Anaplan is a scenario planning and analysis platform designed to optimize decision-making in complex business environments so that enterprises can outpace their competition and the market. By building connections and collaboration across organizational silos, the Anaplan platform surfaces key insights.
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SAP Integrated Business Planning
Score 8.2 out of 10
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SAP supports supply chain management with Integrated Business Planning, the company's real-time cloud-based supply chain planning platform supporting demand response, supply planning and inventory management oriented features, with supply chain analytics to support decisioning.
Customizability and ease of learning (not a coder, similar to Excel formulas). Not confined to the existing configurability of software's planning process/tables. Low IT involvement. Scenario and driver-based planning (can make inputs). Can be used for more than just Finance …
Anaplan combines the best of both worlds, the flexibility, ease of use, and freedom of modeling of a spreadsheet and the control, calculation power, and reliability of the best planning, budgeting, and consolidation software vendors.
Strengths, Complexity Known for its robust features, but can be complex to implement and require extensive training. Cost Higher initial investment and ongoing maintenance costs, which may be a consideration for smaller businesses or those with budget constraints.
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.
One of the best parts is how it is suited to global or multi-site organizations with complex supply chains. It just operates across multiple regions with various manufacturing facilities, and that too with very much ease; it is simple, solid and very reliable in terms of working when the logistics is an issue and fetches data and insights very quickly.
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
The system does not work as smoothly when processing large volumes of data. There are processing delays when we are busy planning.
Moreover, because inventory exceptions are not automatically alerted, employees have to check them manually, which takes extra time. Upgrades in these sections could raise our operational efficiency.
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
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.
User experience has various issues, from the way to represent data on the Dashboard to complex graphical interfaces for making the right report of something that is easiest to make on other similar platforms. SAP Integrated Business Planning is difficult to integrate into other operating systems and ecosystems. Activity planning, in some cases, is confused, and access is limited if customers or end-users don´t use the platform over the internet using a desktop computer.
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.
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.
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.
Set up a supply chain strategy. Define your north star. Follow it with good consultants. Get know how from consultants with a deep know how in the system. Do proper change management.
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
System integration: CPI DS landscape allowed to integrate with the SAP ECC and SAP S4HANA with ease. Ecosystem: As most of the systema were of SAP landscape, choosing SAP Integrated Business Planning has given a sense of confidence. Higher Futuristic roadmaps: SAP Integrated Business Planning had gen AI and AI incorporated roadmap making it more impressive.
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
