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Anaplan vs Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Anaplan
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Business Performance Management (1st), Production Planning (5th), Predictive Analytics (4th)
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Busi...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
ERP (3rd), Activity Based Costing Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Anaplan and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Anaplan is designed for Business Performance Management and holds a mindshare of 13.4%, down 16.0% compared to last year.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, on the other hand, focuses on ERP, holds 6.3% mindshare, down 6.9% since last year.
Business Performance Management
ERP
 

Featured Reviews

Antonio Flor - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time data integration enhances operational efficiency and flexibility
As a client developer and solutions architect, I use Anaplan for building modules and deploying logic end-to-end. I work closely with the business in an agile manner to ensure the model aligns with business needs Anaplan offers flexibility in building different options within the platform. The…
StefaanVandesompele - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides end-to-end accounting and finance module at reasonable pricing
365 Business Central integrates with Office 365 to streamline the invoice approval process. This allows businesses to manage and approve invoices efficiently within a unified system. Our organization plans to transition to the Dynamics 365 environment, where various functions will be centralized. We will consolidate everything into one system instead of maintaining multiple databases for each country with local data. Dynamics 365 is fully integrated, which should address many of our challenges when we migrate to this new environment. We look forward to seeing how it performs in practice. The project is progressing well overall, though integrating it with other tools and ensuring Dynamics 365 operates smoothly can be challenging. Dynamics 365 is user-friendly and effective. However, a deeper understanding of its technical capabilities and architecture might be necessary to optimize its use fully. The software landscape is evolving, and achieving the best reporting and functionality with just a click can be complex. A clear vision of what you want to achieve with Dynamics 365 is essential. Proper preparation and configuration are crucial to achieving the desired outcomes. This principle applies not only to Dynamics 365 but to all software packages. Understanding the system's flexibility and adaptability based on your specific business needs is key to its successful implementation. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's real-time connected planning, so the calculations are pretty much seamless as far as your model is connected."
"Anaplan provides 130 GB of cloud storage for organizations to use as part of their license."
"Technical support has been good."
"The most valuable feature of Anaplan is machine learning. The solution is constantly evolving from feedback. Additionally, there is a wide range of training material online."
"Anaplan offers flexibility in building different options within the platform."
"It's simple to use with a lot of functions."
"It's highly flexible. If you've got a complex environment with complex calculations, you can build that out. So that's a really good positive."
"Anaplan's strongest feature is that its GUI is very modern and user-friendly."
"The solution makes everything organized for my organization or enterprise. It makes workflows more than clear."
"Microsoft Dynamic 365 has everything we need, like Teams, Outlook, Excel, etc. I do a lot of data visualization, so I work a lot with Power BI. I bring in tables from Oracle and use Power Bi to manipulate and visualize the data. I handle all the stats and track everything that goes in and out of the company. We use all the modules, but I work primarily with Power BI, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams. They are all equally important and work together."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is using the Excel sheets on Chrome and other applications."
"I have found the flexibility to be very valuable. It's highly flexible, and at least for us, it has been effective. It is also highly functional."
"It is a scalable solution. There are more than 5,000 end users in my organization."
"The most important feature of Microsoft Dynamics NAV is that it lets us centralize all our information so that we don't need to rely on any other software outside of Microsoft."
"It's quite useful for our production line, and it's easy to configure to our requirements."
"The vertical covers all aspects of functionality and integrates easily with the existing Office products."
 

Cons

"There are workspace issues, like the limitation on model sizes."
"The visualization tools in the product are limited in comparison to other reporting tools."
"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 some APIs but it could be made much easier. This would be a large help to us."
"Anaplan is a relatively expensive piece of software."
"One key area of improvement is pricing."
"The negative is that the higher the flexibility, the higher is the complexity. That can act against you as a negative because it does require a model builder or a coder/developer."
"The dashboard could be better. Because within a dashboard or report, you have to do a lot of scrolling. You need to scroll down because the table doesn't fit in a single view. That's why even the users aren't happy with that kind of user experience. They need to scroll to see all the data, and it could be better if it fits in just one page. That way, you can see everything. In the next release, I want automation that's connected to Anaplan. For example, to load master data from SAP to Anaplan. I don't know if this already exists, but a log where you can see the progress and see if there's an error will also help. It would be better to give you the error message, for example, if there is an error within the automated process importing to Anaplan."
"It would be nice if the solution offered better extensions."
"Customization and costs could be improved."
"The solution's event management can be improved."
"Microsoft Dynamics NAV will be replaced with Office 365 in the future."
"I would like a more modular and user-friendly interface."
"Microsoft Dynamics NAV could be improved in terms of exporting income statements and balance sheets. Currently, there is a feature, but you can only have the last three years. I spent some time trying to improve the KPI portion that exports the data, that already calculates the sub forms or subtotals, but they weren't able to break that up into different dimensions. They've now managed to crowd the separate table and you can export that, but it's only for the last three years. So, they could improve this solution by getting the chart of accounts or the account schedules to be exported, where you can go further than just three years with it."
"In Thailand, the support here could be better. The process to get an answer is too long."
"If Microsoft made some of the security setups a little easier to work with, that would be a significant improvement. The warehouse management features could also use some work. We had to buy third-party software to make NAV's warehouse management and security more usable and functional."
"The solution must provide more AI features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Anaplan is a challenge for clients, especially if they don't have an ongoing long-term use case for it. It's a $50,000 licensing fee just to get started. Clients need a strong business case to switch from Excel to Anaplan. But if clients have used something similar in the past, such as Hyperion or other solutions, that's not a factor because they know what to expect."
"A value-for-money product and a very reasonable price compared to competitors like SAP or IBM."
"The entry-level is anywhere from about $30,000 to $50,000 a year, however, it does go up significantly after that depending on the complexity and how much space you're using."
"Anaplan is a bit pricier compared to its competitors - the license costs about $4,000 per user annually."
"This is a yearly subscription. So a customer initially buys a workspace and specifies how much GB they want. The minimum starts at around 30 GB. You can buy multiple workspaces."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"This is an expensive product and if the price were reduced then it would attract more customers."
"The license is a yearly subscription. There are three licensing tiers: the model builder, planner, and the reporting."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"The license changes every year. Sometimes it's for fixed users, and sometimes it's for concurrent users."
"The solution's license is costly compared to other CRM tools."
"The price of the solution could be reduced to improve their offering."
"NAV might be a little pricey for a small or medium-sized company, but all the solutions out there are."
"$80-$100 per license, per month."
"In my opinion, the fees are reasonable."
"You have to pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
30%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are your main use cases for Anaplan?
Anaplan is an industry-leading cloud-based corporate performance management (CPM) platform that combines business planning and analytics in a single solution. It is designed to assist organizations...
Is Board better than Anaplan as a Business Intelligence (BI) solution?
We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simu...
Is Anaplan better than SAP ERP?
There are different aspects of both Anaplan and SAP ERP that I like and dislike. Anaplan improves forecast accuracy and drives up the quality of analytics. Rather than spending all of their time co...
What do you like most about Microsoft Dynamics NAV?
The platform offers a robust and comprehensive cycle for supply chain and inventory management, with features like minimum and maximum settings, dynamic monitoring of inventory levels, and integrat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Dynamics NAV?
The pricing for Dynamics 365 Business Central is reasonable. The value for money is very high.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Dynamics NAV?
There is a need for improvement in consolidation and multi-country master data management.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Dynamics NAV, MS Dynamics NAV
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

HP, ForeScout, DocuSign, EAT, Pandora, Aviva, Intel Security, Zalora
Harris Farm Markets, Mister Spex GmbH, Bounce Foods, Eurofin Services SA, Medica Medizintechnik, Associated Gaskets, Onduline, Sitka Surfboard Corporation, World Animal Protection
Find out what your peers are saying about Anaplan, Oracle, IBM and others in Business Performance Management. Updated: March 2025.
842,651 professionals have used our research since 2012.