Anaplan

Score8.5 out of 10

547 Reviews and Ratings

What is Anaplan?

Anaplan is a scenario planning and analysis platform designed to optimize decision-making in complex business environments so that enterprises can outpace their competition and the market. By building connections and collaboration across organizational silos, the Anaplan platform surfaces key insights.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of a preview of the Anaplan login page.

Screenshot of a preview of an Anaplan home page.

Screenshot of a preview of an Anaplan board.

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Screenshot of a preview of the Anaplan login page.

Report-Level Access Control
Report-level access control means that the type of report determines who has access to it.
Category average: 8.8
Financial budgeting
Annual budget for revenue and operating expenses, headcount/compensation, capital expenses, projects, etc.
Category average: 8.7
Role-Based Security Model
Role-based access means that access to data is determined by job or position in the corporation.
Category average: 8.6

Mobile Application
A dedicated app for iOS and/or Android.
Category average: 6.7
Pixel Perfect reports
Pixel Perfect reports are highly-formatted reports with graphics and ability to preview the report before printing.
Category average: 7.5
Predictive Analytics
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.
Category average: 7.6

#1 most frequent

Manufacturing

71.4%

10 installations of 14

“Sales cycle which happens yearly has seen productivity gains not requiring a huge team to maintain and considerably reduced the time to close from 6 months to a few weeks.”
— Senior Solution Architect, GE Healthcare (5001-10,000 employees)

#2 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

7.1%

1 installation of 14

“We have a customer in Foods Industry got their budgeting cycle reduced from 3 months to 1 month”
— Senior Consultant, Fidenda (11-50 employees)

#3 most frequent

Transportation and Warehousing

7.1%

1 installation of 14

Patrick Desmond

Manager at Cervello, a Kearney Company (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Anaplan is used as a solution to a myriad of pain points that exist within a firm's corporate planning cycles. The tool is extremely flexible and allows organizations to obtain forecasts and outlooks for almost anything in a much more timely, accurate, and detailed manner than old processes such as handing off excel spreadsheets around and organization to be updated. Anaplan is also much less error-prone since the manual manipulation of data is drastically reduced when implemented properly. Multiple-use cases have been addressed during my time from Biopharma, Technology, Manufacturing, Demand Planning, Workforce Planning, Revenue planning, all across the use case spectrum. These cases have been addressed effectively as well leading to major reductions in the effort it takes for an Anaplan customer to come up with a forecast.

Pros

Connectivity with other systems
Acting as a single source of truth for data
Powerful, Anaplan's calculation is very fast compared to a lot of legacy systems
Integrated Business Planning among entire organizations

Cons

Anaplan has improved drastically on the reporting front. Some more updates that would be ideal would be to allow some of the flexibility within the excel add in/fluence into the App pages themselves
UX Changes such as on a worksheet the page selector at the top has to be driven by the primary grid which might be at a lower level and you are forced to use this.
Everything is custom so it can be quite tedious to build if you're not experienced.

Most Important Features

A good looking and slick in my opinion UX
Ease of use
Ability to do pretty much anything

Return on Investment

Anaplan has been positive. On every project I've worked on, a lot of people on the customer side have been promoted who have worked on projects with me
Every project has reduced the time it takes for a customer to compile what they need by a significant amount
More free time for end-users to focus on more important tasks because Anaplan takes out the leg work in calculating a lot of the information they require for forecasting purposes

Usability

Other Software Used

Alteryx Platform

Mark Tregub

Senior Manager in Professional Services at Keyrus EPM APAC (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it internally for our forecasting & budgeting and we implement it for our clients for a wide range of use-cases, including supply chain, TPM, FP&A, consolidation, pricing, and more, across all industries.

Pros

Collaboration
Forecasting
Flexibility
Scenarios/what-if

Cons

The flexibility can be a risk (and a strength)

Return on Investment

We often see budget cycles reduced by 50% or more
Collaboration is made easier

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Workiva and Pigment

Other Software Used

Workiva, Microsoft Excel

Verified User

Employee (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Anaplan helps eliminate the offline files created by different teams during the financial planning process. The result is that users have one source of truth with the real-time view, so there are not multiple versions of different files flowing from one team/user to another. Another benefit is that the process is unified based on the previously defined and agreed logic, and everybody follows the same steps and calculations. This helps to build more precise and suitable plans based on the same sources in a predefined timeline.

Pros

Real-time collaboration
User friendly interface
Easy developoment
Flexibility
Scalability

Cons

Missing versioning
Lack of partial deployment
Multi-filtering
Long rollback times

Return on Investment

Faster planning process
One source of truth
Real-time collaboration
In-house implementation and updates
More precise and transparent planning

Usability

Other Software Used

Microsoft Power BI

Verified User

Employee in Finance and Accounting (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Anaplan for a variety of finance use cases, including budgeting, management reporting, and long-range planning. One example of a problem Anaplan addressed was numerous excel files that were difficult to keep consistent in [the] process or roll up to summary reporting in a timely manner. Anaplan's real-time nature and cloud-based dashboards that can be used across the department keep everyone on the same page and with updated information.

Pros

Real-time updates - An entry on one dashboard will automatically flow to other relevant areas of the model
Continuous improvement of the product based on feedback from customers
Ease of use for both end users and model builders

Cons

The new UX does not handle transaction drill-downs the same as the classic UX and should be brought to parity with the old setup.
The system can lock for several minutes for minor errors from a model builder, such as writing a true/false formula without updating the format to boolean.

Most Important Features

Flexibility - We can make changes in-house based on changing business needs
Real-time updates
Customization to handle our unique needs

Return on Investment

Each dashboard often saves hours of work per week or month for the individuals that used to have to recreate such dashboards manually on a recurring basis.
The budget window has reduced significantly because it is easier to plan and roll up results across our account and organization hierarchy.
We were able to move to more metric-based planning, requiring less manual work and improving accuracy.

Other Software Used

Workday Human Capital Management

Verified User

Consultant (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My company uses Anaplan to achieve accurate workforce planning and forecasting. As a consultancy, we need to be able to plan for both current and future projects with the ability to move around resources with different skill sets and be adaptable when project extend or end early. This is not only important for staffing, but for also achieving and accurate financial forecast for our company. The flexibility of Anaplan allows our planning to be adaptable and accurate.

Pros

Flexibility: Any business case can be tackled in the tool (FPA, SPM, WFP)
Adaptability: You can align to changing business needs
Reporting: Different audiences (Exec board vs. boots on the ground planners) can get the reports they need

Cons

Long time to setup: When building from scratch, there is a learning curve
Sharing data between models can be difficult, even with ADO
Hierarchy structure needs clean data and can be very rigid

Return on Investment

Has helped people update resource forecasts on time
Gives visibility to project managers on resource availability
Clear ownership of accounts and structure of territories for sales rep

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Xactly Commission Expense Accounting and NetSuite ERP

Other Software Used

Salesforce CRM Analytics, Emburse Nexonia

Anaplan

What is Anaplan?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Key Features

Top Performing Features

Report-Level Access Control

Financial budgeting

Role-Based Security Model

Areas for Improvement

Mobile Application

Pixel Perfect reports

Predictive Analytics

Most Frequent Users

Manufacturing

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Transportation and Warehousing

Reviews

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Most Important Features

Return on Investment

Usability

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Return on Investment

Usability

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Most Important Features

Return on Investment

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

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