Anaplan Reviews

There are four or five main use cases. One is for P&L. It's for profit and loss planning forecast and actuarial reporting. We also use it for balance sheet reporting. And then I have what is connected to payroll and HR. I have a lot of business cases and allocations by product, by customers, et cetera, as well.

We are able to create and build the yearly budget and the yearly focus. It allows for a direct saving of human capital.

The modeling part of Anaplan, which is a model builder in which you can build whatever you want, has been great. There is no limit. The sky is the limit with Anaplan.

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

The solution scales well.

We have found the product to be very stable. 

The limit today is in the ability for business people to describe what they actually need. I don't see any need for improvement on Anaplan's side. The limit is within the people who use it and not the product itself. 

It's not easy to test the Anaplan processes completely, as it's so large, that it is covered by Anaplan. It's quite difficult to test everything, including all the business rules all the business cases. It requires a lot of data to be able to test everything because it's so big. When you implement the accounting software you just have to test two devices and just two customers invoices, two customers, and then you know it works fine. However, when you implement Anaplan on the scale on which it is implemented, it is difficult to test every single business case.

The ability of the end-users to manage the software is due to the fact that it becomes so sophisticated. On top of that, there are so many business rules to set up in the system that as a business user it's hard to gauge what they're doing and it's possible to get lost.

The advantages of Anaplan are its weakness. You can set up whatever you want, however, it tends to be really big, and the users have to be very competent, very efficient, and have to know what they need to do to use Anaplan. There needs to be a good understanding of the solution. When the user was working on Excel, due to the fact that Excel is very small and it's very limited, a user can understand everything. With Anaplan, the scope is so wider, which makes it difficult for the average user to manage and drive the process. Some users are very skilled. They have good knowledge of what they're doing. Others are not. It will become difficult for them.  

I'd like to see the ability to print papers, as it's not easy to do so right now. I know that we are in August and by the end of August Anaplan will release new features about reporting. However, in France, we are quite old-fashioned people. A lot of clients like to have a sheet of paper - something printed. That's not easy on Anaplan. Anaplan is designed to be worked on from a screen, on a laptop, on a smartphone. It's not designed to allow a person to print a sheet of paper with data.

I've worked with the solution for more than ten years. 

The solution is very stable and very reliable. there's no doubt about that. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

I have never met a limit in Anaplan as far as scalability is concerned. I understand from a certain point of view that there is a limit. However, with my daily customers, for 10 years now, since it's more than 10 years that I've been working on it, I have never met any limits as far as scalability is concerned.

I have various clients on the solution, and their users range from just five to up to 100 people in the sales area. 

I would say in the first year clients are using perhaps two or three percent of the company are using Anaplan. The second-year is the same. By the third or fourth year, they grow and up to 10% of the company will use it. Within six or seven years, you may go up to 50 or 75 percent.

Technical support is really fabulous. I've been working in data processing for the last 25 years, and Anaplan is incredible. They're fast, they are skilled, they are competent, and they are accurate. It's really great. They're wonderful. The support is incredible.

We did previously use IBM Cognos. We also noticed people were using Orion Hyperion, however, it is called something else now. 

Cognos is very limited. It takes quite a long to implement and it is not scalable at all. You cannot extend the usage of Cognos as very quickly you are faced with a limit. IBM and Anaplan are like day and night.

In terms of initial setup, I would say 95% of the time it's very straightforward.

Deployments, for a small project, can take between two and three weeks. Bigger ones can take two or three weeks. That's between 10 and 15 days. Even larger projects can take three months. That's for a very sizable project. 

The implementation strategy is agile. We design the scope with the customer, with the business user. First, we define the scope with the business user, and then we do an agile process. And after that, there is a test process.

For the customers who are using Anaplan exclusively from a financial SPNA point of view, the only return on investment we can expect is about savings in relation to personnel count. It can shrink staff. That said when the customer uses Anaplan for sales composition planning, or sales management, or supply chain project, there is a direct return on investment within six months. It really depends on what field of the business they are implementing with that. In finance, you will not have a return on investment and in supply chain management you will see an ROI.

While the cost is on the higher side, the value is high as well. The customer's plan is a yearly cost. It's software as a service. Beyond the standard licensing fee, there are no additional costs. 

I'm using the latest version. I am not using the beta, however, I am using the live version.

I am a consultant and a partner, so I am working on the cloud deployment. 

I would advise new users to not try to create something too complex in the first year. Keep it simple. It's so powerful. You can do so many incredible things with Anaplan, however, if you try to go there in the first year, you will lose yourself.

Anaplan is the type of software that requires collaboration between people, more than ever. You cannot have an Anaplan project if you are not a team and a collaborative team. Previously, with IBM Cognos, this was not the case. 

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

We use the solution for supply chain management. It is more like logistics solution.

It is easy to use.

The solution should provide customization.

The clients had good support.

The initial setup was straightforward but client's setup was complex because they were overlappping with other teams.

Clients used Anaplan for various purposes. As their needs became more complex, they wondered if a custom solution would be faster and provide more tailored data. Anaplan was clearly useful. However, clients wanted to focus more on data engineering and integration with their processes to track numerous metrics. They were unsure if Anaplan and other IT solutions could fully meet their needs. Thus, they sought a custom solution.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We concentrate now on financial planning. However, we have intentions to move towards supply planning. My company uses the tool to know the key players in the market.

I am impressed with the tool’s real-time calculations and intuitive interface. The tool’s user interface is the best compared to other software that I have worked with. I also find the tool’s management reporting feature valuable.

The tool needs to work on its integration with MS Excel and MS Word. The tool does not allow data analysis in spreadsheets which is possible on other platforms. I want the solution to be more collaborative to facilitate decision-making in organizations.

I have been working with the solution for three to four years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. There are around 10-20 users for the solution.

The tool’s support is responsive but its Workaround Time is not very helpful.

Neutral

We chose Anaplan based on the client’s requirements.

The tool’s setup is easy. The tool’s deployment depends on the requirements of both users and clients. The overall deployment will not take more than four to five weeks to complete. One week is required for the determination of user requirements and another four to five weeks for the solution’s deployment.

The tool’s pricing is reasonable and competitive with other solutions.

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. This product is an important Enterprise Performance Management tool. It has one of the most powerful calculation engines called Hyperblock.

We're using the product for budgeting and forecasting.

The calculation capabilities are great. The reports on offer are perfect.

The initial setup is simple.

The performance is good.

The solution works very well for budgeting. 

The integration technique should be a little bit easier. Currently, we need to connect with the API server and then we need to install it. That includes the IT team also. It would be ideal if the Anaplan consultant could do it in an easy or simple way. That would be great.

I would love to see additional features added. They have an action tab, however, the action tab itself is a little bit complicated. It would be great if some easy thing could be incorporated there.

I couldn't get any documentation that we can provide to the customer to lay out, for example, the features. It's there on the Anaplan website, however, it would be helpful to have some sort of proposal so that we can use the proposal to propose it to new clients. Also, the pricing is not there on the Anaplan site. We are not able to tell what would be a good quotation or what would be the price we would offer them. I'd like approximate pricing, or something related price so that I can tell customers what it would cost.

I've been using the solution for four years or so. 

The solution is stable and the performance is good. It's actually performing very well as it actually reduced a lot of manual work and manual exercises. We have reduced the Excel work, and now teams are using it on Anaplan itself.

20 to 21 people are using the solution in our organization. 

The solution is easy to scale. 

We work with it on a daily basis. 

I haven't had any issues with technical support. 

I've used other solutions, such as SAP and Oracle. 

The multidimensionality is good in Anaplan as compared to other options. In Anaplan, we can also do calculations in designing a module for all the departments in one go. For other ERPs, for example, in SAP, for each department, there are separate SAPs, different implementations have to be done, and the process has to be set up for all the different departments. 

The inial setup was pretty simple and straightforward. It's not difficult.

The first deployment only took about six months.

Currently, we have the product installed internally, however, we are pitching it to clients, so that we will deploy it to the client-server as well. 

There isn't really any maintenance. I know maintenance is going on, on the backend side. For us, no maintenance is required. We just keep on taking the backups.

The is a cost per user and also costs related to the implementation itself.

I'd like the product to have more transparency in terms of the pricing and the licensing model.

I don't know how to check the date of the licensing and when it will expire. It would be great if there was some feature on the Anaplan site that people could check. I can check, for example, the GBs used, and yet I can't check the license status. I've raised so many emails in regards to needing to know when the license will be expiring, however, I still don't get any response.

We are Anaplan partners. 

We are using the latest update.

I'd advise potential users, if they want to search for any reporting tool that will help them for budgeting or forecasting, I would suggest they go to the Anaplan website and try Anaplan instead of other ERPs. 

I'd rate the product at a six out of ten. There are still many improvements needed, however, I like the product in general.

Anaplan can be used for many types of planning, such as finance, supply chain, sales, and workforce.

My organization has benefited from the solution providing us with very good forecasting models. Additionally, there is a tool where users can go through different dashboards,  a feature called Dimension where you can use multiple dimensions, and the granularity is very good for us.

Anaplan provides 130 GB of cloud storage for organizations to use as part of their license. 

It is easier to implement for the developer teams and client users who are using it. For example, if a client is using thousands of Excel documents, it becomes very easy for Anaplan to do all of the calculations and move things around inside.

The flexibility is very good, it is easy to make new changes to the deployments.

The solution can improve by providing an easier form of integration to different platforms, such as receiving data from different Salesforce. There is a process to do it through the use of APIs but it could be made much easier. This would be a large help to us.

I have been using Anaplan for approximately three years.

The solution is very stable.

Anaplan has been scalable, there are a least 40 domains where this solution can be used, such as OPEX and financial planning

In my organization, we have approximately 10 clients using this solution.

We are extensively using this solution in the project we are currently involved in.

We provide the implementation and the after the support of the solution.

The installation is not difficult but I would put it in the easy to medium level of difficulty.

The amount of technical staff required for the implementation and maintenance completely depends on the requirements of clients. There is some flexibility that comes after the first deployment, we can do enhancement for the same deployment instead of creating a new one.

We follow the Sprint method of implementation and it can take approximately two weeks. However, as previously mentioned the time is dependant on the client's requirements. For example, we are doing an update to enhance a previous implementation that will take approximately two months.

We are not the end-user to know if the clients are receiving a return on investment. However, I would conclude they have been receiving a good return on their investment because we are having an increasing number of clients and we are doing enhancements to previous deployments.

I would strongly recommend this solution to others.

I rate Anaplan an eight out of ten.

You can use this solution for almost everything that you need, that includes the sales forecast, workforce, planning of technical KPIs, etc. It's not a focused solution for a specific use case.

It's simple to use and has a lot of functions suitable for many use cases. Here, you don't have to know how to code. So it's like Excel-based syntax.

Workspace allowance and integrations with external systems are the things to be improved. Apart from that, everything else works well except for the poor ETL capabilities. They should first solve the issue of integrations and modeling sparsity. That would be great.

I have been using this solution for five years. It's a SaaS solution so it's always up-to-date.

I would rate it nine out of ten.

It's one of the solutions that could be scaled up quite easily if its architecture is set up correctly at the beginning of the project, compared to many others marketed by big and well-known CPM/BI providers. Currently, we have approximately 20 Anaplan users in our organization.

I would say it was a good experience. I faced probably zero unsolved issues. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate it all nine. They're good at solving issues.

Positive

I switched due to the company's policy I work for now.

It's not easy to start from scratch, but the complexity is something you can also find doing your planning in Excel. So, I don't think Anaplan has an outstanding complexity.

As it is cloud-based, it doesn’t need to be deployed on your servers and it's usually deployed via partners. We just make sure it serves the needs of the organization considering the demands of the specific projects.

It's not that expensive compared to the vast majority of other products. But it's not cheap, it's somewhere in the middle. I would rate the cost five out of ten.

I would very likely recommend the product to my colleagues. 

We use Anaplan for a lot of different things, but mostly in sales planning.

The features that I have found most valuable are that it is web-based and easy to use.

In terms of what could be improved, when there is a lot of data, it sometimes takes long to load.

In the new experience, it does not let you pick a list in the formula box like it did in the old experience. I would like that to be included in the new release.

I have been using Anaplan for about a year and a half.

It is a low maintenance solution.

The support is pretty good. They get back to you within a week.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Anaplan an eight.

We are a solution provider and we take on support and integration projects. I provide resources to my clients and one of the products that they work with is Anaplan.

Anaplan is used for different business cycles. For example, in sales, we can use it for the ESD cycle, order-to-cash process, and the procure-to-pay process, to find the sales turnover. 

Another use case is finding out sales demand and forecast.

There is a full set of reports available for sales.

Automation needs to be built into this solution. There are various cycles within the platform and I am not able to easily enter a single case.

Anaplan is a stable solution.

This product is scalable.

Technical support has been good.

The initial setup is straightforward. There is no complexity to it.

It is deployed with code that has been designed for Anaplan.

We integrate this product for our clients, and we also handle the support.

ROI is not something that I see in my role.

This is an expensive product and if the price were reduced then it would attract more customers.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is that they need the right partner to implement it. I am certified in Anaplan and I recommend that people use somebody who is certified. They will know the process and understand end-to-end business cycles, so it will be easy for them to implement.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.