Anaplan Reviews

I'm a consultant. I work for a consulting firm, and our job is to implement Anaplan for our clients. I'm a solution architect in Anaplan.

It's mainly for financial planning and analysis (FP&A), supply chain, and sales incentive use cases.

I’m a consultant for a consulting firm. I’m a certified Anaplan model builder with solution architect experience. I’ve implemented around eleven projects, most of which were related to financial and sales planning. 

I also have a fair understanding of supply chain, but I’ve only worked on one supply chain project. The primary use cases I’ve seen involve financial planning, supply chain planning, and sales planning, including territory and quota management.

One advantage is easy integration. While some IT support may be needed, Anaplan offers many connectors to automate data transfer from ERP systems, reducing manual data loading. This connectivity comes at a cost, but it's worthwhile. Anaplan can connect to various third-party resources, sometimes requiring IT assistance for configuration. You can create many scenarios and what-if analyses based on business drivers, adapting them as needed.

Anaplan is constantly evolving and introduces new features monthly. As a SaaS product, updates, patches, and new features are seamlessly integrated into the backend, eliminating disruptions for businesses. Also, Anaplan introduced new dashboards with IRR-type visualizations, which are useful and enhance the user experience.

Anaplan's real-time data updating feature impacts our customers' decision-making processes because they don't have to wait. With a well-built model incorporating best practices, data updates happen in real time. Any changes or dynamic elements are reflected immediately, thanks to the Designer Client product.

For example, if new items are added to a list, the data is automatically updated based on the model configuration. All data is real-time; simply refresh to see the latest information without waiting or making additional changes.

Anaplan has many great features. For example, the UX features and dashboards are intuitive and user-friendly. Anaplan's acquisition of Fluent will bring artificial intelligence capabilities to the platform, benefiting users with the latest AI technology. 

Anaplan's scalability stands out compared to other platforms, especially for scenario planning and what-if analysis. It's user-friendly and requires no coding, making it easy for end-users. This is why Anaplan is gaining recognition among clients.

Anaplan is planning to enhance AI capabilities, but right now, there's PlanIQ. With some statistical knowledge, we can use it, but it's a paid option, not free.

One key area of improvement is pricing. With many competitors entering the market, pricing is something they need to reconsider, which could help us. Also, while cPanel is slowly gaining traction, the biggest competitor remains Excel. Since most people use Excel, Anaplan should offer more free training to help users get familiar with its features. This would make the platform more popular compared to other competitors.

Anaplan has improved significantly over the years—five years ago, it didn’t have features like a good dashboard. Back then, everything was done on a classical dashboard, but now, it's all in the new UX. In terms of the product, there are still features that need to be added, but they are working on it. However, there are some smaller issues that also need attention.

I have been using it for almost seven years. 

I would rate the stability as nine out of ten, where one is low and ten is high stability.

If a thousand customers use Anaplan at the same time, there won’t be any challenges. The product doesn’t go down or anything like that. It’s a very stable product, being cloud-based, and it has its own in-memory technology and patented system. I’ve seen tests where multiple users are logged in at the same time, and it performs without any issues.

I would rate the scalability as nine out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high scalability. Our customers are mainly mid-size to large-scale enterprises that use Anaplan. The product is most suitable for companies with large operations.

My customers come from various domains. We have clients in the consumer goods, pharma, consulting, and healthcare sectors. Right now, Anaplan covers most industries, including Fortune 500 companies and mid-sized enterprises. Since Anaplan is a US-based company, the majority of these companies are based in the US, but it also has a strong presence in Europe. They are expanding their focus on the Asia Pacific region as well. One of the challenges, however, is data center locations. 

Currently, the data centers are in the US and Europe. In countries like China, there are data restrictions, which can be a disadvantage. Anaplan is working on getting data centers in specific regions, such as Saudi Arabia, where data restrictions are stricter.

The response is very good. If you face any issues, you just need to log a ticket, and Anaplan team immediately acknowledges it. They assign someone to help you out, so the support is really good.

Positive

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy. 

It’s not very difficult to set up. Anaplan uses something called an agile process during implementation. The first step is data discovery, where we understand the client's requirements and their entire process.

Anaplan is a platform, meaning it’s a blank canvas. Unlike SAP, which comes with default features, Anaplan is customized for each customer. So, depending on the specific business requirements, the model is built from scratch. For example, if I'm working for a pharma company, their business logic will be different from a manufacturing company or an IT company.

Anaplan customizes the model according to each business's requirements. The same model may not work even for two companies within the same industry, as every company has different needs. That’s where Anaplan stands out—it tailors the model based on the business. If the person implementing the solution has a good overview of the end-to-end business process, it makes the setup process much easier.

So, what happens is the client needs to purchase a workspace. Anaplan has three types of models. Based on the model licenses, the workspace is allocated accordingly. Most companies, when implementing Anaplan, start with a private project. For example, they might focus on one specific function like finance. They begin small to visualize the benefits and then slowly expand it to other departments, such as supply chain or sales planning. As a SaaS product, customers have to pay for both the workspace and the model licenses. There are three types of licenses, and the billing is based on that.

The deployment time depends on the business requirements. For example, a typical financial planning process varies depending on the industry, the client, and what exactly the client wants to achieve. There’s no fixed timeline, but generally, it takes at least three months. Anaplan follows the Agile process where we try to understand the scope of work, perform data discovery to grasp the entire end-to-end process, and then establish a timeline. The timeline also depends on what features the client wants, such as whether they want to automate processes right away or keep things manual for a while before integrating systems. There are many external factors that affect the duration.

It is good value for money. The reason is that it saves a lot of time. Planning is a very tedious job, and most of the people involved are highly talented team members. Before Anaplan, a lot of time was spent on preparing and cleansing data.

For example, I’ve seen situations where a consultation team required four members, but after implementing Anaplan, only one person was able to handle everything. That's the value Anaplan offers. However, it all depends on how it's implemented, who the partners are, and whether they have a long-term vision. The sustainability of the implementation is important. If Anaplan is implemented properly, it delivers excellent results.

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive. The price is quite up there. 

This is a very good product, especially for planning solutions. It’s been in the market for over a decade, and it’s widely adopted by Fortune 500 companies. People are using it and benefiting from it. The key to maximizing its value is not using it in isolation. Instead, once customers understand its capabilities, they should leverage it across departments, starting with finance and then expanding into other areas.

It’s a good product, both in terms of stability and return on investment.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

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.

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.

Anaplan is used for various financial planning, such as supply chain, and consolidation.

My clients exhibit enhanced efficiency in financial planning, supply chain management, demand planning, and financial consolidation. They possess superior visibility, enabling swift action-taking.

The most valuable feature of Anaplan is machine learning. The solution is constantly evolving from feedback. Additionally, there is a wide range of training material online.

The price of the solution can improve.

I have been using Anaplan for approximately eight years.

The solution is generally stable. There are tweaks that need to be made for optimum stability.

The solution is highly scalable.

We do the support ourselves and rarely needed global support from the vendor.

We did not use another solution previously.

The initial setup of Anaplan is easy because it is low code or no code deployments. The full process of deployment can take six months. We do not need a lot of resources for the deployment.

We do the difficult customization for the customers. We provide our customers with feedback.

The price of the solution is expensive.

If the solution is built correctly there is no maintenance needed.

The crucial aspect is to ensure that there are individuals who possess the knowledge to effectively utilize the tool. It is akin to piloting an airplane, where one must first acquire the skills to fly before attempting to operate it. Otherwise, they will crash it.

I rate Anaplan a seven out of ten.

I'm using Anaplan to provide production support for my client. The Anaplan model is already there and what I'm doing is fixing bugs updating the logic. That's my main role in the project. I will fix those queues for the business and update some processes or dashboards to better suit business needs, as per their requests.

I believe Anaplan is a new cloud tool, and from time to time, there's a lot of improvement that the Anaplan company deploys with the system. So, with that improvement, we need to really adapt and know the new system trends.

I like updating the current model. For example, if the business wants to see a different version or a different report style, I'm happy to work, manipulate, and do some data visualization changes for them.

The dashboard could be better. Because within a dashboard or report, you have to do a lot of scrolling. You need to scroll down because the table doesn't fit in a single view. That's why even the users aren't happy with that kind of user experience. They need to scroll to see all the data, and it could be better if it fits in just one page. That way, you can see everything.

In the next release, I want automation that's connected to Anaplan. For example, to load master data from SAP to Anaplan. I don't know if this already exists, but a log where you can see the progress and see if there's an error will also help. It would be better to give you the error message, for example, if there is an error within the automated process importing to Anaplan.

I have been using the Anaplan tool for about three years.

Right now, Anaplan is very stable. It has some downtime from time to time, but they're able to reinstate it to work as it is. I think many of our users have a demand planner, and they are the main users of Anaplan for our clients. Many of them are in field sales roles, and these people are in the market selling the product. I believe the number of users ranges from 30 to 50 for one country.

In terms of scalability, Anaplan is great. Right now, there's a lot of changes that need to happen in our model, and I believe you can easily ask for an increase in size, and it can adopt the new logic that encouraged a lot of space.

Sometimes, we find bugs within the system, and we don't know how to fix them. So, every year we file maybe five to ten tickets with Anaplan support to fix the bugs that we found.

I used IBM Cognos TM1, which is now called Planning Analytics. I started using Anaplan because I was given an additional role, and I started supporting Anaplan simultaneously. 

I think there's a lot of differences between Anaplan and IBM because Anaplan is cloud-based. But I believe IBM Planning Analytics is getting on the cloud as well. The old version of IBM is more like a remote desktop. But Anaplan is on the cloud, and you can access it via the web anywhere you go.

The initial setup is quite complex because we have this one development team, and we have plenty of markets connected to one model. There's a lot of customization to tailor-fit with the market requirements and with the country requirements. Setting up a new model takes the team at least three months or five months at most.

We implemented this solution. We followed the Agile methodology, and there were a lot of sprints for two weeks and then we released all the enhancements or deployments. It's very fast-paced.

I would advise potential users to have a good model builder and a solutions architect to transform their business complexity into an Anaplan module or dashboard that fits and works for them. They need to have a great solutions architect, a finder, and the end model builder, which will convert this complexity in Excel and to an equivalent Anaplan report.

The biggest lesson I learned using the Anaplan is that everyone can learn to use the Anaplan tool if they have the perseverance to learn. Everything is in Google, and you can Google the logic that you need to apply to a given bug or issue with the module within the system. It's continuous learning, and you have to keep learning and using the Anaplan system every day to be more familiar with the tool.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Anaplan a nine.

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.

My first project in Anaplan was about capacity planning for the factory's RCT and NCTC capacity planning. My second use case was about CapEx and OpEx planning for another client. Mainly it's finance and supply chain related activities.

In finance, mainly, earlier, we were using Excel spreadsheets. Every time their monthly cycle ends, the company needed to go back to the reporting. They would have to pull all the data from all the users and then publish all final reports. However, in Anaplan, everyone reports their numbers through the cloud and wherever the end-user or the planner wants to see the data collated, he can just simply open the Anaplan and then see the reports ready-made. It's much less work-intensive.

The modeling is very easy. It's almost an Excel-like model building. It is very easy to change the logic or business rules. You can do it anytime. It's not like you need a different team set up for the changes.

The solution is very user-friendly.

The initial setup is very easy.

The solution is scalable.

The solution has been very stable so far.

We have found that the product integrates well with SAP and they have ready-made connectors. In fact, it is easy to integrate with any other system. They have plug-and-play software which makes integrations easy with very little time consumption required. 

You don't need to have a programming language to use Anaplan.

There is no demand planning, no dedicated demand planning where it can do statistical forecasting. They have engaged with a plan queue to do the statistical forecasting. However, if we compare it with SAP or others, they don't have an in-house forecasting tool or anything.

It would be nice if the solution offered better extensions. For example, in SEC Excel, they have one extra extension, which is really good in terms of performance. It would have been really great to have something similar, however, from what I have seen so far it is not up to the mark. Whenever you load the data in Excel and then send it back to Anaplan, it takes a lot of time. It's very hard to use it. Rather than using the available extension, people prefer to go back to Anaplan again.

Plastic dashboards were a little bit hard to create, however, it's my understanding that it's a bit better now.

I've been using the solution for more than two years at this point. 

The solution is stable. I've never faced any issue where it had downtime or anything. It has never failed, at least for me.

The solution is very scalable. In previous projects, there were some changes that the business wanted to make, however, they were not able to do it in SAP or Cisco systems. They used append models to do those changes and send them back to SAP.

Considering the previous project, there were almost 300 to 400 users. There are finance project managers across the zones or the CapEx and OpEx controllers.

Our latest client does plan to increase usage. They've already forgotten all about trying to make Excel reporting work.

Technical support is very good. I have also worked on SAP previously, and, if I had to compare SAP support and Anaplan support, Anaplan support is quite responsive. We're very satisfied with them overall. 

I didn't use business performance management, however, I do use SAP, IBP, and APO. These are mainly ERP-related Software solutions.

The initial setup is not difficult or complex. It's very simple and straightforward. 

Generally, the deployment takes four to five months to complete at least the basic agenda. Later you can keep on adding the functionalities once the users start filling the Anaplan, they go ahead and ask for more requirements.

The four to five-month deployment includes, for example, the process of customization and testing.

We did not use an integrator. I'm in consulting, so we get the projects for the deployment.

I don't know anything about the cost or the licensing. It's not an aspect of the solution I work on.

We have partners and we do the implementation for clients. 

I am using a SaaS version of the solution.

Generally, people rush to design the scope and just start building. I would say that new users should focus first on designing the process and scope. Once that is finalized, then move into the model building rather than pushing everything in one go.

During our training in Anaplan, there was one quote saying, "almost everything can be built in Anaplan". There were scenarios where I thought, okay fine, Anaplan can't build this logic, and yet, after a point, we were able to build that logic. It's pretty scalable.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

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.