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
Anaplan LimitedExternal reviews
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Anaplan Enhancing S&OP Performance and Efficiency in Athletic Apparel Company
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan strong focus on customer success makes achieving project goals easier. With its high-quality training resources and supportive community, customers get to learn not just how to use it but also to maximize the product’s potential. Also, Anaplan continuously delivers new features and functionalities, ensuring the product remains relevant and effective in achieving the objectives.
What do you dislike about the product?
Unplanned system downtime significantly affects a use case that requires frequent daily updates.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
As a retail company, Anaplan helps us plan the timing, location, duration, and pricing of a product to achieve target revenue.
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
Innovation is slowing, but users are still confident in the tool.
What do you like best about the product?
The user experience and confidence in the data management and planning capabilities of the tool highlight the most important features of Anaplan. Anaplan is a trusted tool in the EPM space.
What do you dislike about the product?
Anaplan's innovation has not kept up to pace with other tools in the market, and the drawbacks of the tool like sparsity and toaster for model builders are no longer acceptable.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Anaplan takes away the multiple spreadsheets and gets everyone in a tool to create a connected planning environment. Realistically, the tool functions to move everyone out of excel. On top of that, there are some quality user experience elements that enhance the planning process and make things like driver based planning more attainable for smaller FP&A functions.
A powerful platform with some minor gaps to Address
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan is an excellent EPM tool for business process planning. Its computing power allows you to produce real-time simulations of several scenarios based on complex sets of hypotheses defined for and by the business.
Data processing is comprehensive, covering a wide range of business needs through a large number of native functions and formulas.
A large number of use cases can be modelled.
The user experience is simple to set up, pleasant to use and allows a large number of graphical displays.
Data processing is comprehensive, covering a wide range of business needs through a large number of native functions and formulas.
A large number of use cases can be modelled.
The user experience is simple to set up, pleasant to use and allows a large number of graphical displays.
What do you dislike about the product?
Despite its many strengths, Anaplan could benefit from better rendering tools for modelbuilders to manage complex models. The lack of a ‘saved views’ parameter-setting page, similar to the ‘lineItem’ page, can lead to a loss of time when analysing complex models.
There is also not easy to find indication of the publication of modules, and this information could be needed for a detailed analysis, particularly in the case of models with a very large number of pages in their app.
These few elements could improve the modelling experience.
There is also not easy to find indication of the publication of modules, and this information could be needed for a detailed analysis, particularly in the case of models with a very large number of pages in their app.
These few elements could improve the modelling experience.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Before using this EPM tool, the exchange file formats differed depending on who was involved. The business process was neither clear nor fluid.
Implementing a management system with Anaplan means more accurate decision-making, thanks to real-time scenario simulation, more reliable results, a single, well-defined process for everyone involved in the business, and a single, reliable data source.
Implementing a management system with Anaplan means more accurate decision-making, thanks to real-time scenario simulation, more reliable results, a single, well-defined process for everyone involved in the business, and a single, reliable data source.
Anaplan for Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan is an easy-to-use SaaS platform with global coverage. Over the last 10 years, they have adopted the best-in-class funcitonalities on their platform to rival other big players in the EPM space such as Oracle, SAP and TM1. It is used for enterprise wide planning and improving collaboration among various teams within an organisation from finance to sales, HR, marketing, tax, operations and treasury to name a few. The platform uses simple drag and drop functionality along with excel-like scripting to build models and front-end pages, resulting in quicker adoption times for both end-users and new model builders and making implementation a breeze. The Anaplan REST API can be leveraged to connect the system to other existing ERPs and master data source system to ensure integrity of data across an enterprise.
What do you dislike about the product?
While Anaplan has recently produced some exceptional functionalities like geo-mapping and workflow, and has a strong roadmap with GenAI coming into the picture soon, a lot of these capabilities (such as Workflow, or the new Polaris engine) come at an additional cost to customers. A lot of times customers are discouraged from using these features due to the additional price tag. This prevents consultants and partners like us from leveraging the full power of Anaplan to implement for the customer. However, the minimum/basic features that come with an enterprise licence are sufficient for a great start to the Anaplan journey.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Anaplan solves a wide array of problems including but not limited to: better data integrity, improved collaboration, scenario planning, faster forecasting cycles. Even though we are a partner/consultant, we also use Anaplan internally for sales perfomance management, financial budgeting/forecasting and workforce planning. Adopting Anaplan has made the before-mentioned processes significantly faster and more reliable. I have also implemented supply-chain use cases for customers, which have resulted in better communication with their suppliers, reduced cost through optimised inventory and better collaboration across the enterprise.
Driving Connected Planning
What do you like best about the product?
The biggest Strength of Anaplan is its ability to connect disparate planning processes and enhance planning rigor, transparency, and tracability.
What do you dislike about the product?
The biggest weakness of Anaplan is the lack of data integration and data wrangling options without purchasing an add-on license for their data orchecstrator tool or acquiring a third party ETL tool with connectors to Anaplan. This limitation results in increased time-to-value and decreased overall value as a result of the additional monetary and time investment.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Anaplan is our primary planning tool for all budgeting and forecasting cycles and the source of truth for all planning data. Anaplan centralizes our revenue planning, HR planning, and OpEx plans for budget and in year forecasting and facilitates our pro-forma balance sheet and cash flow statements.
Real-time data integration enhances operational efficiency and flexibility
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Anaplan offers flexibility in building different options within the platform. The real-time data integration feature allows me to immediately see the impact of changes made in the model without waiting for a process to run. This has been instrumental in enhancing operational efficiency.
What needs improvement?
Anaplan could enhance its user interface by including a more user-friendly API. Improving the deployment process to make it less complex and easier to manage is another area for potential enhancement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Anaplan for ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Anaplan is absolutely stable, with a stability rating of nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Anaplan is a scalable product, especially when managed with cost considerations. There are options to make it more scalable.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support from Anaplan is responsive and helpful, with a customer service rating of nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before Anaplan, I worked with SQL databases and VBA. I switched to Anaplan because of its power and potential as a platform, offering similar functionalities to Excel and VBA but with much more capability.
What about the implementation team?
I have a junior colleague working with me on maintenance tasks for Anaplan.
What was our ROI?
It is difficult to quantitatively assess the ROI since it involves evaluating time saved from transitioning processes to Anaplan. However, the platform allows for significant operational efficiencies.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the licensing cost for Anaplan as a seven to eight, making it affordable.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend Anaplan due to the flexibility it provides for building modules and the various options available within the platform.
Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Anaplan is one of the best
What do you like best about the product?
Anaplan provides greater flexibility in model building, as well as high computation speed.
What do you dislike about the product?
The price is why companies tend not to increase the number of licenses
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The entire forecasting process was rebuilt with new logic in Analpan, this helped to increase the granularity of planning and automate most processes, which significantly increased the speed and accuracy of forecasting
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