Anaplan Reviews

My first project in Anaplan was about capacity planning for the factory's RCT and NCTC capacity planning. My second use case was about CapEx and OpEx planning for another client. Mainly it's finance and supply chain related activities.

In finance, mainly, earlier, we were using Excel spreadsheets. Every time their monthly cycle ends, the company needed to go back to the reporting. They would have to pull all the data from all the users and then publish all final reports. However, in Anaplan, everyone reports their numbers through the cloud and wherever the end-user or the planner wants to see the data collated, he can just simply open the Anaplan and then see the reports ready-made. It's much less work-intensive.

The modeling is very easy. It's almost an Excel-like model building. It is very easy to change the logic or business rules. You can do it anytime. It's not like you need a different team set up for the changes.

The solution is very user-friendly.

The initial setup is very easy.

The solution is scalable.

The solution has been very stable so far.

We have found that the product integrates well with SAP and they have ready-made connectors. In fact, it is easy to integrate with any other system. They have plug-and-play software which makes integrations easy with very little time consumption required. 

You don't need to have a programming language to use Anaplan.

There is no demand planning, no dedicated demand planning where it can do statistical forecasting. They have engaged with a plan queue to do the statistical forecasting. However, if we compare it with SAP or others, they don't have an in-house forecasting tool or anything.

It would be nice if the solution offered better extensions. For example, in SEC Excel, they have one extra extension, which is really good in terms of performance. It would have been really great to have something similar, however, from what I have seen so far it is not up to the mark. Whenever you load the data in Excel and then send it back to Anaplan, it takes a lot of time. It's very hard to use it. Rather than using the available extension, people prefer to go back to Anaplan again.

Plastic dashboards were a little bit hard to create, however, it's my understanding that it's a bit better now.

I've been using the solution for more than two years at this point. 

The solution is stable. I've never faced any issue where it had downtime or anything. It has never failed, at least for me.

The solution is very scalable. In previous projects, there were some changes that the business wanted to make, however, they were not able to do it in SAP or Cisco systems. They used append models to do those changes and send them back to SAP.

Considering the previous project, there were almost 300 to 400 users. There are finance project managers across the zones or the CapEx and OpEx controllers.

Our latest client does plan to increase usage. They've already forgotten all about trying to make Excel reporting work.

Technical support is very good. I have also worked on SAP previously, and, if I had to compare SAP support and Anaplan support, Anaplan support is quite responsive. We're very satisfied with them overall. 

I didn't use business performance management, however, I do use SAP, IBP, and APO. These are mainly ERP-related Software solutions.

The initial setup is not difficult or complex. It's very simple and straightforward. 

Generally, the deployment takes four to five months to complete at least the basic agenda. Later you can keep on adding the functionalities once the users start filling the Anaplan, they go ahead and ask for more requirements.

The four to five-month deployment includes, for example, the process of customization and testing.

We did not use an integrator. I'm in consulting, so we get the projects for the deployment.

I don't know anything about the cost or the licensing. It's not an aspect of the solution I work on.

We have partners and we do the implementation for clients. 

I am using a SaaS version of the solution.

Generally, people rush to design the scope and just start building. I would say that new users should focus first on designing the process and scope. Once that is finalized, then move into the model building rather than pushing everything in one go.

During our training in Anaplan, there was one quote saying, "almost everything can be built in Anaplan". There were scenarios where I thought, okay fine, Anaplan can't build this logic, and yet, after a point, we were able to build that logic. It's pretty scalable.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

My primary use case of this solution is to solve business scenarios, including sales and operations planning and compensation management for top FMCG clients and service provider clients.

Anaplan has eased a major pain point in mapping multidimensional data by combining all the necessary dimensions into a single tool. This makes it much easier for managers to understand the data coming in from their reps.

This product has a very good modeling feature, and its graphical representation of visualizations has also been valuable.

The visualization tools in the product are limited in comparison to other reporting tools.

I have been using this solution for about three years.

My impression is that this is a reliable solution that gets very good feedback at the management level. 

We have something called Anaplan Connect, which is like an in-built Anaplan connector, where we can connect with our third-party data sources, and we don't have any issues, especially when we do an integration perspective.

My experience with customer support has been great, they are very responsive to any issues.

Before using this solution, I used to develop using Excel macro dashboards. I switched because while Excel is a bigger environment compared to Anaplan, this product is a tool created to achieve something, not like an enterprise package.

With Anaplan, setup is almost like solving a Rubik's cube - there are no book rules for the product. So the complexity varies depending on the business scenario and how well the people involved understand the logical requirements. However, the product's architecture is very simple, so the sync process happens in a matter of seconds.

Anaplan sell their licenses on a storage basis, which they call a bucket. 

I would personally recommend Anaplan, especially for anyone who is having issues dealing with bulk loads of Excel data or is experiencing pain in allocation or planning. Anaplan is a one-stop solution and does not require knowledge of a programming language - if you're familiar with Excel functions, that will be sufficient. I would rate this product as eight out of ten.

We concentrate now on financial planning. However, we have intentions to move towards supply planning. My company uses the tool to know the key players in the market.

I am impressed with the tool’s real-time calculations and intuitive interface. The tool’s user interface is the best compared to other software that I have worked with. I also find the tool’s management reporting feature valuable.

The tool needs to work on its integration with MS Excel and MS Word. The tool does not allow data analysis in spreadsheets which is possible on other platforms. I want the solution to be more collaborative to facilitate decision-making in organizations.

I have been working with the solution for three to four years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. There are around 10-20 users for the solution.

The tool’s support is responsive but its Workaround Time is not very helpful.

Neutral

We chose Anaplan based on the client’s requirements.

The tool’s setup is easy. The tool’s deployment depends on the requirements of both users and clients. The overall deployment will not take more than four to five weeks to complete. One week is required for the determination of user requirements and another four to five weeks for the solution’s deployment.

The tool’s pricing is reasonable and competitive with other solutions.

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. This product is an important Enterprise Performance Management tool. It has one of the most powerful calculation engines called Hyperblock.

• Multi-dimensional
• Easy to restructure
• Cloud compatible

The capacity projection of certain lines helped to identify where the utilization is falling beyond a limit. It helped certain category planners to plan for long term investments (shift patterns).

I would like to see more flexible graphs. That is, more varieties of graphs, more customization (like choosing colors, gradients, etc.) and more conditional formatting options (format sharply or gradient).

Anaplan gave us some limitations in terms of these aspects. There might be scope for experimenting around the formatting, if not the types, of graphs!

I have used the product for one year.

Very rarely. The tool slows down around once every two months.

There were no scalability issues.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10.

I used a different solution. I switched to expand my exposure to a budding tool in planning.

The initial setup was straightforward.

It might cost more compared to some decent tools in the market. But one should be mindful about the capabilities of Anaplan, which justify the cost.

I haven't done this, as it was already selected by my organization. However, I did some market research to see how other options are flourishing, and found Anaplan to be a worthwhile option.

There are fewer experts in the Indian market, but there seems to be a lot of scope in global markets. Anaplan is a worthwhile investment for a top performing planning solution in any sector, Finance, Capacity, or Budgeting, etc.

• Ease of integration with Salesforce (Sales Cloud).
• Flexibility - the ability to run several different sales forecasting models, but have those parts roll-up to a corporate model.
• Extremely customizable (add fields, add dashboards/components, etc.)

• It has supported a global process change to sales forecasting and created a single method for this.
• It has created a global standard in corporate dashboards that all regions agreed to run the business from.
• It has simplified the sales forecasting process.
• It has increased visibility at a corporate & global sales leadership level where previously it was not possible in MS Excel.
• It has helped speed up business and reduced the time it took to report on and view the sales forecast.

Anaplan needs to place more limits on builders/developers in some cases because we found that if we continued to customize a given sales forecast model it would degrade performance slightly as we continued to add dimensions to our forecasting model.

We have used the solution for more than two years.

For the most part Anaplan had reliable up-time and stability so this was not an issue.

Small changes could create massive amounts of data without the Anaplan Builder knowing that they did that. This could push us over space/storage limits quickly.

After going live in August 2015 we had to double storage capacity and rebuild the entire forecasting model six months after go-live in Spring 2016 due to a poor initial design that led to wasted storage and less optimal performance.

Anaplan provided us with some great resources and Professional Services resources to get our initial sales forecasting model off the ground.

Previously we used MS Excel. We switched because we needed global visibility, forecasting accuracy and a cloud/SaaS/online solution for our sales organization.

The organization & forecasting solution in Excel had gotten so complex, took too long to aggregate and was giving Sales Leadership false forecasts (based on bad data).

Initially we thought it was straightforward, but it ended up being complex, but not because of Anaplan. The challenge was getting a Global Sales organization to agree on a single way to do sales forecasting. That took almost eight months to nail down. Once that was done, it only took six weeks to get the Anaplan sales forecating model setup and rolled out to our users.

Be mindful about storage limits initially. Also, make sure you decide how many Administrator licenses you need. If I recall, the Admin/Developer license costs ten times more than a standard user license so make sure you know how many of those you really need at your company to make cost effective decisions for your organization.

We also looked at Salesforce (native forecasting solution), Adaptive Insights and an IBM solution.

Get Anaplan Professional Services to start, make sure to pay for additional Anaplan training sessions and continue to invest in training for your organization. These skills are not easy to pick up so getting help to start your project is highly recommended.

Anaplan can be used for many types of planning, such as finance, supply chain, sales, and workforce.

My organization has benefited from the solution providing us with very good forecasting models. Additionally, there is a tool where users can go through different dashboards,  a feature called Dimension where you can use multiple dimensions, and the granularity is very good for us.

Anaplan provides 130 GB of cloud storage for organizations to use as part of their license. 

It is easier to implement for the developer teams and client users who are using it. For example, if a client is using thousands of Excel documents, it becomes very easy for Anaplan to do all of the calculations and move things around inside.

The flexibility is very good, it is easy to make new changes to the deployments.

The solution can improve by providing an easier form of integration to different platforms, such as receiving data from different Salesforce. There is a process to do it through the use of APIs but it could be made much easier. This would be a large help to us.

I have been using Anaplan for approximately three years.

The solution is very stable.

Anaplan has been scalable, there are a least 40 domains where this solution can be used, such as OPEX and financial planning

In my organization, we have approximately 10 clients using this solution.

We are extensively using this solution in the project we are currently involved in.

We provide the implementation and the after the support of the solution.

The installation is not difficult but I would put it in the easy to medium level of difficulty.

The amount of technical staff required for the implementation and maintenance completely depends on the requirements of clients. There is some flexibility that comes after the first deployment, we can do enhancement for the same deployment instead of creating a new one.

We follow the Sprint method of implementation and it can take approximately two weeks. However, as previously mentioned the time is dependant on the client's requirements. For example, we are doing an update to enhance a previous implementation that will take approximately two months.

We are not the end-user to know if the clients are receiving a return on investment. However, I would conclude they have been receiving a good return on their investment because we are having an increasing number of clients and we are doing enhancements to previous deployments.

I would strongly recommend this solution to others.

I rate Anaplan an eight out of ten.

My main use of Anaplan is for financial planning and budgeting forecasts.

Anaplan's strongest feature is that its GUI is very modern and user-friendly.

Anaplan could be improved with a stronger consolidation module. In the next release, Anaplan should include out-of-the-box integration with software systems. Currently, they don't have a connector, so you have to work with an API or directly with a company to build connections, whereas their competitors already include native connectors.

I've been using Anaplan for seven years.

Anaplan is a bit pricier compared to its competitors - the license costs about $4,000 per user annually.

Anaplan's technical support is very good.

Positive

The initial setup is very easy, though it can vary based on users' needs. Depending on the scope of the user's requirements, it can take anywhere between two and twelve months to deploy everything.

Anaplan is a great product for large organizations with multiple locations that want to do FP&A. I would give Anaplan a score of eight out of ten.

• Serves as a platform: You can design your solutions on top of it
• Allows you to do “what-if” analysis on the go
• Allows collaboration across the organization: This is most essential for security

We use Anaplan across multiple functional areas. I will elaborate a few features that have had the most impact on our organization:

• The forecasting/planning cycles: This used to take months to collaborate. It now only takes a week to finish and be worked upon.
• The commission payment systems: Have been automated in Anaplan. The commission payments are highly transparent and efficient now.
• The Bookings and Revenue Forecasting model: Allows us to predict the Salesforce requirements and to budget for them beforehand.

• A better presentation layer would certainly take it a notch higher.
• As compared to other BI tools, such as QlikView, the presentation layer is not as user-friendly.
• It still does a fairly good job on the look and feel of the dashboards. But this is the only area in which there is scope for improvement.

I have used this solution for more than four years.

There were no stability issues.

This product is super scalable and efficient.

Mostly there is no need for any support. Anaplan is very supportive in case you need to contact the technical support.

Being a business analyst, we use multiple tools.

We were the early adaptors of Anaplan. Because of the customizability that it offers and the ease of various “what-if” scenarios, you can build on this tool.

None of the other tools in the market offer that level of flexibility. Hence, it is pretty unique in that sense.

There is no setup required. It is a cloud platform.

Go for a bigger deal initially. Once you start using it, you will certainly want more of it.

We had evaluated Tableau and QlikView. Even though a lot of the other tools do a good job, only Anaplan allows flexibility and customizability to design solutions and do real-time “what-if” analysis.

Have a core team dedicated only to Anaplan and you will realize the true potential of this tool.

The tool is very good and customizable.