Anaplan Reviews

As a client developer and solutions architect, I use Anaplan for building modules and deploying logic end-to-end. I work closely with the business in an agile manner to ensure the model aligns with business needs.

Anaplan offers flexibility in building different options within the platform. The real-time data integration feature allows me to immediately see the impact of changes made in the model without waiting for a process to run. This has been instrumental in enhancing operational efficiency.

Anaplan could enhance its user interface by including a more user-friendly API. Improving the deployment process to make it less complex and easier to manage is another area for potential enhancement.

I have been working with Anaplan for ten years.

Anaplan is absolutely stable, with a stability rating of nine out of ten.

Anaplan is a scalable product, especially when managed with cost considerations. There are options to make it more scalable.

The technical support from Anaplan is responsive and helpful, with a customer service rating of nine out of ten.

Positive

Before Anaplan, I worked with SQL databases and VBA. I switched to Anaplan because of its power and potential as a platform, offering similar functionalities to Excel and VBA but with much more capability.

I have a junior colleague working with me on maintenance tasks for Anaplan.

It is difficult to quantitatively assess the ROI since it involves evaluating time saved from transitioning processes to Anaplan. However, the platform allows for significant operational efficiencies.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the licensing cost for Anaplan as a seven to eight, making it affordable.

I recommend Anaplan due to the flexibility it provides for building modules and the various options available within the platform. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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.

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're a service provider, so we work with multiple clients to build out Anaplan solutions across a lot of different disciplines. We have a couple of high-tech companies. We're using it to manage the PR process, the purchase request process for marketing, which includes campaign management, and also for how a purchase request gets funded. It's that modeling around scenarios where you want to really understand what costs are associated with activities. 

Shortly, we're going to implement around connected with revenues so we can understand in more detail the ROI on marketing. This is for a high-tech Fortune 100 company.

What you do is you buy a workspace and then you basically have access to that workspace, and then you can build models within that workspace.

The solution improves forecast accuracy. We've seen forecast accuracy go from a variation of 10% to something like 2%. It also drives up the quality of analytics. What we're seeing is not only forecast accuracy improving but also the time spent on pulling data together to do a forecast. You get the benefits of both worlds and you get the forecast accuracy as people are spending significantly less time. 

It goes from about 50% on data validation, and getting the data, and validating the data, down to about 20% on a lot of our clients. You're freeing up those finance people that are pulling those models together. You're freeing up 30% of their time during the planning cycle to really spend a lot more on analytics, and deep-diving into the numbers, and doing a better job at understanding what those numbers are owning up to instead of spending all that time just consolidating all the numbers into one space.

That's definitely a big advantage. We are seeing massive time savings for people, freeing up time so that employees can do more value-added work. 

Especially over the COVID period, a lot of people have left and they haven't hired new people to replace them. The company is really looking at standardizing processes across the globe. This solution helps to build a platform where you can build a standard process across the world, and you get benefits from that idea of standardization where anybody can do anybody else's job as it's exactly the same all over the world. There is that advantage as well.

In corporate performance management where you're looking at building out forecasts, modeling data, and have really heavy interaction with data, it's extremely useful due to the fact that, unlike using Excel to build out models and things like that, it's very collaborative.

While you can put Excel in the cloud, and try to collaborate that way, it doesn't necessarily work as well. Whereas, this works really well as a collaboration solution. You can build complex data models. You can have lots of people entering lots of different pieces of data into them, similar to what you have in Excel, and yet, it's in the cloud and it's designed for the cloud, and it's a bit more structured than Excel.

It takes out a lot of the risks you have in building models in Excel. On the other side of the spectrum, you have your consolidation tools. You've got your Hyperion, you've got your adapters. Their primary purpose is to consolidate large amounts of data. They're typically quite purpose-built with little ability to customize them and their core function is consolidation. You can also add driver-based solutions on top of that. It's very rudimentary, and it's very designed around the application. These solutions typically are for corporate performance management. If you're a smaller company, and you just need a basic consolidation solution, that's where you go. 

Where we're seeing the opportunity in the market is at the Fortune 100 companies that have far more complex modeling type scenarios where you need to be able to have a lot of people collaborating together, and you need a lot of information all at everyone's fingertips. This is where you see the big advantage of a solution like Anaplan.

Anaplan is a relatively expensive piece of software. It's definitely being applied to very complex problems, and if the price were to drop I expect it would be more broadly adopted. 

From a product point of view, they have launched some new reporting functionality, which is pretty basic compared to something like Power BI.

What they have done to compensate for the reporting was to build native APIs into something like Power BI and Tableau, so that you can integrate your data into a reporting suite. The need to continue to develop this. There's new functionality all the time, however, some of the core functionality was lacking about three, four years ago. It's continuously getting resolved and improving, and I'm now pleased with the level of functionality, however, they need to keep going in this direction.

I've used it for about the last five years.

I've been super impressed with the performance. I use other technologies for multi-billion dollar, trillion-dollar companies, and they can sometimes be a little bit challenging, especially if you haven't got a great PC. Due to the fact that this is all in-memory computing, the stability has been pretty good. 

The challenge to that is building the model. For example, we just built a model for a client recently, and we created a holiday calendar, which had a relatively complex calculation in it. That was actually slowing the entire model down. Every time there was a change, we just had to hard code the numbers as opposed to having it calculating all the time. That said, the actual stability is pretty solid.

Still, when you're building the model, you can get performance issues, which may be caused by actual model design, as opposed to the software itself. My advice is to make sure to spend the money on a good architect. If you can get a good architect, you're fine with the builders as most people pick it up quickly. 

It's phenomenally good at scaling. We built a solution for a retail chain, which basically initiated transfers from a centralized hub down to stores. There were 800 stores and about 600 skews in each store. It was all machine learning that drove the purchasing. And we were able to, on a daily basis, send an automated transfer to the central hub. There were six hubs around the world, and it would automatically on a daily basis send anything between 100 and 250,000 skews to different stores based on predictive algorithms. 

Typically, it's very unusual to deal with a small business. Typically Fortune 100 companies are using this product. There are a couple of different models, however, just the cost of being able to build a model, for a smaller company, that amount it would cost doesn't make any sense.

Also, typically, smaller companies don't have as many complex problems to solve. You can have a standardized model, whether it's a forecasting model or a headcount model, full cost and headcount, or a sales model and things like that. For smaller companies, Excel could handle it.

We do have plans to increase usage in the future.

Typically the way it works is that you normally start off with a use case or a number of use cases, and then the client gets used to using it. They build up an internal team as well, and then they expand the use cases out, and that continues to kind of build-out. There are just hundreds of modeling opportunities where you can bring in two sets of data, where you can bring in lots of people putting information in and, you can bring in predictive analytics. So there's always a huge amount of opportunity. The nice thing about Anaplan, as well, is it's very connected. I can use that one use case and I can use data out of that use case in another model, and all the models are connected. If somebody changes something in one model, then it'll change in the other models as well.

The tech support is pretty good. They're very responsive, and that typically means they're pretty good at solving problems. They can tend to take a little bit of time. Sometimes the challenges that we have are, typically, quite complex. 

When we had a performance issue on one of our models, it took them at least three weeks to do a full review of the model as the models are quite complex. However, they did a detailed breakdown line by line and there were probably 10,000 lines of items in here. It's built as cubes, so we have line items inside the cubes, similar to a pivot table in Excel. They did a full analysis, and then we got a detailed report at the end of where we had performance issues on a line-by-line basis and we could easily fix those issues.

Previously, if we were building models and things like that, we would typically build them in SQL, and, before then, Microsoft Access, and before then, Excel. Some of my clients still use Excel just to keep it kind of simple, however, the reason why we switched to it is that it's really easy to set up the user interface, so you can build something that used to take us six months in SQL with a web UI. Now it takes us six weeks to build something. It's just the speed to deployment which is significantly faster. This is due to the UI which is very well designed, so you can build out that UI very, very quickly. Then the model in the background is also extremely powerful as it's all in memory. The barrier for most companies is the cost to switch. A lot of our clients would stay with Excel models until they got to a certain point, or a company got to a certain size, and then they would move over to an Anaplan.

My background is not technical. My background is in finance. Therefore, picking up a solution is relatively quick if you're familiar with building models in Excel, or some of the other technologies out there. However, for a non-technical user, it is relatively easy to pick up. A lot of our clients don't necessarily use their IT department to support Anaplan, however, it does require that the people internally are trained. My advice is also to get a very good architect.

A lot of the projects we do are actually fixing other people's models. For example, people have built out a particular model that hasn't been positionally well designed. What we end up doing is going in and redesigning the model just to optimize it. What we need from clients is to really get them to focus on ongoing support. Getting them trained up is a key part of the deployment. Making sure that they are driving the functionality, et cetera, however, where we support them a lot is more in that initial design phase to make sure that we're building the right model for them.

The deployments are typically pretty small. For a small deployment, probably two or three people are needed. A larger one might have up to ten people.

For deployment, what we normally do is we do it in phases. A typical phase will be about three months, and a lot of our projects last a couple of years. The solution is very agile, so typically when we deploy, we have something up and running in the first month so that we can start to set it against people's expectations and understand some of the challenges. A typical project lasts three months. It might be to build a particular model, and then we'll go on and then we build another model or enhance the first one and things like that. For a typical deployment, end-to-end, is about three months.

The product probably doesn't require maintenance. The reality is that if you're doing business modeling, business modeling is constantly going to change. It doesn't necessarily need maintenance, and yet, typically, you don't want to build something that's static for very long, so you're constantly updating it. Where we see companies doing well is to have them invest in the development upfront, and then invest in what they call a center of excellence that is an internal team of people, that's centralized that can help architects and build future enhancements. Then, you have Anaplan experts within the business that can update and build constant enhancements. If you think about the modeling capability, this is not something that is like a one-off kind of development. It's typically an ongoing thing. 

We had COVID in between, so the dates are not a hundred percent accurate, however, a client was looking at a significant cost return just being able to get the right level of inventory in every store across the world meant that, there was a 5% impact on the bottom line. I haven't got the final numbers yet. They are still working them out, however, from what we were seeing from sales, there was a 5% increase at least in sales. That was all translating to the bottom line as well.

Some client ROI's are a little bit more difficult to quantify. It's ROI in saving people time and being more accurate. One of our clients went from 10% to 2% accuracy of the full cost, which meant that they were able to make far better decisions. They knew exactly how much things were going to cost, for example. This is an IT organization within a Fortune 100 company, a tech company. It made their lives a lot easier when they were going through this massive uncertainty. They were able to really understand exactly what their underlying costs were.

The entry-level is anywhere from about $30,000 to $50,000 a year, however, it does go up significantly after that depending on the complexity and how much space you're using. It's really driven by the number of users and also the space. It's more the user base, however, sometimes you need to buy extra users just to get the space.

Currently, we are working on a partnership agreement with Anaplan.

It's one of the areas that I probably haven't explored enough at the moment, however, they have added integration into machine learning as well. The idea of that is you can build out a model and then you can push it through a machine learning model and then you can get an answer out of that. That's an area that I haven't probably spent enough time exploring, however, we're definitely working towards that.

If you've only got one person that's going to be building, then you probably want to go with something else, however, if you've got a complex modeling problem, and you've got a lot of people that are interacting with it, your typical kind of forecast and where you want to collect data from loads of different people, and you're just finding that Excel isn't doing it for you, this solution is worth considering.

I'd rate the solution a nine out of ten. If there'd be any reason why not a ten, it is just it is that much more expensive. It's a lot more difficult to get more clients onto it. You need to be a certain size to get it, to use it, however, from a stability point of view, from delivering value, et cetera, it's well worth it.

We concentrate now on financial planning. However, we have intentions to move towards supply planning. My company uses the tool to know the key players in the market.

I am impressed with the tool’s real-time calculations and intuitive interface. The tool’s user interface is the best compared to other software that I have worked with. I also find the tool’s management reporting feature valuable.

The tool needs to work on its integration with MS Excel and MS Word. The tool does not allow data analysis in spreadsheets which is possible on other platforms. I want the solution to be more collaborative to facilitate decision-making in organizations.

I have been working with the solution for three to four years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. There are around 10-20 users for the solution.

The tool’s support is responsive but its Workaround Time is not very helpful.

Neutral

We chose Anaplan based on the client’s requirements.

The tool’s setup is easy. The tool’s deployment depends on the requirements of both users and clients. The overall deployment will not take more than four to five weeks to complete. One week is required for the determination of user requirements and another four to five weeks for the solution’s deployment.

The tool’s pricing is reasonable and competitive with other solutions.

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. This product is an important Enterprise Performance Management tool. It has one of the most powerful calculation engines called Hyperblock.

We use Anaplan as a retail budgeting and planning solution. We use our retail private-based planning solution for almost one hundred entities. Anaplan is a cloud-based solution. 

We have integrated SAP with Anaplan because our base is SAP. Anaplan doesn't require any coding language. It's very Excel-based with respect to the models, so a user should be very strong in modeling.

Anaplan is a driver-based solution. For a finance-driven project, the business inputs the revenue or the expense lines, which is directly connected to your financial statements and further integrated to your core systems for your consolidation of other things. For example, with store planning for new stores, it calculates the ROI.

It's real-time connected planning, so the calculations are pretty much seamless as far as your model is connected. That's the major advantage, and it's cloud-based and very UX friendly.

There are workspace issues, like the limitation on model sizes. The model is very limited to 130GB, a base model. We were one of the use cases to go beyond 130GB for a model size. So it's not enterprise-wide. Performance is quite weak if there are concurrent users. In the next release, I would like to see performance improved. It can't handle concurrent users because of the way it's designed.

Integration is not that strong. We use a connector called Anaplan Connect, which needs a lot of interface to work on.

License cost is quite huge compared to the other solutions we ran in the market. It's too costly for SME businesses.

I have been using Anaplan for three years.

Anaplan invests a lot. In the past year, there have been a lot of developed features. They have spent a lot of time on R&D and pretty much every day, every quarter, or every 15 days they do an announcement pack, and every month I see new features coming in because they have made a lot of improvements.

But they have also made a lot of improvements that might not add value to us. However, I like to see more and more as we get into new business cases. Within a month, there could be 10 to 15 improvements, and not all will be useful for us, but from a product strategy perspective, it's good. From a business point of view, we use maybe one or two developments because of how we have developed it earlier.

They have restrictions on the space, so scalability is currently limited, but they are working on that because they are trying to make it wider.

We have around 300 people using Anaplan in our organization, and they have a category of users to work on. Model builders manage the model and there are also planners and then reporting users. We have a wide range of users, like IT consultants, who are on the lead level. I lead, but I also do hands-on. There are developers and then FP&A professionals, and I have brand managers and finance managers who are doing the reporting.

Our entire retail division is on Anaplan for FP&A solutions. Every business is using it. Once you get in, you can't come out because you have replaced your traditional way of planning using Anaplan, so pretty much all users are bound to use it. From a scalability point of view, our organization is quite wide with respect to divisions, like retail. We brought treasury in for cash flows. We are working on real estate and probably will go with automotive soon.

We are thinking that our numbers will increase to around a thousand plus. The reporting is quite huge because that's the cheaper one in Anaplan. With planning, you will be reaching around 400 plus because it's not financial alone; it's business cum finance, so it's a wide reach.

They are very customer oriented. You get your responses very quickly, and their turnaround to fix problems is also very quick: around four hours. They don't have any kind of portal, but they are building on it. It is all through mail communication. Once you send something,  there is somebody immediately supporting you 24/7.

They have a huge documentation space for troubleshooting. Because it's a very small solution with less customization, it's more about your thought process and they have forums to help you out based on user experience. From a technical side, it is very easy to understand. But to do the customization part you need someone for support, and the forums are helpful.

We have business planning and consolidation SAP BPC. It's primarily a financial-driven tool because you just do it at a high level and collect information as a data dump. You don't have any driver-based solutions that extensively in BPC. We went with Anaplan because our focus was on driver-based solutions and cloud strategy.

The solutions are completely different because the other solution is purely an Excel-based solution, a native product, and is much less driver-based. It was very finance-focused, but Anaplan is quite a different strategy for us.

It's very straightforward actually and much more user friendly. A business can run it, and I learned Anaplan during this course.

Normally, the deployment shouldn't take more than three to four months for simple usage. For us, we took around six months because of the user adoption, which is a hundred plus entities. The six months included the customization and testing.

It's a top-down approach. Basically, you go to the end to see what you want and work backward to the calculations and data.

Right now, we haven't seen any ROI from using Anaplan. With the current solution, we are trying to make that work because that was our first learning. When we thought it would reach to business, we struggled to establish the finance itself. When it reaches to business, you get the ROI. If it doesn't reach to business, it is just another tool where people just upload data. We got licenses and we pretty much use them for different focus areas. We have had success in a few cases, but we haven't gotten the full ROI, which is what we invested initially.

The license is a yearly subscription. There are three licensing tiers: the model builder, planner, and the reporting. The reporting is the cheapest. Model builder is the costliest one. Depending on the type of license you buy, you get more spaces to work on.

There are some additional costs to the standard licensing fees. For example, we go with the extended workspace ISIS. For that, they charge for model optimization if you are below the premium customer level, so we were having more licenses. We are in the premium level, but if you are below premium, they charge for your model optimization, or they charge you if they want to investigate something on the licenses.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. There is still room for improvement because of the integration issues. 

If your strategies are more toward driver-based solutions and if you have a very lean implementation approach, Anaplan is the best solution you can get. If you're okay with spending lots of money and aren't SAP-bound, Anaplan is the best in the market right now.

Currently, I'm working in marketing and promotions. This includes promotions like buy one, get one offers, supply chain management, as well as forecasting supply and demand. All of this is done in Anaplan. We load the data into the app and plan the business execution at the retail level, including the pricing, payments to the retailers, and so on. 

Before Anaplan, we would have to supply a lot of technical resources to the team just to make sure the solution was up and running. The great thing about Anaplan is that you don't need to have much technical knowledge. You don't need a lot of raw technical knowledge, but you'll have to have functional knowledge.

Anaplan's in-memory calculation engine is super-fast compared to the old tools we previously used. You enter the data and everything shows up in one go. It's all refreshed across the system. So let's say we have a central system that is connected to workforce planning, supply chain planning, demand planning, dispatch planning, etc. If you change one number, it will update everywhere. Reporting is instant. You don't need to load it, refresh it, save it—it auto-saves and is processed by the in-memory calculation engine. 

I would like to see Anaplan adopt machine learning algorithms. That's where everything is heading—a package with AI, forecasting, and so on—but Anaplan still lacks it. Anaplan could make some improvements in terms of graphs and visualizations. They do have nice graphs to show the data, but when I compare it to Tableau or Power BI, Anaplan's charting ability is lacking. At the same time, I know it's not a BI tool. It does what it's supposed to do, but machine learning forecasting and artificial intelligence are much needed now. It still uses statistical forecasting. It's all formula- or history-based. There isn't really seasonal forecasting based on what we can now predict because of COVID and all. So the tools still won't support these sorts of forecasting.

Also, the cloud engine slows down when working with a large dataset. It still lacks a powerful engine. There are a couple of areas they're still working on and recently they have improved a lot. And there are some features that have been lost when they update, but that is more related to the tool aspect, not the usability.

We have inside access, so I can see the roadmap of what Anaplan is planning to implement. There's nothing specific that I would like to see that they haven't included there. They're working on the beta version of machine learning as well as the user experience. There are some new features like the ability to generate a PPT-style report within the system itself. 

In terms of the UI and dashboards, much needs to be improved. It's not perfect but compared to others, it is way better. And the way I had from other tools, actually, in terms of everything. I know there are a couple of improvements and announcements the way they use it and all, but it's always a trade-off between how people take it as an output or else anything. 

I've been using Anaplan for the last five or six years. I work with Anaplan full-time on 
implementation, solution architecture, etc.

It's hard to say evaluate the stability of Anaplan considering different users will have different needs and experiences. Just financial planning by itself doesn't require a large application. But if you add to that workforce planning, supply chain management, and marketing, then you'll need a bigger model in terms of data. At that level, it doesn't seem to be very sustainable, but when it comes to the FP&A and other stuff, it's very stable.

They've been working on it, and there are some integrations currently available to connect with the output and input sources, but not on a very large scale as other tools can. It does have a decent APA connection. That's where people can integrate with other systems as well. There is support for connecting Dell Boomi, SnapLogic, Informatica Teradata, and a couple of other things.

Technical support from Anaplan is excellent. But I haven't seen any major setback that required technical support. Sometimes the server was down and we couldn't do anything. Support from Anaplan in those instances was great. It's not like other tools where the server keeps failing. Everything is in the cloud, and we hardly see things collapsing.

I have worked on TM1, Essbase, Hyperion, and other similar tools with these capabilities. Comparing to these, I think Anaplan is doing a great job. But in terms of actual user experience, there is room for improvement.

That's one reason people like Anaplan. Setup is very straightforward. You just log in. That's it. There is no IT setup required at all.

I don't have data on that yet, but I think initially it's not too much. Let's say I buy a license and in the first year, I might not see a big difference in terms of ROI. But from the second year onwards, it's actually double the initial ROI or else one-and-a-half times it. That's really awesome. I think there are articles on Anaplan itself, which I have reviewed, but I don't recall those numbers. There will be a dip in the first year when they do the licensing and go live for the first time. But after that, when a customer starts expanding to multiple countries or territories, then they will see the real impact of the driver-based analysis and optimization Anaplan provides.

This is a yearly subscription. So a customer initially buys a workspace and specifies how much GB they want. The minimum starts at around 30 GB. You can buy multiple workspaces.

Anaplan sets a limit on the size of the model. Say that you pay for 130 GB and you want to increase this to 560 or 700 GB, you have to buy a separate one and pay a lot for it. But let's say if you are running a business model on a supply chain and you can't run a model that is more than 130 GB. That's too much. And they'll have to pay and purchase a separate workspace that is 700 GB. They call it "HyperCare" or a "HyperModel" and that's too expensive. 

Pricing is premium because they're the market leader right now. Their competitors are still far behind.  haven't seen a real competitor in Anaplan's niche. Of course, IBM has  Watson Analytics. However, when it comes to implementation, that's too technical and people tend to prefer Anaplan over that. 

Overall things are moving into the cloud. Of course, COVID taught us a great lesson. We used to go to the office and work because the servers are everything. The whole IT setup was required to work on something. But now the business is easier. You sit here and log into Anaplan and run a supply chain model and see how the whole inventory is optimized.  Everything is here in the system. Probably in maybe another five to 10 years, more players will come into this field because of the pandemic. I think Anaplan predicted it a long time ago. That's why everybody's moving into Anaplan, thinking it's safe to run a business on.

If you're considering Anaplan, you should assess the tool first in terms of capability. We have seen some use cases where we're not exactly certain Anaplan is the right fit in terms of the procurement area. Some use cases might not really fit into Anaplan. Another feedback is that Anaplan might require a clean dataset to be fed in in order to get the whole thing working.

There are some ups and downs when it comes to the capability of other engines with Anaplan, but what Anaplan makes simpler is the ease of use. It's simple and gets the job done.

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.