My client is using Anaplan for budgeting and planning purposes. They execute their budgeting and planning processes by utilizing this tool.
Anaplan
Anaplan, IncExternal reviews
425 reviews
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Feature-Rich and Responsive, But UX Needs Modernization
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan has added a ton of features over the last year and seems like they really are listening to feedback. Workflow has improved immensely. The new calculation engine addresses major concerns of the past version. And now with combined grids, that solves for one of the largest headaches in development.
What do you dislike about the product?
A key dislike of the platform - at times the UX pages can look clunky and old fashioned. Especially when compared to some competitors solutions from best in class reporting tools like Tableau.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Anaplan can solve for tons of problems - lately I've used for budget forecasting, FP&A, SaaS revenue and Capacity Planning
Flexible Scenario Planning and Multi-Dimensional Analysis—All Features Impress
What do you like best about the product?
The scenario-based planning and multi-dimensionality features stand out to me. They provide a flexible approach to planning, allowing for a more comprehensive analysis of different possibilities and outcomes.
What do you dislike about the product?
So far, I haven't found anything to dislike, as I enjoy all of its features.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Scenario planning is a useful approach for anticipating possible future developments and preparing strategies accordingly. It helps me think through different outcomes and make more informed decisions. I find it valuable for both personal and professional planning, as it encourages flexibility and readiness for change.
Flexible, User-Friendly with Excellent Support
What do you like best about the product?
I love Anaplan's flexibility and ease of use, especially its cloud-based, low-code platform that allows for intuitive navigation. The customer support is fantastic and responsive. The advanced features and continuous updates keep up with market demands, ensuring seamless user experiences. Anaplan's ability to solve problems by providing real-time data integration and advanced security is exceptional. The scenario-based modeling for forecasting, budgeting, and planning is highly useful for clients.
What do you dislike about the product?
I would like to see a place where I can test all the formulas before deploying them. This would make things more efficient for model builders. Additionally, I feel that the UX and other pages of Anaplan could be more intuitive. Another area for improvement is being able to model without worrying about model size and workspace size. Addressing these issues could enhance the overall user experience and make it easier to manage models.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I find Anaplan resolves data disconnect by bringing teams together on a single platform, reducing errors and enhancing collaboration. It's intuitive and easy to use, facilitating real-time data integration and advanced forecasting, which our clients find particularly beneficial.
Anaplan as a flexible planning tool
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan is a tool that is easy to use, not only for end users but also for developers building planning applications. The structure, building blocks, and user-friendly ("Excel-like") modeling interface make this tool suitable for a wide range of use cases, from financial forecasting and sales performance to supply chain. One tool enables the chaining of different areas, creating a unified environment with real-time collaboration that allows end users to view the latest updates made within the team or by other teams.
What do you dislike about the product?
The tool lacks some essential features that could help developers and users build and utilize the tool more effectively and fully leverage its potential. Lack of versioning, partial promotions, multifilter, or long rollback times are some of the most missing features.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
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.
A very powerful platform with data integration and hierarchical capabilities.
What do you like best about the product?
Low code knowledge is required to maintain the models. On-cloud platform which enables real-time data displayed as you plan your scenarios.
What do you dislike about the product?
Handling sparse data and model performance when solution gets too complex.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The platform helped in ensuring that there is a standardized way of planning across the organization. It also provides a streamlined approach in managing approval workflows.
Real-time insights using Anaplan
What do you like best about the product?
Real-time connected planning helps to eliminate silos allowing for data driven decision making. Easily scalable and auditable gives us confidence our data is safe and secure.
What do you dislike about the product?
Limited visualisations mean other reporting tools are usually required.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Anaplan has enabled the business to easily consolidate data from multiple units to give real-time data to decision makers
Good adaptive tool for supply chain
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan is easy to use. It can be customized to your business and manufacturing model. What I liked best was it's ability to scenario plan supply chain outcomes based on our requirements .
What do you dislike about the product?
I would like Anaplan to integrate high level analytics into the software so it can be used without having to use other tools.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Other legacy tools were complicated to integrate and use especially for a small and meduim scale industry. Anaplan worked perfectly for our business needs and was easy to use and maintain history.
Planning tool that does most of it well
What do you like best about the product?
With a solid foundation of data, integrations, financial models, the tool can be as flexible as the company needs. The code is easy to understand and easily built out with the proper talent (either in house or contracted). Users do not need extensive architecture knowledge to stand up models and then connect the pipes together. This allows teams to trial and error fairly quickly to build new use cases. The ability to manage a large portion of the infrastructure within the function and outside of IT is also very appealing. Typically, finance functions rely on IT to perform regular tasks and wait for results - with Anaplan, a lot of those activities can remain with the business. There are a variety of integration tools available as well as native tooling that can support an enterprise.
What do you dislike about the product?
Without major talent, the models can quickly go awry and be poorly designed. Though the functionality may work, it might be less performant or create complexities when trying to adjust existing logic. Talent is also a large factor when considering this tool as it requires either building a team in house or contracting out. With contractors, you run the risk of knowledge gaps & lack of documentation for proprietary processes. To facilitate the implementation phase, business owners need to actively participate and devote a large number of hours to support the build. This is expensive to manage with larger organizations and could be less likely with smaller organizations. On the support side, you may contract out activities but there is a ramp up time that companies need to factor in (though this is true with most tools). The pricing model is quickly evolving to a subscription based model (again not uncommon amongst most SaaS platforms these days). Customer support is fairly basic and can be escalated, but is cumbersome during critical periods.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
FP&A and close use cases at the moment, but are exploring additional use cases as we grow. As a global enterprise, we have performed several M&A activities that resulted in many planning processes & Excel-based packages. The tool consolidates all activity into 1 tool and eases corporate's requirement for consolidations. The tool also acts as the single source of truth for the forecast/budget and allows finance teams globally to perform their close reconciliations. There is a large automation piece factored in so users do not need to update Excel sheets manually every period or forecast cycle. This is a major time saver and resolves most user errors when managing manual calculations. The tool also consolidates master data so all teams operate on 1 standard and prevents the misstatement of KPIs based on segregated hierarchies. Overall, Anaplan is the starting point to create consistency and flexibility in how we manage our FP&A processes.
Cloud technology enhances budgeting and reporting with intuitive features
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Both Hyperion and Anaplan serve the same purpose for budgeting and planning, but Anaplan is cloud-based. Previously, my client was using Oracle Hyperion Planning and Essbase, which was on-premises. Anaplan, being a cloud-based platform, allows customers to adapt easily. It is easier to enter data, load data, and develop reports compared to Hyperion.
In Anaplan, once you create a system, the end user can utilize the reports immediately. Users can create UX pages with boards and worksheets. The boards contain different cards such as bar cards, chart cards, map cards, KPI cards, and field cards. These cards are used for high-level reports and top-level management reporting. For plant-wise location, worksheets can be created for analysis purposes, analyzing data at the plant level, while reports are used for top-level purposes.
The board functionality works similarly to a dashboard, where users can add different cards. Users can drag data and add chart cards, field cards, map cards, and KPI cards to a single board.
Anaplan can handle large sets of data and models within its ecosystem. Data volume is not an issue for the platform.
What needs improvement?
The tool is very effective from a user perspective, providing good analysis and reporting capabilities. It is an excellent tool for financial planning, supply chain planning, and territory and quota planning.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have a total of 3.5 years of experience in Anaplan.
How are customer service and support?
I provide technical support for clients but have not had experience contacting Anaplan's technical support directly.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The setup of Anaplan is very straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Currently, Anaplan is more expensive compared to other tools. This pricing is based on the tool's demands. However, I believe the price might decrease after some time.
What other advice do I have?
I previously worked with Hyperion Essbase and Hyperion Planning from Oracle, and now I work with Anaplan technology.
I provide technical support to users for security-related issues, creating new administration roles, and workflow management. We assist with security provisioning, user creation, workflow issues, and technical business logic modifications. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Anaplan a 9.
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Anaplan For Financial Planning and Forecasting
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan is robust and powerful modeling tool that promotes collaboration across various teams.
What do you dislike about the product?
Space constraint. UX formatting can be improved
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Automating the monthly forecasting process and providing leadership with faster insights
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