values of collaboration, personal growth, excellence and well-being. Both of these things really help drive the success of Twelve.”
Can you tell me about your career at Twelve and how it has prepared you for your current role?
“I started as a consultant working on a couple of different projects, but quickly transitioned into multiple different projects for a large beverage company. This experience prepared me for the senior consultant role, where I worked on a connected planning vision for another large beverage company. I also was tasked with developing IP around commercial planning to better enable our team for commercial planning projects. From there I moved into an SA role, where I was the SA for several projects, including a large bicycle parts and accessory distributor. These experiences have prepared me for being a Managing Consultant because I’ve been in the shoes of the people that I lead. I can relate my experiences in my prior roles and provide guidance based on my experiences to both clients and my team members. My previous roles have also given me the technical knowledge of Anaplan that I need to help guide my team when they have model building questions, as well as inform them of best practice within Anaplan. Finally, because of my previous roles, I have an array of project experiences, which has helped me to become very familiar with Twelve’s Project Methodology, so that I can guide my team through this methodology on every project that they are involved with.”
What excites you most about getting the opportunity to be the first domain specific team lead?
“Since we have a number of clients that have commercial planning needs and this is my background, we decided to create a team of people that focus most of their efforts on commercial planning specifically. I am excited for my team to grow our depth of knowledge and become true subject matter experts in the different commercial planning use cases. I have the opportunity to hire new employees who already have commercial planning backgrounds and to work with my team to develop best practice commercial planning Anaplan solutions. My team will also be able to develop collateral that will help make commercial planning implementations run more smoothly. We create Anaplan Applications that have been built utilizing best practices to be able to demo to clients and prospective clients, as well as create sample data files, user stories, and process diagrams. We also have the opportunity to develop internal training to educate the rest of the teams on commercial planning.”
What special and/or unique opportunities do you see for your Commercial Planning team?
“In addition to what was stated in the previous question, we have the opportunity to work on commercial planning workshops for our clients and prospective clients. This will help clients to visualize how their commercial planning business processes can all be implemented into Anaplan and help them experience the connected planning vision for their company. Since we’re the only team that specializes in the commercial planning domain, we also have the unique opportunity to be the team that other teams know that they can reach out to for any commercial planning use case questions.”
What is the most rewarding part of your new role?
“There are so many things that I find rewarding in my role - it is hard to pick just 1!! I love seeing people grow and develop – I have seen Anaplan lead to many promotions not just for folks at Twelve, but for many of our customers as well. I enjoy seeing my team help our customers to improve their business processes and day-to-day activities with limited guidance! I find it rewarding when clients realize how their business can transform with Anaplan and they want to expand it to other areas of their organization. One of the rewarding impacts I have experienced firsthand was when a client could see volume changes in their price planning immediately rather than it taking two days to update in other systems.”
What are some things that you like to do outside of work?
“Outside of work, I like to exercise and stay active. I found that the best way to stay motivated to workout is to sign up for different races so that I have something that to train for, for example this summer I completed my first triathlon. My current training is for a 10k that I will be running in December (outside in Minnesota!) with some coworkers. Additionally, I like to spend time with my husband and daughter; we go on walks together and try new recipes in the kitchen.”
