Likelihood to Recommend Anaplan revolutionizes the planning process by standardizing it, creating transparency in data, particularly in showcasing results to the management team. By replacing Excel-centric planning methods, Anaplan not only opens the door to handling larger datasets but also enables a more intricate level of data granularity at an accelerated pace. What sets it apart is its capacity to facilitate a seamless collaboration within a cross-functional model, accommodating diverse departments and business functions in a dynamic, real-time environment.
Read full review Qlik Analytics Platform has helped us track turnaround time as well as sales volumes. We can display metrics in a multitude of ways and can then slice it up in even more ways by adding filters. It is nice that you can filter down the data by essentially "Qliking" anywhere to find insights. Qlik Analytics Platform has been extremely beneficial in reducing manual reports. We are able to automate numerous reports in addition to setting up alerts, through Nprinting, that will notify users when certain metrics are hit. For example, if our turnaround time exceeds a certain number, we can alert business stakeholders so they can take a closer look. We can also send notifications to sales representatives when their territories are underperforming.
Read full review Pros Forcing structure and auditability to processes that used to exist in spreadsheets Strong calculation engine that can account for many dimensions Formula Syntax that is not overly complicated and can be learned by the business in order to have ownership of their models internally Read full review Fast setup of analytics report Easy tweaking of build dashboards Perfect integration with other data software Vast possibilities on setting up dashboards Read full review Cons The "new" UX front-end offers a lot of modern and intuitive features, but it lacks the ability to view multiple "tabs" of dashboards and reports. The "classic" dashboard had this feature but now with the UX, you need to be really smart about how to design a single page where the users won't get "lost". Lacks the ability to "wrap text" (similar to excel) and auto-size grid rows Read full review Certainly, it turns out that implementation and data modeling are sometimes complex. There are still many graphic and representation limits that need complex customizations to be overcome. Read full review Likelihood to Renew In any line of work, a tool that is flexible and would allow different departments of your company to easily interact and exchange valuable insights, is highly anticipated and needed. For me, what Anaplan provides to a business, be it a smaller one or an enterprise customer, is an easily scaling, agile planning and modeling platform that can meet almost any need and give a high-end solution to the problems any company faces on a daily basis.
Read full review Usability There is a dependency in this rating - in that I find Anaplan extremely easy to use, but I've spent the necessary time developing a strong understanding of the platform. Once you understand how to use it, the platform is flexible, easy to use, and fun to use.
Read full review Reliability and Availability There are very few outages. Maintenance is scheduled on two or three Saturdays per month, so as not to affect businesses. When there is an outage, users are kept informed of progress to restore the platform and typically this takes no more than an hour. Anaplan customer support is very responsive if we ever have questions about platform issues
Read full review Performance Everything is calculated in memory in the cloud. It's nearly instantaneous updates when you make changes. The only time things get a little slow is when you have a massive model with very intricate calculations...but "slow" for Anaplan is not what I would call "slow" for something like
Hyperion . We used to have
Hyperion calcs that ran for 60 mins before you could use data. The equivalent would be 60 seconds in Anaplan.
Read full review Support Rating 1. Anaplan has separate 24/7 customer support channel to help with queries, 2. Customer Partner from Anaplan to support vendor with their queries like license purchase, use case implementation support, customer advocacy 3. Anaplan Learning Platform to help learning new product features free of cost and Yearly Anaplan connect across globe to share success stories of various companies.
Read full review Customer support is provided through resellers, and finding the right reseller for your context can be a challenge. However our support from our last two resellers/partners has been largely very good. The online community is strong, though obviously doesn't replace having local technical experts working with the product and managing it.
Read full review In-Person Training The in-person training is simply not worth the cost. After a few weeks of playing in Anaplan, I went to the basic training and knew more than the person teaching it. a year down the road, I was the first person to complete the advance training, and again could have been teaching the class better than the person running the session. Spend some time on your own trying out different things and you will get all the understanding you need to be successful.
Read full review Online Training Anaplan training materials are clear, simple, easy to understand and to follow. Visuals are excellent. The vendor is good at updating training materials in a timely manner and encouraging users and administrators to keep coming back to Academy site for refresher courses or new feature courses. I really like their interactive diagrams
Larissa Lowe Director, Sales Operations Business Systems and COE
Read full review Implementation Rating Agile methodology and breaking the work down into sprints was very helpful. Implementation required a deeper dive into our data than expected for the consultants to be able to construct the data model. But once it was in place, the focus on knowledge transfer enabled us to be able to use the product effectively after the team rolled off.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Anaplan is what I would consider a modeling platform. It excels at taking a forecasting or planning process and systematizing it - and allowing for whatever nuances and granularity you need to perform that modeling. It is not positioned as "data collection" platform - which are typically designed to take data uploads from Excel to calculate basic opex and revenue models. It's much more customizable and flexible.
Read full review Qlik is a platform with more scaling ability and functionality compared to PowerBI. PowerBI is the prior step before passing to Qlik, however, Qlik provides more functions and abilities to the business domain unit with better management capabilities for the IT team that set it up. In the end, we implemented Qlik for functionality and scalability.
Read full review Scalability We have managed to leverage Anaplan for financial planning and forecasting across the business. It is now used by almost every department, with more than 50 users (but I know of companies that have hundreds of users) and still the platform is quick and reliable. It is easy to make changes to divisions and departments or add users and apply different user settings - the core part of the model is not affected and end users can continue their work without any disruption
Read full review Return on Investment Speeding up the process of closing and updating the current month forecast Reduced work on the preparation of reports and presentations. We used different Anaplan approaches with varying success, but the overall result was there. It's hard to gauge, but the overall increase in process and algorithm transparency, along with data protection, has given an excellent platform for scaling up the company's processes. Read full review It made our analytics better Dashboards for strategic decisions are changed and setup faster We spend more time on learning the tool than we thought to need Read full review ScreenShots