Anaplan Reviews: 4.6/5 — Highly Rated

Anaplan is a great planning and analytical tool to conver a wide range of general and industry-specific use cases through an amazingly flexible modeling engine and nice user inteface. Recent addition of powerful workflow functionality looks great as well

There is a bit of a learning curve for users to learn navigation and advanced features, such as pivot, drill down, etc. Integrations could be improved as well. Importing large data sets could be faster.

Sales Forecasting, Territory and Quota, various data management and analytical edge cases

Its flexibility and scalability make it suitable for various use cases across different industries. Easy to use, Ease to implement, Reliable customer support, Easy to integrate

Limited offline flexibility, integartion is complex

Anaplan addresses a variety of business challenges and provides solutions that are particularly valuable for organizations involved in planning, budgeting, and performance management.Some of the common problems that Anaplan helps customers solve include: Spreadsheets Limitations Disconnected Planning Processes Inefficient Manual Processes Difficulty in Scenario Analysis

Anaplan is breaking down the silo between different business units at companies by introducing integrated planning

Standardization sometimes forces organizations to be less flexible than they originally wanted

Anaplan addresses the challenge of fragmented and disconnected planning processes within organizations by providing a cloud-based platform that unifies data, people, and plans. It enables seamless collaboration, facilitates dynamic modeling for various planning activities, and offers real-time insights, thereby solving the problem of inefficiency and lack of coordination in business planning. Anaplan's flexibility, scalability, and integration capabilities empower businesses to make informed decisions and adapt to changing circumstances effectively.

Anaplan's constantly evolving features added on to its core functions

Some of the newly introduced features were buggy. Could benefit from additional testing

Data centralization and alignment across the business. Planning and forecasting sales.

Customizability and the performance of the calculation engine

High learning curve. Not very user friendly

I used Anaplan to create models for sales planning. It enables consolidation of planning data.

Anaplan is a great tool for taking companies to the next level of planning capabilities. The ability to connect an enterprise in real time drives down the time and cost of running a planning cycle and pivoting based on new challenges and changing variables.

It can take a while to get used to the model building approach and reshaping your brain to think in multidimensional terms, especially if coming from a traditional planners toolkit (Excel). I will say the training does a good job of being thorough and on demand.

Anaplan is solving a vast array of my customers' problems, across industries and use cases. I have implemented Anaplan for fast food chain restaurants, oil & gas, healthcare, SaaS companies. Anaplan's flexibility can tackle any industry and any challenge presented.

Anaplan is a cloud-based planning and performance management platform that enables businesses to plan, budget, forecast, and analyze data in a collaborative and connected environment. Anaplan is a very Flexibile and Scalable platform due to hyperblocks/hyper models, very strong in Collaboration and Ease to Use which includes Ease of Implementation becasue of we can build models using Agile methodology. As Anaplan supports various planning areas in an organization we can build an enatire build Connected Planning environment and can easily build Scenario Planning capabilities because of its multi dimensionality capabilities. Supports various types of Data Integrations and last but not least the product is continuously being innovated. Anaplan has great customer support

Inspite of a lot of advatanges, managing new development and production bug fixes is still a painful proicess. Need more innovation in UX pages versioning as the cganes in NewUX are mostly manual.

At Qualys, becasue of Anaplan the time for forecasting and Budgeting has been reduced drastically and the platform provides an amazing collabrative experience unlike excel. Pur CFO now can look at the budget and Forecast vs Budget vs actuals variance all in single place and is all live data unlike with excel where there were teams pulling multiple files and trying to aggregrate every week/month.

Anaplan as a solution provides flexibility whilst creating a robust and secure environment to connect people, data and plans. It is the best placed tool I have come accross to replace the 'messy middle' and heavy dependence on modelling in excel. The platform allows you to build your processes, formulas and plans in line with the structure of your business and the ability to drill down provides transparency. It allows for end to end planning accross your business. In the Alternative Investment industry we have seen this clearly. In additon to standard FP&A and Workforce Planning use cases Anaplan can truly offer a breadth of capabilities. Real Estate firms use it plan the entire lifecycle of their assets from Acquistion Underwriting Models, through Developments, Asset Level Planning, Disposals and Fund Modelling. Private Equity firms have seen value in building out Fund Outcomes models, Valuations, Carry Waterfalls and more.

Management Reporting has been a great new feature but it would be great to see this develop even further. Adding the TODAY function would also be useful and the ability to sub-total via a selection in reports

Time to value, with short implementation time-frames, Anaplans benefits rapidly realized. The platform enables collaboration, provides one source of truth, enables security, version control and transparency.

Flexibility, Scalable , Customizable, Dyanamic User Interface , NUX Pages and Reporting , Quick Modelling , Ability to model what if scenarios like excel models.

Security Setup needs improvement; Groups wise provisioning needs to be enabled; inbuilt integration capability needs to be enabled. Provide an ability to customize security like SAP and Oracle systems.

Anaplan allows us to plan quickly and quickly provide decisions. This enabled in increased productivity and efficiency across the team. Moreover, the value-driven using Anaplan helped to reduce the cost in the organization.

Self service for FP&A analysts Self service for LOBs users Rapid implementation time Flexibility to make changes Quick backup and recovery

130 GB model size limit Missing public APIs (There is only one API related to data import/export)

FP&A planning, forecasting & budgeting (Contribution Margin, Opex, Capex, Headcount, Personnel spend, Department Spend, Program Spend etc) Connected planning Treasury planning Collections forecasting T&Q Sales Planning

The ease and efficiency of use, it allows people to spend less time planning and more time with their friends and family.

When the model locks down it can lock for long periods of time.

It's allows my customers to have a multi-dimensional platform with the ability to make an input once and leverage these inputs/calculations many different times. As my clients have expanded thei footprint within Anaplan they are know able to not only pull each other's data/results and work extremely more efficently.

- Great for complex calculations - Transparency in calculations/formulas - Easy to use end user experience - Data integration options - Bolt on workflow option

- Have to pay for Polaris - With the classic model not able to create sparse modules

It allows for complex calculations and having the ability to slice in dice for end user reporting, with great data integration options available like cloudworks or Anaplan connect

Anaplan is an extremely powerful calculation engine and planning tool that gives model builders tons of flexibility to creatively solve almost any problem

The front end "pages" are still not very flexible. Many views that are needed by end users are not possible without using the "Management Reporting" feature, however this is more for reporting and you lose almost all of the functionality from the traditional pages that gives end users the ability to interact with the model.

Anaplan is our central hub for forecast owners across our business to see their actual spend within their departments and enter their budgets and forecasts,

Business-owned and low code solution. Highly extensible and requires limited reliance on IT organization.

Scalability of solutions for large user bases (15,000+)

Various Sales Planning use cases

Anaplan is a multi-dimensional planning tool that allows you to bring together multiple sources of data to act as the one source of truth for planning. With versions and flexible time scales, you can plan for any eventuality as far out as you need to.

The lack of workflow was an issue, butAnaplan has implemented this recently and looks to provide what we need. It good to know they listen to their customer base.

Anaplan acting as the one source of truth for your data allows greater faith in the numbers throughout the business. it also speeds up the whole reporting process allowing more agile planning throughout the business.

Anaplan is almost as flexible as Excel. You can pretty much model anything you want and without the need to write scripts. Anaplan is probably the most flexible modelling tool on the market. This means people can stick to their models and don't have to conform to any other standard.

Just like Excel it is affected by the numbers of cells used in the model. Fortunately, we are talking here of billions of cells before running into any sort of issues but still. It would be great not having to worry about it.

Collaboration is drastically improved. People don't need to send each other spreadsheets or worry about formula errors. Multiple stakeholders can access the platform simultaneously but can only see the data they have access to. The calculations happen live without the need to refresh nor save anything.

How customizable it is. Companies can replicate their business processes with minimum to no compromise. It is one of the few tools on the market (with Excel) with this level of customization. Anaplan is probably second only to Excel in project development time, it is incredibly fast. Finally, given that it is a formula-based tool, there is no scripting needed so anyone can pick it up.

The user interface. Even though Anaplan has invested a lot of time and effort over the last couple of year to improve it (new user experience, management reporting,...) I don't believe it's quite there yet. Simple things are still missing. Additionally, proper workflow capabilities need to be re-introduced (Anaplan did release a v.1 in 2020).

Problems: siloed business processes, difficulties to consolidate the figures, multiple data sources, manual calculation/template errors, no audit trail, no data security Benefits: time savings, live consolidated figures, single source of truth, accurate and correct calculations, advanced audit and security capabilities

Anaplan standardizes and promotes healthy processes and workflows within a business. It centralizes key hierarchies which are used across multiple calculations and business units, ensuring everyone is on the same page and eliminating duplication of work effort.

The new UX has a grid system that does not lend itself to holding a lot of data on one dashboard. However, the improved user interface is more attractive than the previous iteration referred to as "classic dashboard"

Anaplan is a robust calculation engine that regularly uncovers longstanding errors within excel processes. In all of my clients, once processes are moved or rebuilt in Anaplan, we have found long standing formula errors and irrelevant hardcoded values when reconciling to Anaplan. Anaplan is incredible flexible and I have personally used it across multiple use cases (monthly FP&A reporting, revue forecasting, HR management, recruitment, WFP, data hub, budget consolidation, comp planning, waterfalls)

I like the flexibility and the fact that Anaplan drives the collaboration. When implemented for multiple use cases can really play a pivoting role in the way your business is organized and how you approach planning and forecasting.

The downsize of Anaplan is that it require quite some knowledge in order to get the true value out of it. The flexibility is so signifficant it can sometimes lead to unperformant solutions, unless done wisely.

Anaplan solves the issue of multiple separate excel files and disconnected planning processes. It can transform your chaotic business processes into an integrated planning platform. It changes the chaos into collaboration.

I like that Anaplan can always show exciting results to clients quickly. Even if a model is only in its infancy, the client can still see the vast benefits offered & the real-time savings they get out of it. I love the scalability and emphasis on embracing connected planning principles. By doing this, organizations can realist sustained improvements that have the ability to expand beyond just the current use case. These concepts seamlessly translate to an intuative user experience for all stakeholders.

Sometimes Anaplan can be so dynamic that seemingly effortless things are missing from the model builder or user perspective. An example can be publishing specific page selectors in different areas, ease of filtering, etc. Another specific example would be native time filtering options when building in a module with 'Time' as a dimension. However, Anaplan has made a lot of strides with these features both in the classic model building mode and the UX.

I have solved problems related to a lot of manual work in excel. Many clients are hampered by vigorous offline processes that take forever to complete, which eats into time better spent elsewhere. There have also been complex allocation pain points that Anaplan has alleviated. Anaplan has also helped us achieve connectivity across organiztion. It has improved accuracy and synergy across different processes that has enabled effective growth and expansion. Once clients realize the how Anaplan can enhance connected planning, it leads to increased adoption & enthusiasm for the product.

Anaplan is low/no code system oriented on selfservice by business users. Anaplan really helps to save time and spent it on thinking and solving business issues rather then technical problems. Anaplan less sensitive ot changes, the change requirments/logic is usually less paintfull ther majority of others solutions. Also Anaplan has great eco sytem with learning center, comunity.

Despite there is a relatively low technical barriers to start building it is easy to make bad product with low performance. Always need to pay attention to architecture and be accurate in solving tasks that are not proper for OLAP like huge transacional lists, long time scales. Also need pay attention to sizes of model since you are limited in available workspace.

Anaplan helps to consolidate financial reporing in a matter of time , source of truth, transparent process of collecting, commenting, approving data. Anaplan helps to reduce time in preparing consolidated statemnets with a higher quality. Anaplan helps to prepare more versions of forecasts and budgets before it was previosly before Anaplan.

- The most flexible and agile planning platform - User friendly - Fast and scalable implementation - Really like the initiatives around Machine Learning - Unparalled customer support from Anaplan team as well as the partner ecosystem - Easy to integration to and from various third party systems

- Minor limitations of the UX that can be handled by workaorunds

Anaplan helps the businesses address the disconnets between teams while allowing them to be efficient and transparent with each other. Having all team members talk and work with the same language in one unified platform fosters the trust and collaboration amongs teams while increasing the accuracy of the otucome.

I like that the user experience is really flexible and meets the main needs of most enterprises. The Connected Planning experience a good implementation can give to its customers is a high-end solution that works really well. The platform constantly expands and is market competitive, the multiple integration options allow the system to communicate and seamlessly fit in any existing environment.

Having been exposed to the gritty back-end work and not only the shiny front-end, there are things that can be enhanced in the way the dimensions work and the way the engine performs - being a live system means any blocking action cripples user experience for everyone involved.

Enterprises shifting their planning processes to a tool that can meet all their needs - processes can be clear and concise, and seamlessly interact with the overall business cases. Complex processes that span over multiple regions and business units are usually difficult to optimize or consolidate; however using Anaplan makes this step far easier to accomplish and maintain.

In memory calculation engine, which provides real-time outputs for any inputs entered.

Below are some of the items. 1. Workflow can be improved 2. NUX can still be improved 3. Some Excel equivalent formula are not available

Financial Planning and Consolidation is the use case we have implemented. Anaplan model helps in reducing the planning cycle from Months to days.

I like Anaplan's planning and modeling features, intelligent engine, user experience, extensibility and scalability. Anaplan connects people, data and plans like no other with their unified cloud platform. New features and functionalities are incorporated into the platform on a monthly basis which enhance the product's value proposition and usability significantly.

Auditability of line items can be improved by adding extra features like saved views references, filter references, UX page references etc. Native support for allowing input/breakback and calculation logic in the same line item can be added to further boost platform adoption in Retail Planning use cases.

Anaplan's versatility is one of its key differentiators. Using Anaplan, comprehensive planning solutions that facilitate quick decision-making can be built for all critical functions - Finance, Sales, Supply Chain, HR and Workforce, Marketing etc. As a partner, this enables me to implement best-in-class solutions for our customers and their planning needs.

Multi-dimensionality and scalability results in error free planning. Easy to implement and maintain With improvements in REST APIs, lots of integration options with other systems Real-time visibility on the go Collaboration with other users within the app Mobile app that enhances on the go planning

Recently the cost of the tool has increased, but it is still preferable because of the value proposition it brings.

Error-free and a streamlined way of assigning accounts to territories. Manage territories dynamically. Adjust/move geographies (postal codes) within Territories among different businesses. Assign and maintain territory/geography owners within each business. Manage indexes on each territory. Help determine the compensation of each rep using an Audit trail. Setup OP process among each market and submodality.

Anaplan provides a stable environment that copes with big data sets well. I also love how easily models can connect and share data, elminating spreadsheets from our planning process. Anaplan is always adding new features and enhancements to the platform.

A desire for employees to want to learn Anaplan modeling skills is key to a successful implementation unless there is a central function for model maintenance or dedicated Centre of Excellence.

Anaplan is a great alternative to Excel. It has allowed us to streamline processes and reduce modelling error risks. Coinnected planning, where data can easily be shared between models, has eliminated the need for Excel files when consolidating business unit results into the Group Budget.

What I love most about Anaplan is how versatile it is. Anaplan is used by a varietey of different industries for multiple use cases because of this. The ability to connect different functions and departments into Anaplan to develop a consolidated forecast that is unique to each funcitons needs is a game changer.

While the interconnectivity is great, you need to be careful when making system changes that it is not having unintentional effects.

Interconnect forecasting

Easy to learn and implement to exact business requirements, UX is clean looking and offers multiple ways to visualize; easy to integrate with ERPs and other data sources

Have to be intentional with what you want to implement as it is fully custom; need to dedicate time to learning

Ease of allowing multiple users to enter forecasts in to one central location, of which aggregations happen naturally and calculations immediately work.

1)New user experience is the game changer with management reporting. 2) Community user helps to get clarifications regarding the platform. 3) Introduction of Hyper model architecture to plan with huge data volumes at the most granular level.

1)Few commonly used formulas in excel are not available, but we can implement workarounds to get the results. 2) Performance issues when dealing with complex logic with huge data volumes. 3) Developer experience and NUX still have scope to improve.

Anaplan is a cloud-based multidimensional and in-memory calculation engine that will help in many business planning and budgeting. It is entirely customized and easy to maintain.