Anaplan vs. OrgMapper

Anaplan is best suited for strategic planning initiatives in industries like CPG, Manufacturing, FS, Pharma. It can handle multiple use cases for each function in the company like Supply chain, Finance, Sales and more. It is one of the best tools I have seen in scenario modelling. It is not suitable for very detailed level planning, essentially execution level eg. Production scheduling.

OrgMapper is especially useful in mapping the soft-relationships within teams and organizations: communication, cooperation, knowledge sharing, and information flows.

• Anaplan can scale as your business grows, for example adding new regions into to your geographical hierarchy.
• Anaplan is flexible and can do anything you want it to, there are no tables pre-configured that you need to fix your business process into.
• Reading formulas in Anaplan is straight forward with a quick learning curve.

• OrgMapper uses appropriate questions to understand the different aspects of networks in organizations. These questions are conceptually sound and appropriate and diverse. They are easy to understand.
• There is a direct path from the survey to the visualization of data in network maps. Though having an official report is of great value, I rely on the ability of OrgMapper to translate raw data obtained via survey into actual maps potentially in real-time if needed.
• I appreciate the use of modules like Knowledge Mapper or Team Mapper which pull together questions to respond to particular issues in organizations. This makes marketing easier and facilitates the decision making process on the part of clients.
• I have found the technical support for OrgMapper to be helpful. I appreciate that the Maven 7 people like many of us users are all on a learning curve with regard to the translation of network science into practical usage. Thus, ongoing communication back and forth between we users and Maven 7 is helpful and important. I appreciate the inquisitive approach taken my Maven 7 and their dedication to resolve technical issues that arise.

• Ability to decide if to apply the formula or a manual input on front end for each line item
• Real Time Data Transfer across models. Currently Data is transferred using Processes across different models. Having a functionality to access data from any model in real time would be great

• Actually I don't see one, it's very easy to use and the results are clear for every one.

Anaplan is a very strong multi-dimensional modeling tool that provides a calculation engine to empower a complex planning process. It is fairly easy to learn for those with experience in similar tools, or excel. It forces structure and auditability that spread sheets do not have, along with extensive security capabilities

Great tool, easy to implement and very powerful in the visualization outputs

Anaplan is interesting because it is at the same time easy to use and difficult to use. An end user can navigate a well-constructed app, being pointed in the right direction every time they feel a slight bit of confusion, and find everything they need in what feels like a straight line. Similarly, a model builder (developer of sorts) can have the exact same experience, but the journey is longer and more complicated. End users have great experiences with Anaplan, but sometimes model builders have a frustrating one. That is not to say model building is hard (because it truly is not), but things change, and when things change in complex systems, the effort required simply to investigate where a model builder needs to make an adjustment may frustrate them but also frustrate their non-technical bosses. However, the reality is that with complicated businesses, complicated business problems, come complicated solutions. It is actually a testament to Anaplan's capabilities that it has taken on the biggest problems at the biggest companies. It may be daunting to adjust it in those environments, but at least you know it did meet the needs there, which is more than most tools can say.

Emailing out the survey to respondents can be a complex undertaking. Helping them gain access via their password can also take effort. The survey respondents must be entered by hand. I did not have a great deal of trouble doing this with 30 people. Questions are clear and understandable. However, if the context of the question differs from the normal way the question is used, this may present some difficulty to the respondents to understand and make sense of the question. Support here is important. It is extremely easy to select questions based on the identification of a focused challenge. Translation of the raw data to the visual map is done by the software and this is of great benefit and makes the product quite useful to me. Filters and the ability to manipulate the maps are also helpful though there is a learning curve to this.

There are very few outages. Maintenance is scheduled on two or three Saturdays per month, so as not to affect businesses. When there is an outage, users are kept informed of progress to restore the platform and typically this takes no more than an hour. Anaplan customer support is very responsive if we ever have questions about platform issues

Everything is calculated in memory in the cloud. It's nearly instantaneous updates when you make changes. The only time things get a little slow is when you have a massive model with very intricate calculations...but "slow" for Anaplan is not what I would call "slow" for something like Hyperion. We used to have Hyperion calcs that ran for 60 mins before you could use data. The equivalent would be 60 seconds in Anaplan.

Incentivized

Support quality has dropped since Thoma Bravo has taken over. I think some serious re-focus needs to happen here -- part of the beauty of being in the Anaplan community was how involved you felt in it before. Before I didn't dread sending a support ticket, now I am starting to.

Always available, and really interested on the success of my OrgMapper implementation

In my opinion, in-person training is always the best if you have the option to do so. This allows real-time interactions with the instructions, whereas the online training I took required me to write-down questions, email them, and wait for responses. This slows down the process, as you can imagine. That said, in-person training is an extra cost and it likely isn't needed for everyone. I would suggest selecting a small number of people to take in-person training and then having them act as mentors to the rest of your team. That way, as the rest of the team takes the online training, they have a resource to help them in real time.

Anaplan training materials are clear, simple, easy to understand and to follow. Visuals are excellent. The vendor is good at updating training materials in a timely manner and encouraging users and administrators to keep coming back to Academy site for refresher courses or new feature courses. I really like their interactive diagrams

The platform allows a flexible implementation mechanic to be put in place, since the possibilities and functionalities are vast and there are very few things the tool cannot do well. The solutions for the financial planning and the integrated business planning we put in place were easily adopted by the end users and their day-to-day work was made easier.

Anaplan and these other tools are very similar. I cannot say that I selected Anaplan over them as I have worked with and been involved with setting up a number of tools for clients. They all have their advantages and Anaplan is a very strong tool in the cloud planning space

We had not found any other tool that demonstrated the power of Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) like OrgMapper.

The platform is highly flexible and can be deployed across multiple departments and locations, supporting growth and varying business needs effectively. Its cloud-based architecture allows for scaling model size and user access as required. However, there can be some challenges with performance and model complexity as the scale increases significantly, which slightly limits its scalability in very large or highly complex environments.

• Anaplan's implementation led to a significant reduction in planning cycle errors and bugs, streamlining processes and improving overall accuracy in data inputs
• Standardizing the planning process and enabling cross-functional collaboration through Anaplan enhanced our ability to adapt swiftly to changing business needs, resulting in improved agility in decision-making
• The platform's capabilities, especially in Demand Planning and Supply Chain, positively impacted our ROI by optimizing resource allocation and solving complex business problems efficiently across multiple functions

• For our clients Orgmapper/the Network Approach has the potential to become a foundational approach to organisational transformation. It is early days as we are working in partnership with our clients to develop the best approach based on our explorations to date.
• In some instances including Orgmapper in our offering has actually slowed the lead conversion process down - which has been good from the perspective that we are working larger propositions, over the longer term. So for Better Change - Orgmapper provides a significant uplift and complimentary capability to our core capabilities.