Anaplan Reviews

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 work with real estate consultants who use Anaplan to budget and plan commercial real estate development. That's been the biggest area. One client has taken it further, and they use it to manage user security for the organization. However, it's mainly for budget and forecasting for commercial real estate.

Most of my clients already have Anaplan, and they're using it quite heavily. I'm not the implementer. I get the client interested and then coordinate with Anaplan to bring in a partner who handles the implementation.

It fills a niche where existing products don't fit well. I don't see it taking over our market and replacing many core solutions, but it allows clients to work with external processes where there isn't a good solution today. Our clients are using Excel for the most part and leveraging Anaplan in those areas. Whether Anaplan stays on the top of my list depends on finding better ways to leverage the tool, but there's one area where it potentially fills in those gaps. Anaplan comes into the conversation when my clients want to move away from Excel as the main tool for certain functions. 

In the budget forecasting space, some clients have chosen to go with Anaplan because it offers a customized experience versus some of the off-the-shelf packages in our industry. It's a small industry in the sense that you're not selling tens of thousands of products. You're selling a few hundred across your whole client base. 

The user experience is usually not as rich in those products because they don't have the breadth of iterations, whereas, in Anaplan, you can set that up for yourself. Clients love that there are certain features and functions that they do as part of their budgeting process, so they don't have to rely on Excel and features like that. They can do everything inside of Anaplan. 

Anaplan integrates well into my clients' core systems. The ability to aggregate the forms within the dashboarding is also useful. Only one of my clients has implemented workflow. Their usage has been very light. Dashboarding capability is probably the biggest one. My clients like having the ability to aggregate, slice and dice, and dynamically adjust things in the dashboards.

Anaplan's workflow component is probably the biggest area for improvement. I'd also like to see Anaplan add an ad hoc reporting tool that allows users to query things. It's going to factor into how you design your data set and your models, but I'd like the ability to create ad hoc queries against the data that's in there.

I've been advising clients on Anaplan off and on for about six or seven years.

I haven't had any issues with stability or heard about any issues that would make me raise any concerns to clients.

Anaplan is very scalable. It is designed so that you can just keep adding on to your core piece. Their sales pitch is "land and expand."  Once you set up your core enterprise structure, you can leverage all your user configurations and settings across every additional module you add.

I haven't used Anaplan's technical support much. I usually contact the architects when I have specific questions about approaching certain things or the viability of different uses for the solution. If I include the architects in technical support, I get a quick turnaround.

Many clients used Hyperion in the past, but in a lot of cases, they're switching because Hyperion has a heavy data platform. Hyperion was big when they were on JD Edwards for different functions, and those clients are moving away from JD Edwards to the leading industry solutions in real estate, so there's also a shift away from Hyperion planning into Anaplan's flexibility.

Anaplan has some complex components, and we did do some iterative calculations that pushed the boundaries of what Anaplan can do. I had to work with one of the Anaplan architects to develop creative ways to address these limitations. It wasn't horrendous. After a day or two of working on it, the architect could resolve the issue, but it was definitely the limits of how Anaplan works with data. Data calculations are challenging in most systems, and Anaplan wasn't designed for that type of approach. I would still rate it eight out of 10 for ease of implementation.

The implementation strategy is more of an agile approach where each step is broken down into six or eight-week iterations. Within each six-week component, we could deliver a good portion of it and decide to expand it beyond that point.

Anaplan takes about three or four people to deploy and maintain. Usually, there's an architect who isn't working with it full time. They act as the lead Anaplan model builder, and then there are one or two junior model builders. Also, you have someone who is the subject matter expert. If we're talking about FTEs, it's probably close to three, but usually, four individuals are involved. That's relatively light. It's quite impressive.

My clients have seen a return. For example, one of the use cases was an investment waterfall model. Using Excel was labor intensive, so it took a lot of extra work every month to extend this out. They needed to add an extra person for every new fund they added to their portfolio. When they rolled out Anaplan, they could keep expanding the funds without adding any resources because it was a one-time adjustment, and the monthly pieces were within the scope of one individual. 

Their ROI on that was reducing their personnel costs. They planned to hire five people over the next two years, but they didn't need to. Anaplan paid for itself with what it saved on new hires. I'm not even talking about operational efficiencies.

The cost of Anaplan is a challenge for clients, especially if they don't have an ongoing long-term use case for it. It's a $50,000 licensing fee just to get started. Clients need a strong business case to switch from Excel to Anaplan. But if clients have used something similar in the past, such as Hyperion or other solutions, that's not a factor because they know what to expect. 

I haven't come across any additional costs. In our role, we've considered developing our own solutions within Anaplan, which requires different licensing costs on our side if we were to do that. That's the only time I ever talked about additional costs beyond a basic licensing fee.

I had a couple of clients that were comparing OneStream with Anaplan. One of them chose OneStream over Anaplan, and the other is still deciding. I don't have experience with OneStream, but a close friend of mine is a consultant there. He says that the features are similar.  I connect clients to him if they want to hear more about OneStream. 

I rate Anaplan eight out of 10 overall. It's addressing a need in the market. Everything is calculated in memory, which allows for rapid analytics and planning. It doesn't require a programmer to develop, and that's the challenge with many things that aren't focused on business users. It allows business users to take a structured environment with security built-in, and its functions are integrated with other systems. Business users can actually put together information and manage it to get results. It's a huge win that Anaplan is user-focused instead of a technical focus.

If you're implementing Anaplan, it's essential to work with an architect. The architect is the cornerstone of this. They will guide you through all the key components of what you're trying to do, how to approach it, and how to determine the right size of your use case. If you're trying to do something that's way too large, it'll take a lot longer than you expect. You'll have challenges, and you may even find that the use case you build out doesn't meet your needs anymore because it was too large, and your needs changed as you went through the process.

Once you have an architect and a good rapport with them, you'll have a good solution. The mechanics are building the model. You need to put a lot of effort into it, and if the people aren't as good, it might take a little longer. You may need to work with someone from Anaplan directly. If your architect isn't good, your solution won't keep you happy in the long run, but you'll be able to build on it with a good architect.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.