TrustRadius Insights for Anaplan are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Highly scalable and flexible data integration and modeling capabilities: Reviewers have praised the Anaplan platform for its highly scalable and flexible data integration and modeling capabilities, allowing for easy evolution from simple calculations to complex formulas. Many users have highlighted this as a major strength of the platform.
Real-time data capabilities enabling informed decision-making: The real-time data capabilities of Anaplan have been widely praised by reviewers for enabling informed decision-making based on up-to-date information. Several users have mentioned that this feature has greatly contributed to their ability to make agile decisions in a fast-paced business environment.
User-friendly interface contributing to high end user adoption: The user-friendly interface of Anaplan has been consistently highlighted by reviewers as a key strength of the platform. Users appreciate the intuitive design, which resembles Excel and allows for quick task completion. This ease of use has contributed to high end user adoption and overall positive feedback from customers.
Used in conjunction with human resource planning and sales cost planning.One of the issues was that the PL and the increase in cost of hiring new personnel were not linked, and it was a black box as to how many personnel should be hired to ensure the appropriateness of the company. By linking the two, it became possible to simulate the appropriate number of employees to meet management targets.
Pros
High flexibility to implement various logic
High performance for processing huge amounts of data
Extensive components to accelerate development
Cons
Mobile App Usability
Fewer types of graphs compared to BI products
Developer license is expensive
Likelihood to Recommend
Suitable scenarios
Deployment for multiple departments or business areas.Consolidation of siloed planning data and consistent planning operations across the company. The high license fee, a negative point, is easy to effect as more users are added.
Unsuitable scenarios
Deployment for only one department or one business area.Due to the high license fee, the return on investment cannot be achieved, and the original value of Anaplan cannot be utilized. The result is a high-end spreadsheet.
Anaplan is used for workforce planning. It was rolled out to key FP&A users to perform planning inputs. Anaplan reduces the time for the users to calculate and consolidate payroll costs from all cost centers. It also enables faster load of employee data from the HR system and secured access to the planning system.
Pros
Real-time payroll costs calculation
Role-based access to the system
Cons
Drill down functionality. Users were used to doing this by expanding or collapsing parent item while Anaplan workarounds this by synchronizing hierarchies or through custom filters
Likelihood to Recommend
Anaplan is suited for a company that wants to achieve connected planning, start small, and expand later. Anaplan offers real-time data calculation and aggregation which are required in fast-changing business environments.
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Professional Services (1001-5000 employees)
I am writing this as an implementation partner as my perspective on how one of our customers uses Anaplan. Our customer, a leading software company, distributes all of the territories and quotas through Anaplan. The planning process begins in late Q3 and becomes a daily undertaking in early Q4. Territories and quotas are distributed by the beginning of the fiscal year, which was a huge improvement over the pre-Anaplan world.
Pros
Connecting operational questions with financial ones
Territory optimization - seeding account assignments for sales leaders to more quickly align on great territories
Anaplan is a great tool for complex modeling of the future. When you are planning your actions for the future, have multiple, disparate datasets to interact with, have dozens if not hundreds of stakeholders who must contribute and need to be guided via a streamlined workflow engine, require complex logic that can grow with your org, require real-time reporting, and you need it all in less than 6 months.
VU
Verified User
Director in Customer Service (1001-5000 employees)
We implemented Anaplan for a valuations use case, specifically for Private Debt. We integrated Capital IQ to bring in public financial data for market analysis and for treasury rates and exported out to a reporting software. It solved providing user control and governance over a single model. It allowed customization of multiple different methodologies and edge cases while standardizing the overall model to avoid user error and erroneous overrides.
Pros
Customization
ALM
Modeling
Cons
Sparsity/Performance
Integration
NUX
Likelihood to Recommend
Anaplan is very well suited to traditional use cases such as budgeting, forecasting, workforce planning, sales performance management. It provides a lot of flexibilities in those use cases where it's not to too complex. However, Anaplan struggles when iterative calcs are needed. The lack of a previous function for lists outside of time is a pain point. Anaplan also struggles with sparsity. If the bounds of a particular calculation is not consistent, especially across time, the model can suffer significant performance issues.
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Finance and Accounting (201-500 employees)
Use cases we have implemented for customers range across, Finance, Sales Performance, and Supply chain. Specifically for finance, income statement planning, balance sheet planning, and deeper dives into each of those, for example product line P&Ls. For Sales Performance, we have done sales and territory planning - calculating quotas and assigning to sales reps, then tracking attainment of the those targets. For Supply Chain, demand planning and supply planning.
Pros
Calculation engine on large sets of data
Security - selective access
custom planning pages
Cons
reporting and use of excel add-in, Anaplan still can't replicate what smartview does with hyperion
Integrations, very limited options for direct connections , you basically need an ETL tool to set up automations with source systems and target reporting systems
No now() formula, to tell Anaplan what day it is, requires an automated integration to get todays date
Likelihood to Recommend
It works well if the customer does not rely on lots of reporting in excel, if the usecase can provide limited reporting on the Anaplan pages. However, if data is pulled down into excel and then tons of detail reporting is done Anaplan wont work well. Also its important for the customer to have an ETL tool or else end users will be manually uploading CSVs
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Professional Services (5001-10,000 employees)
I work for an Anaplan implementation consultancy. We use Anaplan at a variety of clients throughout different industries and functions to revolutionize their planning process. Anaplan allows our clients to have a more connected and dynamic view of their planning process across their greater organization. Especially with as common as it is for our clients to have primarily relied on excel the improvement is massive.
Pros
Calculation Speed
Customizability
Simple Dashboarding
Cons
Workflow
Data Storage
Management Reporting
Likelihood to Recommend
Anaplan is great when trying to work dynamically within/across a team. It can handle large complicated calculations and allows for simple what-if analysis. I consider Anaplan an extremely customizable tool that has a bit of everything. Especially as Anaplan increases its workflow capabilities it will continue to set itself apart within the EPM space.
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
I use Anaplan as a solution provider for clients. Anaplan addresses the need for companies wanting to deal with long turnaround times and lacking agility conducting business analyses. Scope of use cases is pretty extensive. Traditional FP&A, Workforce / Compensation Planning, Allocations / Cost Recovery, Loans & Deposits, and Private Equity Fund Forecasting.
Pros
Calculations - very functionable and can do almost anything, pretty efficiently.
Dashboards / User Experience - pretty good capabilities for end users.
Anaplan Community - Excellent articles and learning material
Cons
Data Integration - ability to manage and kick off integrations
Versions (Native) - lacking some functionality. End up using Custom Versions for almost every build.
Workflow - relatively new product, but needs additional features / capabilities to be used by most clients.
Likelihood to Recommend
Areas Well Suited: Tedious business processes that require multiple people, departments, or data sources. For organizations dealing with lots of or large excel files. Great tool for organizations that are willing to learn new technology. Albeit, calculations and formulas are similar to excel, having an organization willing to learn can result in a high return on investment into Anaplan.
Less Appropriate: Consolidation (I have yet to see impact of Fluence acquisition). Historical data and storage system for planning results. Reporting on a lot of dimensions with a high number of list members.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Finance and Accounting (501-1000 employees)
We implement Anaplan for clients that are looking to modernize their analytics capabilities and scale their business models as their business grow. We ensure to deliver a great planning solution that is easily auditable, that users love to use and find value added in their day-to-day jobs. We ensure good process control through security and workflow, making businesses confident in their decision making and reducing errors.
Pros
Easy to implement
Flexible solution that adapts to about any need
Scalability as the business grows
Cons
Technical support
Reporting capabilities
Data integration
Likelihood to Recommend
Anaplan is a great tool for business models with complex calculations that are evolving over time. It is easy to learn Anaplan and once you start using it there is added value from analysts up to c-suite decisions. Anaplan lacks vs. competitors when it comes to reporting, where it is not possible to have pixel perfect reports and where support is slow and inneficient.
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
We are the implementer of Anaplan, and we have implemented Anaplan for over 100 use cases for various customers. The scope including Financial Planning (with workforce planning), budgeting planning, sales planning and supply planning. Usually we start from a smaller scope, and the expand to other use cases. The fact that Anaplan is a ligh weight and flexble planning tool makes it suitable for connected planning scenario, and its patented technology enable it for real-time and multi-dimension what-if analysis and scenario planning.
Pros
Light-weight
Flexible with code-less configuration platform
Real-time calculation
Multi-dimension
Cons
Cost structure is relatively complicated
Cost is high compared with other competitors
Customer support can be more professional
Likelihood to Recommend
It is very easy to use, and very easy to adopt to different planning, suitable for collaborative environment. This is very important for financial planning scenario, where ease of use is important. As the key of our project success metric is adoption rate, Anaplan is by far the easiest planning tool to be adopted in a large enterprise.
VU
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
