Anaplan Reviews

• Ease of integration with Salesforce (Sales Cloud).
• Flexibility - the ability to run several different sales forecasting models, but have those parts roll-up to a corporate model.
• Extremely customizable (add fields, add dashboards/components, etc.)

• It has supported a global process change to sales forecasting and created a single method for this.
• It has created a global standard in corporate dashboards that all regions agreed to run the business from.
• It has simplified the sales forecasting process.
• It has increased visibility at a corporate & global sales leadership level where previously it was not possible in MS Excel.
• It has helped speed up business and reduced the time it took to report on and view the sales forecast.

Anaplan needs to place more limits on builders/developers in some cases because we found that if we continued to customize a given sales forecast model it would degrade performance slightly as we continued to add dimensions to our forecasting model.

We have used the solution for more than two years.

For the most part Anaplan had reliable up-time and stability so this was not an issue.

Small changes could create massive amounts of data without the Anaplan Builder knowing that they did that. This could push us over space/storage limits quickly.

After going live in August 2015 we had to double storage capacity and rebuild the entire forecasting model six months after go-live in Spring 2016 due to a poor initial design that led to wasted storage and less optimal performance.

Anaplan provided us with some great resources and Professional Services resources to get our initial sales forecasting model off the ground.

Previously we used MS Excel. We switched because we needed global visibility, forecasting accuracy and a cloud/SaaS/online solution for our sales organization.

The organization & forecasting solution in Excel had gotten so complex, took too long to aggregate and was giving Sales Leadership false forecasts (based on bad data).

Initially we thought it was straightforward, but it ended up being complex, but not because of Anaplan. The challenge was getting a Global Sales organization to agree on a single way to do sales forecasting. That took almost eight months to nail down. Once that was done, it only took six weeks to get the Anaplan sales forecating model setup and rolled out to our users.

Be mindful about storage limits initially. Also, make sure you decide how many Administrator licenses you need. If I recall, the Admin/Developer license costs ten times more than a standard user license so make sure you know how many of those you really need at your company to make cost effective decisions for your organization.

We also looked at Salesforce (native forecasting solution), Adaptive Insights and an IBM solution.

Get Anaplan Professional Services to start, make sure to pay for additional Anaplan training sessions and continue to invest in training for your organization. These skills are not easy to pick up so getting help to start your project is highly recommended.

The most valuable features are the dashboards and Model Map, as they speak to the business and they are the backbone of the modelling.

It’s very agile and we can do changes in minutes, rather than waiting for consultants and change requests. So, it’s as dynamic as the business.

• The sizing can be improved.
• Need more subsets for Versions and Time.
• Reporting can be vastly improved.

Right now, if we build a module using 3 versions, 100 GL Accounts, 25 Cost Centers, and 13 periods (12 months + 1 Year), the sizing of the model calculated would be 3*100*25*13 = 97500, irrespective of the data present in the module. I mean, even if you have only 1000 cells with data out of those 97500 cells, and the remaining cells are null, still the sizing is calculated for all the 97500 cells.

Further, we do not have an option of having only a few months or a few versions (Actual Forecast in module). We should either use them or not use them; if we can get a subset for the version and time, then we can reduce the sizing to some extent.

In the above example, if the module was only for forecasting purposes, then the sizing could be reduced to 65000 instead 97500 by reducing the number of versions to 2 from 3.

Sizing is the biggest challenge in providing solutions.

I have been using it for 2+ years.

The projects I have worked on were of medium scale and had no issues with stability.

The projects were of medium scale and had no issues with scalability, but sizing of the cloud server directly affects scalability and thus affects the cost.

Technical support is 8 out of 10.

Previously, we had a built-in and Excel-based solution. We switched for more agility, data control and transparency.

Initial setup was complex to design due to the diversified planning methods used by different operating companies within the organization.

The sizing is the biggest culprit, so please get your sizing done properly by giving all the details before you decide on going with Anaplan.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated TM1, along with SAP Business Planning and Consolidation.

Please keep in mind the sizing; the way sizing includes even empty cells is big disadvantage. The reporting for now is not up to mark if you do not use dashboards intelligently.

Anaplan's most valuable features are that it's a no-coding platform, everything can be scaled to your other functions, and it's easy to learn and use (especially because Anaplan provides excellent interactive training).

Anaplan should come up with flexible options to connect to a data warehouse rather than an Anaplan hub, like a data decoupling layer with an option for customers to maintain their data on their own cloud. They could also continue to improve their UX and provide more features on the reporting side, including more options for charts and graphs.

Anaplan is quite stable.

The initial setup is straightforward and rarely takes more than twelve weeks.

Anaplan gives a good ROI.

So long as Anaplan fits your requirements, it's quite affordable. It's a value-for-money product and a very reasonable price compared to competitors like SAP or IBM. There are multiple pricing models, and you only need the costlier license if you use the model builder.

I would advise those implementing Anaplan to go through the L1-L3 training program. I rate Anaplan as eight out of ten.

I'm using it to produce a proof of concept and SDNA.

The best thing is that it's very intuitive and user-friendly. You don't need coding skills to manipulate the platform.

One area of improvement is conditional formatting. It's not very practical, and you need to specify additional formatting for each line item, which increases the size.

These are also areas that could be improved for the long-term sustainability of the platform.

It's been about three months now.

There are around 13 users in my company using the solution. 

It's quite easy to set up. It doesn't require much effort.

It is an expensive solution. 

I would definitely recommend using the solution. It is a practical and easy-to-use solution. Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.