Anaplan
Anaplan, IncExternal reviews
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Anaplan: Connected Planning For The Enterprise
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan is a great connected planning tool that can break down silos between different teams, enable version control for planning, and reduce the amount of time it takes to plan through automation of datasets & calculations, predictive AI & through multi-dimensional planning
What do you dislike about the product?
Anaplan has some challenges when it comes to concurrency for loading datasets, as well as with size when handling large quantities of data
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Anaplan enables teams to plan in real time, it allows for complex business rules to be applied within the platform, and it enables version control while being on a cloud based solution. Anaplan also has AI capabilities to enable planning using predictive AI with PlanIQ
Anaplan: Balancing Agility and Complexity
What do you like best about the product?
Modeling Flexibility: Anaplan allows handle complex models with ease and it's multidimensional modeling capabilities allow for scenario planning and forecasting which accommodates various business needs in the EPM ecosystem.
Real-Time Data Updates: The platform supports real-time data integration with it's need in house integration system called Anaplan Data Orchestrator (ADO) which enables quick decision-making. This feature allows the system to be updated with latest data from your various legacy system within seconds, enhancing the planning experience and also collaboration across teams.
User-Friendly Interface: With the onset of New UX a few years ago, Anaplan's user experience allows easy navigation, even for users without extensive technical expertise. It allows for users to easily get accustomed to the system encouraging them to use the system.
Scalability: Building on the "Honeycomb" idea of Anaplan, the free design within Anaplan allows for clients to scale their small models to big implementations with ease, taking different use cases within a single Anaplan umbrella.
Collaboration Tools: Built-in collaboration features like comments notification, workflows etc. promote seamless communication within different teams working on the model. It fosters the idea of collaboration among different teams prompting better planning and forecasting exercises.
Real-Time Data Updates: The platform supports real-time data integration with it's need in house integration system called Anaplan Data Orchestrator (ADO) which enables quick decision-making. This feature allows the system to be updated with latest data from your various legacy system within seconds, enhancing the planning experience and also collaboration across teams.
User-Friendly Interface: With the onset of New UX a few years ago, Anaplan's user experience allows easy navigation, even for users without extensive technical expertise. It allows for users to easily get accustomed to the system encouraging them to use the system.
Scalability: Building on the "Honeycomb" idea of Anaplan, the free design within Anaplan allows for clients to scale their small models to big implementations with ease, taking different use cases within a single Anaplan umbrella.
Collaboration Tools: Built-in collaboration features like comments notification, workflows etc. promote seamless communication within different teams working on the model. It fosters the idea of collaboration among different teams prompting better planning and forecasting exercises.
What do you dislike about the product?
Cost: Despite it's amazing feature, Anaplan does come with a good price tag. The new bundle costing method might help out large scale enterprises to adopt Anaplan, it will remain out of each for a number of smaller organizations with limited budgets and resources.
Performance Issues: Even though Anaplan very much allows large scale scalability, it can have a few performance issues specially when working with large datasets. New calculation engine called "Polaris" is now available for clients to tackle some of these issues, but it does require good model building to ensure justification of using the Polaris engine.
Performance Issues: Even though Anaplan very much allows large scale scalability, it can have a few performance issues specially when working with large datasets. New calculation engine called "Polaris" is now available for clients to tackle some of these issues, but it does require good model building to ensure justification of using the Polaris engine.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Agility in Decision-Making: With real time data integrations using ADO, fast calculations and real time reports allows organizations to be agile with their decision making and make room for swift adjustments to plan based on the market conditions and updated budgets. This ability comes in handy special in a world like today with multiple economic and political situations which pivot every few days.
Scenario Analysis and Forecasting: As Anaplan allows detailed scenario planning, planners have the ability to play out various scenarios, playing with wide range of planning assumptions - allowing organizations to be agile with their plans and make informed business decisions in line with their strategic objectives.
Collaboration Across Teams: Having seen Anaplan in action within my own organization, I can see how well Anaplan allows collaboration among various teams and business units which wouldn't easily collaborate on some of the key decisions. This allows break down silos and contributes to a shared vision.
Scenario Analysis and Forecasting: As Anaplan allows detailed scenario planning, planners have the ability to play out various scenarios, playing with wide range of planning assumptions - allowing organizations to be agile with their plans and make informed business decisions in line with their strategic objectives.
Collaboration Across Teams: Having seen Anaplan in action within my own organization, I can see how well Anaplan allows collaboration among various teams and business units which wouldn't easily collaborate on some of the key decisions. This allows break down silos and contributes to a shared vision.
Connected planning and rapid calculations streamline financial forecasting
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Anaplan's connected planning feature is its most valuable aspect, allowing for seamless financial planning, HR planning, and updates. The in-memory engine ensures super quick calculations without delays for data refreshes. Recent developments in dashboarding and other functionalities enhance the product greatly, making it an outstanding tool for current needs.
What needs improvement?
There are minor improvements needed on the dashboarding side and with the formulas, but no significant issues. Advanced planning with AI, machine learning, and related plugins would be great to see in the future.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Anaplan for more than six or seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate scalability between six and seven. Anaplan had issues before, but the new Polaris engine solves them, although its implementation is more challenging compared to the Classic engine.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support from Anaplan is amazing, with a dedicated team to assist in case of any issues.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
There are several competitors, but Anaplan differentiates itself with its unique in-memory calculation engine and other features that enhance its functionality.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very simple. You just need a workspace license, username, and password. There's no need for a separate setup.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is slightly on the premium side, but I do not have detailed knowledge about the exact licensing structure.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Anaplan eight out of ten in general. While the product is mainly for medium and enterprise-level companies, it may be too costly for smaller ones. Overall, I recommend Anaplan to other users. I would rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.
Product Review
What do you like best about the product?
It relatively easy to learn and intuitive to use.
What do you dislike about the product?
The occasional availability of the models and the platform compare to other cloud services.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It allows for data integration with databases, allows for better control of formulas, reduces number of errors compare to old spreadsheet process. It speeds up decision making due to automating manual tasks.
High Flexibility＆High Performance
What do you like best about the product?
High flexibility
Anaplan's high flexibility allows it to replace most of the work done in Excel. It is like writing code.
High Performance
Anaplan can handle huge amounts of data that Excel and spreadsheets cannot handle. If designed well, there is no waiting time.
Quick development
Since a wide variety of components such as functions, batch processing, simple ELT, and AI functions are provided in advance, the system can be developed much faster than if you had to write code from scratch.
Anaplan's high flexibility allows it to replace most of the work done in Excel. It is like writing code.
High Performance
Anaplan can handle huge amounts of data that Excel and spreadsheets cannot handle. If designed well, there is no waiting time.
Quick development
Since a wide variety of components such as functions, batch processing, simple ELT, and AI functions are provided in advance, the system can be developed much faster than if you had to write code from scratch.
What do you dislike about the product?
Fewer graphs
While we already have simple graphs that are commonly used, in rare cases we are unable to meet our client's needs due to graph limitations.
While we already have simple graphs that are commonly used, in rare cases we are unable to meet our client's needs due to graph limitations.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It consolidates data siloed by planning work done in Excel into one single source of truth. And it will rapidly accelerate the speed of your business.
A product that does many use cases well! Flexible modeling for endless Oppritunity
What do you like best about the product?
I like Anaplan is flexible in it's modeling and does not hold you to 1 use case.
This is very valuable to bring to a firm and have endless growth with the tool.
The tool is relatively easy to learn and can be picked up my anyone.
This is very valuable to bring to a firm and have endless growth with the tool.
The tool is relatively easy to learn and can be picked up my anyone.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some aspects of the developer experience could be improved. Knowing what line items are used for what actions could be improved. Also, cloudworks having a snowflake connection would help.
"Toastering" of the model when a bad formula is inputted is very aggravating for users.
"Toastering" of the model when a bad formula is inputted is very aggravating for users.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Anaplan real time design is very helpful for our business. They can input their assumptions and see in real time the impact of their plans. This makes it so the tool can always be used as a conversation piece.
Anaplan was able to help allocation use cases, where we didn't previously have a tool to help us with completing large allocations. Users can assign drivers and see the impact in real time, where user's can truly "integrate easily on creating their allocated financials.
Anaplan allows for data to be exported to Power BI, which is helpful for storing data and merging with other data sources in a data lake.
Anaplan was able to help allocation use cases, where we didn't previously have a tool to help us with completing large allocations. Users can assign drivers and see the impact in real time, where user's can truly "integrate easily on creating their allocated financials.
Anaplan allows for data to be exported to Power BI, which is helpful for storing data and merging with other data sources in a data lake.
Anaplan continues to improve for Sales Planning
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan's platform continues to evolve in an incredible way. Just in the last 18 months, the following has released: app native workflow, build in data management, AI, brand new tech that builds models for you ("T&Q app"). It's changing what you expect from an EPM tool
What do you dislike about the product?
Anaplan's pricing can be confusing and opaque. This is due to an evolving platform, technology, and GTM model. Customers from just 3 years ago may have completely different expectations on pricing and that can cause friction. However, the GTM model had to change - the platform, which did not drastically change from 2014-2022, has received an incredible overhaul in terms of technical functionality, and old pricing models did no capture that at all.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I will specifically answer this question regarding the territory and quota (T&Q) use case. T&Q represents a widespread, needed-everywhere planning problem but it doesn't have any of its own big software players. The reason is that Anaplan is so well-suited to the use case, that you'd waste your time trying to create a bespoke competitor. And Anaplan's offering is only strengthening.
T&Q has the hallmarks needs of planning: nuanced, many disparate data sets, very large data sets, operational and financial considerations, many distributed stakeholders, and consistent collaboration. Anaplan checks each of those boxes an we see it at our customers. Our customers tell us they love a prescriptive approach that they still can own (the new T&Q app comes out of the box), where they can merge what they love about their current process with the best-in-class they need. These streamlined T&Q apps help our customers create fairer territories with better account scoring, build better quotas to set the right incentives and reach the right attainment curve, and do it all significantly faster. Our happiest customer now deploys territories and quota before the yera begins when it previously took them until 6 weeks into Q1.
T&Q has the hallmarks needs of planning: nuanced, many disparate data sets, very large data sets, operational and financial considerations, many distributed stakeholders, and consistent collaboration. Anaplan checks each of those boxes an we see it at our customers. Our customers tell us they love a prescriptive approach that they still can own (the new T&Q app comes out of the box), where they can merge what they love about their current process with the best-in-class they need. These streamlined T&Q apps help our customers create fairer territories with better account scoring, build better quotas to set the right incentives and reach the right attainment curve, and do it all significantly faster. Our happiest customer now deploys territories and quota before the yera begins when it previously took them until 6 weeks into Q1.
Anaplan is a flexible tool that is advancing with new platform capabilities
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan is a great tool for multiple types of use cases. I think ALM is a really great aspect of Anaplan. I found it was instrumental in a particularly complex use case. Fluence has also been a great addition to the platform and has a lot of potential to add value to clients.
What do you dislike about the product?
How the standard model deals with sparsity can be particularly difficult for performance in complex models.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It's solving standardization within an organization. Its an easy tool for business users to use. And with a COE it enables an org to build so much more.
Versatility and ease of use is key
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan allows the "business" to own the toold rather than IT. This allows areas like finance and sales to make changes and updates to the logic without having to wait for IT to make the changes. Plus, the changes are easy becasue the "logic" is behaves in the same way as other programs used by the business. Anaplan also allows the business to design the tool to cater to the specific needs of the business such as terminoly and allowing for unique processes.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are quite a few ways to connect data to Anaplan, but not always a direct connection. However, Anaplan is constantly evolving as well.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Anaplan can be used as a tool to centralize many processes. Each department within a business can create a process in Anaplan that fits their specific needs while also being able to aggregate the results into a summary level (such as corporate planning) all within the same tool with real live connectivity.
Do it all planning platform
What do you like best about the product?
The modular structure - allowing for different dimensions to be used in different areas of the model which can enhance user experience.
What do you dislike about the product?
The modular structure significantly limits the reporting. Customers coming off of Hyperion with the smartview add-in struggle replicating the adhoc reporting capability ie using essbase datamodel and smartviews drag and drop pulls. There needs to be a option with fluence where customers can get a data model and not pay extra.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It has significantly helped customers modernize their planning process - move off of inefficient and complex excel models
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