Anaplan Reviews: 4.6/5 — Highly Rated

1)Anaplan provides the flexibility to model any business use case. 2)Platform has a very intuitive UX which allows great end user adoption. 3)Configured model can very easily modified to accommodate changed business scenarios.

1)Anaplan modelling has size restrictions which sometimes makes it very difficult to create reports by intersecting multiple dimensionality. 2)Anaplan should provide better starter models for some of the most common use cases so that the implementation does not require creating everything from scratch. 3)Anaplan should provide some built in algorithms to make the platform more relevant for Supply Chain Planning use cases.

Anaplan has a very intuitive UX which allows significant end user adoption as the functionalities are very straightforward to use. The Platform provides the flexibility to model any business use case and all the functionalities can be implemented in a very agile manner. The Platform can be used to build applications related to FP&A , Sales Planning and Supply Chain planning use cases. On top of the business modelling capabilities , the tool also provides embedded AI/ML capabilities that can be leveraged for a wide variety of use cases. The Tool can be seamlessly integrated with other third-party systems with various integration options available.

Anaplan is Cloud Based In-Memory Calculation engine Concurrency Transparency of the Data Auto calculations of any dependent calculations

Some commonly used Excel formulas are not available Scope for Improvements in user experience Performance issues with large data sets.

We have implemented financial planning and budgeting. It helped us improve the efficiency of the planning by enhancing transparency.

Anaplan is a cloud based tool that can be access from any web browser and even mobile devices. It can store billions of data points and has native security and user access management capabilities.

Anaplan can relatively be implemented incorrectly making the tool slow and unusable. This leads to the need of an Anaplan expert to help develop the initial application to ensure that the overall architecture is built sustainaby.

Most Anaplan implementations help teams get out of the pains of Excel. I have used Anaplan for FP&A, Project Planning, Inventory Planning, and Territory and Quota Planning. Anaplan allows many users to interact with the same information and conduct their planning without running into version control issues.

1. Flexibility 2.Transperancy 3. End User Experience Anaplan is suitable for any time of planning be it across Sales , Marketing, Finance or Supply Chain. This works just everywhere.

This tool sometimes struggles to handle volumes of data if not configured properly. Model builder has to be very carefull while developing if the volums of data is very high.

Its majorly solves the problem of collaborations which avoids the time dealys in processing the data and that time can inturn be used for productive decision making.

Anaplan allows for an enterprise approach to planning and forecasting, allowing for collaboration while maintaining consistency in approach, calculation, and reporting. Manual Excel process can be eliminated in favor of scaled Anaplan models that allow for controlled access and user role-driven experiences.

While the UX has advanced greatly this is not a BI or data visualization tool, the power of Anaplan is in the calculation engine and the collaborative modeling capabilities. No native multi-select functionality and conditional formating can be a bit clunky.

Dispersion of sensitive information in a controlled manner (selective access), the connection of disparate teams on a single platform, reduction in forecast process timelines.

This tool was a significant first step to the finance team getting reporting in a digestible format to distribute to our partners. We were able to present and pivot the data along the GL levels easily, as well as sync data from other sales and operation sources to analyze. Also amazing version control

It's not the best for headcount monitoring. It's very manual and you can easily mess up entries. It's hard to just upload and replace with new cost, headcount, and new open hires.

benefits: version control, able to create many views and breakdowns, clean look downside: very manual, needs a dedicated person to maintain and setup, restrictive format for data input

The flexibility of the tool allows for every nuance of the business to be accommodated for. Although there are many similar processes across organizations, every business has unique needs. Anaplan's customization allows for all of these nuances to be reflected, and the connectivity of the tool simultaneously allows for instant collaboration within one system.

Without a proper understanding of how a model within Anaplan is built and best practices of building, it can be easy to lose the simplicity and logical structure within a model.

Financial planning and analytics are often segmented across different teams within an organization, and this consolidation to a single system allows for these teams to communicate and view outputs in real-time. The elimination of communication lag allows for shorter cycle times and greater agility across the organization.

User friendly Flexibility Fast Capability to simulate all value chain

need to build all from scratch some features are missing, like workflow with notification

Plan all Supply Chain from Demand Planning to Distribution, including procurement

Anaplan is a cloud based technology that is used for planning and modeling . It is versatile and different planning needs can be fulfilled by using this .You can do you Supply Chain Planning ,Financial Planning ,Merchandise Planning ,Territory Quota Planning and what not ! It's quite easy to learn and implement as well and learning material is simply awesome .

Since its a cloud based technology lot of Model builders can work on this at a same time .But the problem is if anyone does some error while implementation the system freezes for all .Sometime the error time even exceeds to 15 minutes .

I am currently working in Supply Chain Planning and using the power of this tool we have implemented the requirement quite significantly and it has helped the clients to save quite alot revenue

- Scalability - Ease of Deployment - Multi-Dimensional modeling - Real-time calculation - Less down-time for deploying updates - Reports with different data-types

-Integrations API using JAVA scripts in ancient - Cloudworks runtime is very slow - Advanced workflow is not available

Forecasting using Statistical Engines Budgeting & Planning for Finance Demand & Supply Planning for Supply Chain Optimizing Inventory by Safety Stock Calculation

The ease of usability and scalability with multiple dimensions, the powerful reporting feaatures with NUX and Management Reporting Tool, take Anaplan a notch higher than similar planning tools.

The focus at times is just on the end user's perspective - fundamental and essential things that would matter to a model builder are sometimes left out - examples are not being able to choose changes that should move from the dev to Prod environment as part pushing changes through ALM - has been long pending.

We have had a major aquisition recently, and integrating all the FY planning and bringing in the workforce and financial data within Anaplan was realtively easier and smoother due to the flexibility the platform provides.

Great flexibility and powerful calculation engine that allows for quicker planning and modeling.

User management is very flexible, but tedious and painful.

Territory & Quota planning across all regions. We've achieved a faster planning cycle with fewer errors.

Compelling and extremely efficient product for FP&A planning purposes The NUX dashboards with time filters and user filters Much better than its competitor products for planning purposes

Formula not inundated and unable to use extensions line A+ for easier readability in New Model experience. I am looking forward to a platform update to enable this feature.

At Okta, we use Anaplan for complex modeling and Financial Planning (Budgeting and forecasting). With the NUX feature, the users can use it comfortably. FP&A team can plan and forecast very effectively to actual data.

Anaplan has a tremendous calculation engine and is a great tool to pivot quickly and review targeted data.

The "toast" time when an enerted error takes place.

I am solving forecasted Waterfall Payment and Fund modeling for private equity firms.

Anaplan offers flexibility that enables companies to build their business processes according to specific needs. These custom processes can then be connected inside Anaplan, which starts to multiply the benefits from the system. Anaplan can deliver quick, tangible results. A proof-of-concept model can be created in a matter of hours.

The new user experience promises long-term benefits like mobile use and cross-platform use, but it still needs to be improved in terms of functionality to allow for the same pros that the old interface had. For example, the amount of data can fit into a new user experience page is considerably lower compared to oldinterface dashboards.

We build a company-wide approach to forecasting, planning, and intelligence gathering. Processes now take less time, and the data quality is much improved compared to old excel-based methods.

I like how flexible the tool is and how simple the coding language is; it makes learning easier for non-technical people.

My least favorite part about the tool is the non-selective ALM process. It makes maintenance and enhancements of live models very difficult.

Helping clients acheieve greater efficencies by automating a lot of the work they are doing in excel in anaplan.

Connected planning, best user experience, possibility to constantly enhance solutions.

Cloud planning not having best reporting, NUX capabilities still have restrictions.

Enterprises shifting their planning processes to a tool that can meet all their needs - every process can be clear and concise, and can seamlessly interact with the overall business processes

Anaplan is highly customizable and can solve varied business problems. As an implementation consultant, this allows me to not only solve for current business needs but also help end-users think about any future issues they can solve with the tool. It helps drive consistency between disparate business groups and easily scales alongside the business, and is easy to pick up for both users and system administrators.

While it can handle enormous volumes of data, there is still room to improve calculation scaling. However, similar to Excel, since it is highly flexible, the problems typically stem from not following best practices rather than actual problems with the tool.

Anaplan is helping businesses solve many problems, including consolidating disparate business processes, eliminating inconsistent spreadsheets, and bringing together various planning groups. In addition, it supports use cases (FP&A, SPM, Supply Chain) across nearly all enterprise business functions. I've been a part of several successful implementations and see many more down the road, both with current and new users.

Fast processing and suited for collaboration. Easily customizable to a company's finance processes.

It's a bit expensive due to its per-GB/ workspace charging, but you are paying for a quality product that processes quickly.

I've solved a lot of finance processes involving product costing, transfer pricing and coming up with a rolling forecast. I was able to customize Anaplan to suit the exact business case.

The upsides of Anaplan is the accessibility, all you need is an account, browser and internet connection and your ready to plan. Another advantage is the ease of implementation, especially with it's ALM features. Deploying updates is a breeze.

I can't say that I dislike this, probably room for improvement is integration and system limitation. Every platform has its limitations anyway, but these are some of the things we can look for when looking for ideas for improvement.

We encountered problems trying to build a model with workflow, at first it was hard but eventually we pulled it off. I think the agile methodology benefited our project. We can quickly test and make quick adjustments according to the user requirements.

Cloud-based platform - able to link multiple models together Flexible to business needs Enables the end-user to make changes to the platform

The native versions used in Anaplan are not a great solution when running numerous scenarios. Instead, you have to use a list alternative, which you lose some of the great functionality of using native versions. Expensive licensing costs

Workforce planning Financial Planning Asset Management Fund Management

Anaplan is flexible, powerful and user-friendly. Model-building techniques can be acquired by the business in order to solve their pain points.

Anaplan lacks some advanced statistical tools and formulas that would enable more complex modeling of decision-making simulations.

With Anaplan, we've solved complex, time-consuming processes such as multi-dimensional forecasting of investment values and cashflows.

Anaplan is a leader in connected planning. It can be described as excel or access on steroids. The tool is flexible and scaleable to adapt to any business objective. The tool exposes silos and barriers in the business that are necessary to have during organizational transformation. The best part is the tool is business owned.

Reporting is currently undergoing a facelift. They are transitioning to a new UX, which provides improved visuals to display data. Currently, there is now way for the platform to realize the current date. This is on the product roadmap and should be resolved in the near future.

We currently use Anaplan to solve for strategic revenue planning, account segmentation, and Incentive compensation management. My solved for our enterprise account selection by using Anaplan to objectively model and predict customer spend by our company’s products and services. From there, we were able to effectively and efficiently develop new business targets for our accounts, that are transparent with the sales reps compensation targets.

For me, the most helpful aspect of Anaplan is its ability to summarize plan updates real-time. The modeling capabilities are easily transferable from your base excel knowledge.

Dashboarding in the classic view was cumbersome. Our implementation was done prior to Anaplan's new UX and transitioning from classic dashboards to the New UX is not the quickest thing to do.

The biggest problem we solved with Anaplan was standardizing our annual budgeting process. We went from thousands of Excel files to one platform where all our budgeting was done. This helped prevent different finance teams from building their own methodologies for the budget and aligned all of finance.

The platform has incredibly simple formulas that allow for both developers and business users to debug and correct any issues quickly. The ability to build a proof of concept model and further iterate off of that even after the primary developers have left creates an astounding amount of scalability for the product. Additionally through using Anaplan the companies I've worked at have all been blown away by the always on and always accurate nature of a cloud solution, especially where other products require significantly more downtime or refreshes to reflect large scale changes.

Anaplan could improve on the use of custom time dimensions to maximize the efficacy of the platform without causing a significant burden for the development team. The switchover functionality and versions work well out of the box, but additional work should be done to help minimize data sparsity and maximize efficiency.

I have worked on FP&A forecasting and budgeting solutions that have allowed for an entire enterprise to consolidate their planning process and significantly reduce the time to create an annual budget. Going from annual forecasting to nearly weekly forecasting. Additionally Anaplan has been instrumental at improving a Territory & Quota process at another company to standardize and regulate the way that employees are compensated for their work. In each implementation the result was that analysts and managers spent less time inputting the data and could spend more time reviewing and fine tuning their departments.

Anaplan is an exceptional modeling tool. Once the data is set up, it provides the flexability to rapidly develop models, easily pivot data vies without changing the underliyinf data and integrate with other systems. Additionally, it provides connected planning, which is an easy, efficient way to bring together people, processes and data. All while being secure and cloud based.

I would like to see more formula development, such as adding new formulas or updating existing formulas to work in new ways.

I have solved various use cases with Anaplan, everything ranging from FP&A and supply chain to complex financial metrics like IRR, MOIC, and custom waterfall calculations.

Anaplan does a phenomenal job of modeling data. If you can provide Anaplan the data relationships, it can show you deep insights and allow you to perform extensive scenario analysis. In short, it is the answer to making big data useful. No one sifts through thousands or millions of transactions to see patterns and trends. Anaplan gives you the tool set do it. Additionally, Anaplan is build-to-suit; the answer to 'Can Anaplan do it?' is almost always 'yes'; it can consume and enhance your current data structures as well as provide the foundation for bona fide process transformation.

While the nature of the tool promotes collaboration in the planning process through its role functionality, the day-to-day collaboration is not mature yet. There is room to grow in workflow and collaboration-specific functionality (e.g. comments in-platform). The platform's pricing is based on allocated space, which means that it can change over time and is subject to the data you load and the capabilities that you utilize in the platform.

As an implementation partner, I help companies solve a variety of problems with Anaplan. I primarily focus on sales performance management (SPM), so I will comment from that perspective. The most pervasive business problems that are solved by Anaplan are developing and managing territories and setting and adjusting quotas for the sales force. Most organizations lack any type of enterprise-level solution that does this, and the most frequent 'system' that is replaced is Excel. Anaplan provides a single source of truth for territories and targets; it allows for collaboration around that single data set and holistic data analytics that provide insights from an individual sales rep to mid-level managers to executives who oversee regions, business units, and entire organizations. The most potent advantage that is realized is the ability to view high-level KPIs, but to then drill into the details at a low level to understand what is driving them.

* Anaplan is reliable, fast and guarantees consistent calculations are applied across very large datasets. * A cloud base collaborative platform means there is no need to email files to colleagues and everyone is viewing real time data * Easy to learn and intuitive platform with natural language syntax and a customisable user interface. With no particular IT background, I found it easy to learn as an experienced Excel user * All the data in Anaplan's hyperblock is like a giant pivot table meaning reports and tables can be repivoted with different dimensions in a few seconds

* Anaplan has a limited (but fast improving) range of formatting options * Anaplan is a sophisticated platform and it can be tricky for end users to drill-down through some calculations * Model building requires skilled and experienced resources which can be hard to find, although the Anaplan community is growing fast.

I work in finance and have implemented Anaplan for FP&A, overheads cost allocations, and long-term contract accounting. It is an extremely flexible tool with a large number of potential use cases beyond finance. The key benefits realized are shorter model turn-around times, primarily made possible through less manual intervention and less manual error. With much greater confidence in the results, this frees up time to interpret results and have better conversations with the business.

How easy it to navigate the system and present charts and graphs to our business

When creating forumlas the system feedback can be vague when it doesn't work

Quick and efficient AOP planning

Anaplan is highly customizable and Excel-like enough that it is an intuitive switch for business users. Building models doesn't require a heavy technical background which is key in empowering the business to lead their transformation. In memory calulation gives ability to have an end user's input seamless flow through to generate P&L impact, eliominating the need for batch processing.

Large scale models may not be highly efficient and require breaking down components into spokes which then eliminates the power of real-time calculations.

Creates a structure to connect related planning concepts - margin planning, expense planning, etc. and centrally enforces data integrity through shared dimensionality. The ability to capture versions and scenarios is a clear advantage to excel based modeling.