Anaplan Co-Modeler: The AI Agent Built for Smarter Planning

The Build Backlog Problem: Why Expert Dependency Is a Structural Risk

Traditional Anaplan model building is manual, expertise-intensive work. A single model with its lists, modules, line items, formulas, and hierarchies, can take a skilled builder days or weeks depending on complexity. When that builder is one of a small number of certified specialists in your COE, every new planning initiative queues behind every other. Documentation lags because there is never enough time. Onboarding slows because institutional knowledge lives in too few heads.

This concentration of risk is not unique to Anaplan environments. In its report on “Future of Jobs Report 2025,” the World Economic Forum finds that skill shortage is by far the largest impediment to organizational change for over 60% of firms worldwide. In planning, the effects are straightforward: slower scenario planning, delayed decision-making, and overloaded COEs.

Skills gaps in the labour market are the biggest barrier to organisational transformation for nearly two-thirds of respondents globally.

Co-Modeler changes leverage that points. Rather than expanding headcount, a slow and expensive response, it expands what each builder can do and makes enables the path to become a builder faster and with best practices integrated.

What Anaplan Co-Modeler Is

CoModeler from Anaplan is an intelligent, role-based AI component built directly into the Anaplan software application. The Co-Modeler interprets the natural language instructions provided by the user to generate Anaplan model elements such as lists, modules, line items, formulas, and hierarchy logic according to the DISCO modelling approach and Planual, which are the standard practices of Anaplan.

The distinction worth emphasising: Co-Modeler does not automate model building. It makes governed model building faster. Every generated output is reviewable, auditable, and explainable before anything is applied. Human approval is always required. This is not a compliance footnote; it is central to how the product is architected, and it is what makes it viable for enterprise COEs where governance is non-negotiable.

How It Works: Four Steps, Full Control

Co-Modeler uses a well-defined four-step approach to ensure that the model developer is always in charge:

• Define — Explain the goals of your model in clear terms or import your model definition in a structured CSV specification. Co-Modeler drafts an initial structure for your review.


• Review — Create a tailored specification, gain complete clarity on your model design. Co-Modeler produces a detailed specification with modules, lists, dependencies, and milestones, so you know exactly how your planning model will be built before a single change is made.


• Apply — Once approved, Co-Modeler creates or extends model components within your existing workspace permissions and governance controls, following Anaplan best practices throughout.


• Validate & Refine — Review generated structures, ask follow-up questions in natural language, and refine as business needs evolve, with auto-generated documentation supporting every step.

Where Co-Modeler Makes the Most Visible Difference

Co-Modeler is a domain-specific agent purpose-built for Anaplan model builders.

Its value is concentrated in four primary pillars where the cost of traditional approaches is most acute:

• Build complex models faster: Describe requirements in plain language or supply structured CSV specifications. Co-Modeler transforms these requirements into a step-by-step build plan including modules, hierarchies, and calculations, all aligned with DISCO and Planual best practices.


• Extend models to meet specific business needs: Seamlessly add new logic layers, dimensions, or scenarios to existing Anaplan applications or custom models without the need for manual dependency tracing.


• Optimize planning models for accuracy, scale, and speed: Run AI-powered reviews of existing models to surface inefficiencies, error-prone formulas, and redundant structures, then apply AI-guided improvements to ensure your models are scalable and maintainable.


• Explain and document models: Translate complex formulas, module purposes, and calculation flows into plain language. This simplifies audits, accelerates onboarding, and ensures that documentation remains current as the model evolves.

What Customers Are Reporting Regarding Co-Modeler

The feedback from live deployments is specific, and it comes from organisations that have put Co-Modeler to work on real planning environments, not controlled pilots.

Both observations point to the same shift: execution labour moves to Co-Modeler; strategic judgment stays with the team. This is exactly the reallocation of cognitive effort that 2026 planning functions need to make.

Governance and Security: Built In, Not Bolted On

Co-Modeler supports both Classic and Polaris engines, sits natively within Anaplan's security and compliance framework, and processes only specification text and prompts. It follows engine-specific modelling standards when prompted. No customer data is used to train AI models. Every recommendation is explainable, meaning users can review the underlying logic, formulas, dimensional context, and model changes driving each output, with full traceability within the model; every change requires explicit builder approval, and the entire process operates within existing workspace permissions and governance controls.

For enterprise COEs where auditability is non-negotiable, this architecture matters as much as the capability itself. Velocity without governance is not a planning tool; it is a liability.

From COE Bottleneck to Scalable Planning Capability

The 2,500+ global brands already planning on Anaplan now have a governed, faster path to extending that investment. Co-Modeler does not replace the model builder. It removes the parts of the job that should not require one: the repetitive scaffolding, the documentation backlog, the dependency bottlenecks that slow every COE down, and concentrate institutional risk in too few hands.

For organisations already running Anaplan, the question is not whether Co-Modeler is worth evaluating. It is how quickly it can be operationalised against your most constrained planning workflows, and what implementation depth it requires.

How Polestar Analytics Can Help

As a Top AI Trusted Partner with Anaplan, Polestar Analytics brings the implementation depth to make capabilities like Co-Modeler operational, not just evaluated. From extending existing Anaplan environments to deploying custom AI analyst applications for domains like Trade Promotion and Private Equity, our work is focused on embedding intelligence where planning decisions are made.

If Co-Modeler is on your roadmap, the right conversation is not about the product. It is about where it fits in your environment and what it takes to make it scale.

Introduction