Anaplan Reviews

For example, with rolling forecasts, you can go back after three months to do a rolling forecast and determine whether to replan forward or backward.

Anaplan saves time for me and is cost effective.

The main benefits that I have seen from using Anaplan are the ease of automation and the way the feature looks and feels. The UI and UX is simple and you can easily see the general overview of what you have done. The chart tree is easy to follow. If you are not used to using that resource, it may take some time, but for Anaplan, it is easy to get your way around with the tree of the charts and chart of accounts.

There are some specific features or functionality that I would like to see included in Anaplan in the future. From what we have been using, I do not think there is any specific one because we import and export numbers. Importing and exporting with CSV files is already available in Anaplan. I do not have any special requests from Anaplan.

I still decided to give Anaplan an eight because I have not seen a specific dashboard on Anaplan. Anaplan could have a dashboard where you can see the flow of your numbers displayed on pictorials rather than just saying this is the number. Simple dashboards should be implemented.

Anaplan has helped to adapt to market changes. Planning happens outside of Anaplan because you need to consider economic situations and the factors that are driving your numbers. If, for example, we are planning inflation to be single digit but it becomes double, you have to go into Anaplan to change that. Anaplan will not automatically do that for you.

I like Anaplan more than the Cognos product because it is more updated and works with different tools. You can automate with various features and even implement artificial intelligence to help data flow properly. Anaplan is more current. In the age of artificial intelligence, if Anaplan could research into using more artificial intelligence to design and sort data, that would be beneficial.

My recommendation for other organizations considering Anaplan is to adopt it for the ease of working with it to do reporting and planning. It consolidates your efforts so that you do not have to report in one place and budget in another place.

I gave this review a rating of eight.

I work for different use cases in the FP&A domain, similar to Anaplan, including cost and expense planning and forecasting scenarios, workforce planning and forecasting scenarios, net sales and revenue calculation, and currently I'm working with performance management use case in Anaplan.

We used to create data hub models in Anaplan. Our source systems were S/4HANA and different other ERP systems. We loaded data from the source system into Anaplan data hub model. In Anaplan data hub, we loaded data in a flat way and then used those lists and module saved views to create the hierarchies and pull them into the spoke models. In Anaplan spoke models, we created different input modules, calculation modules, and output modules, creating reportings including P&L reporting and different other reportings. From Anaplan to different target systems, such as OneStream and HFM, we sent Anaplan data at the higher level.

When we were calculating net sales and revenue calculation in Anaplan, we worked on the allocations part where we loaded data into Anaplan at the high level and then allocated those forecast numbers and plan numbers at the ground level for different hierarchies including products, customer, cost center and department level. We then rolled it up at the higher level in the hierarchy and sent it to the source system or the downstream systems.

Before we implemented Anaplan, our clients used to calculate the numbers in Excel files. It was not real-time data. One user would complete their part of work and then forward it to another user who could implement it in the Excel file. It was not real-time and was a very time-taking process. After we implemented it in Anaplan, it made the calculations much easier and at one time, multiple users could log into Anaplan and work simultaneously for different areas. This helped us to reduce the cost of employees and increased the performance of the team and the system.

Implementing Anaplan helped us to save almost 150 hours per month.

After implementing Anaplan, we were able to increase performance by 50% and achieved 150 hours of savings.

Anaplan provides different useful features. We have the integration capability where we do not need to load the data manually into Anaplan. We can integrate with the source system or the target system and automate those jobs using CloudWorks. Real-time data calculation is another important feature of Anaplan. User access management provides the security and selective access for different users to access Anaplan. Anaplan has a front end with new UX, which is very good for customers. Customers can modify the UX pages according to their view and needs, apply different filters, and create pie charts and graphs. Anaplan provides the ability for users to update the view on the front-end UX page. Modeling is very simple for Anaplan model builders and developers.

Anaplan provides the flexibility to plan and forecast numbers at the ground level. This is another important feature, which is not available in many other different tools for planning and forecasting.

There is a chance of improvement for the history. In Anaplan back-end model, if there is any change, it is captured in the history. However, on the front-end UX page, if there are any changes on the UX page, there is no history captured. This can be improved. Sometimes we see our production environment, dev and test environment, and they have two different apps, but the UX pages appear different in both environments. We are not able to track how it got updated and by whom it got updated. If any kind of history can be captured on the front-end UX page, that would be really appreciated and helpful.

I have been using Anaplan for the last seven years.

Anaplan is stable.

Anaplan is scalable. I have good experience with it.

Customer support is good. We are getting the kind of support that we need from Anaplan.

I have not evaluated any other option. I moved into Anaplan and I am happy working with Anaplan, so I am not exploring any other option.

I rate Anaplan as a nine out of ten. As I have already mentioned, there is a lesser area of improvement, but there are still some chances that we can improve in Anaplan. I have not used any specific tool because I was part of the testing team and Q&A team. Moving into Anaplan was a good experience because I gained experience in development and there is no specific computer language that I need to learn to develop in Anaplan. As a model builder starting with Anaplan, one should be very focused on Anaplan Way certification and then Anaplan Level One and Level Two certification. This would really help. From an end user perspective, Anaplan is not meant for allocations. Whenever someone wants to work with Anaplan, they need to keep the performance and size in mind. This should be kept in mind before we bring the requirement or discuss the requirement. We are using Anaplan to increase the performance of the team, which should be considerable. There are no concerns. It is going well. I have an overall good experience working with Anaplan. It is time-saving and provides very accurate numbers for forecasting and planning.

IBM Planning Analytics is better for large data manipulation, whereas Anaplan excels in the presentation side and ease of use. My group company uses Anaplan for summarizing clean data, while the UK region company uses Planning Analytics for detailed calculations and speed.

I develop in both Anaplan and IBM Planning Analytics, so I know both very well. I try to find ways to compare them for various purposes and explain their slightly different use cases based on the tools' capabilities.

Anaplan's focus on APIs helps streamline data consolidation, while IBM Planning Analytics offers stronger capabilities in base-level data and detailed calculations.

Anaplan is excellent for summarizing clean data and is easier to use for reporting and security, while Planning Analytics is better for data cleansing and low-level data manipulation. The ease of developing individual models in Anaplan is notable, allowing users to handle it with minimal complication.

Anaplan's problem is that it has its own niche market. It cannot perform some tasks handled by Planning Analytics due to their different foundations, Anaplan on Hyperblock technology and TM1 on OLAP.

Anaplan lacks a native ETL tool, making it challenging to integrate numerous flat files. Its licensing model could also be changed, and integration with other solutions simplified.

The report on Anaplan and Planning Analytics could have been more detailed.

I have worked with Planning Analytics for years.

I do not use technical support much because I write code, run servers, and handle technical aspects myself, minimizing reliance on external customer service.

Planning Analytics and Anaplan have unique selling points despite being marketed in the same area. They are not the same tool, each catering to different needs. It is important to choose based on specific user requirements and end goals.

Anaplan has a different pricing methodology compared to Planning Analytics, with a more consolidated approach. This difference might guide a company's decision to switch tools if cost structure is a concern.

I do not view it in a commercial competition way; it is more about which tool is best for my specific data needs.

I am still exploring what features could be suggested for improvement since Anaplan and IBM Planning Analytics serve different purposes in our applications.

I have colleagues who are Anaplan salespeople and marketers, driving its adoption across different companies.

Anaplan is marketed strongly, and many cannot see the distinction without understanding the backend and coding structures.

I would rate this review a nine out of ten.

Anaplan is used for FP&A, and we are currently working on CAPEX and P&L Signify. Whenever the year comes, there are usually healthcare benefits planned, which I work on for a client, CVS Health.

There are projected, budgeted, and forecasted items, and based on that, the dashboards are projected with different schemes of healthcare. The team plans accordingly to arrive at the best possible ways to provide for the customer and how revenue is generated. The dashboards consist of a P&L, balance sheet, and other financial dashboards that we prepare.

About my main use case and how my team interacts with Anaplan, we first go through the development phase based on user stories and client requirements. Some other teams handle the development part while the integration team switches on. Once the development is done, we deploy it, including tests and different functionalities we use to test. If we find any functionality defects, we raise another ticket in Rally for resolution. Once the defects are fixed, we retest the functionality, which includes UAT and production testing before moving it through synchronization to live production.

Anaplan offers various optimization aspects, enhanced dashboards with new features in the front end, and flexible optimization capabilities that provide enriched functionalities with time releases.

The recent enhanced functionalities that made the biggest difference for my team are the Hypercare functionality, which allows for quick resolution of any issues arising from enhancements and implementation tasks. It provides optimization in a better way before upcoming features. Hypercare is an enriched functionality in Anaplan that landed last December and January 2026.

Anaplan has positively impacted my organization by reducing the coding work involved by developers. It increases work flexibility and enables a better division of tasks among testing, development, and implementation teams. With page administrators looking into technologies, the integration takes data from legacy systems and integrates various systems, offering a broader scope than prior systems.

Specific outcomes that show how Anaplan has helped include saving time through integrating large data from AWS directly via CloudWorks. It also reduces the time for scheduling and running reports. Once scheduled, it runs on specific days or times, allowing for month-end closings without manual intervention unless there are bugs or formatting issues. Overall, it works smoothly, enhancing time efficiency and quality levels with an automated data hub.

Anaplan can be improved, particularly regarding latency issues when running deployments that may cause the system to hang. Reducing latency during huge data imports is necessary, as server hang-ups can create significant problems. Cleanup at the Anaplan level for any unwanted data and addressing latency issues could ensure uninterrupted services.

Regarding needed improvements, the user experience has some bugs, particularly with fields involving production and structural data. Data loss happens when redeploying a specific choice, and preventing this would require additional features.

I have been using Anaplan for the past four years and beyond.

Most of the features are repetitive, and the existing functionalities are enriched, so there is not much to add.

My advice for others looking into using Anaplan is that it is portable, and I recommend exploring its flexibility and integration capabilities with existing and upcoming software applications. It is beneficial to analyze the cost advantages as Anaplan connects all databases and applications, both internal and external.

Anaplan is good as of now, but I think there should be exploration into different business areas where it has not been implemented, especially in smaller regions such as the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, based on my observation. I would rate this review as a positive assessment of Anaplan's current capabilities and potential.

Anaplan is used for many typical use cases, starting from finance, supply chain, territory and quota planning, sales and operations planning, marketing management, call center planning, to incentive compensation, and many others. I do utilize Anaplan's scenario planning feature.

The multidimensionality helps significantly with scenario planning, allowing me to run various scenarios and check the outcomes, which suits my needs well. Anaplan performs exceptionally in scenario planning.

The user interface in simplifying data modeling is simple and user-friendly; it makes it easy for end users, and I often call it Excel on steroids because it is as easy to handle and use as Excel.

The strong points of Anaplan include the dashboarding capabilities, integration perspective, and various domain outcomes with multidimensionality, so there are various positive points, more than negatives.

When addressing what could be improved about Anaplan, I acknowledge that drawbacks can be the pricing, and at this point, the scalability is getting questioned due to several other tools emerging that are more scalable in nature, along with challenges in dealing with sparse data sets that increase the size of Anaplan considerably, which competitors are working on and challenging Anaplan's market position.

I believe the licensing cost for Anaplan is on the higher side, as there are cheaper options coming into the market, so I think it is somewhat overpriced.

I have been using Anaplan for more than eight years.

There were some integration issues earlier, but now, with product development and good integration capabilities, Anaplan is performing very well with new features. Previously, the product faced many integration challenges and was not supported by many integration suites, but that situation has significantly improved.

Anaplan as a company provides implementation services for customers. I am currently working on Anaplan for different companies, specifically in the internal finance team of Qualitest Global, where I support the internal Anaplan models.

In terms of technical support, I would rate Anaplan a two out of ten, as they are poor. They are not very responsive, and they often try to sell packages or new products every time I seek technical support, which is not satisfactory.

It does not take much time to deploy a solution according to the use case and the implementation being performed. The duration depends on various factors, such as whether I am working on a project that outputs only two reports, which will not take much time, or a bigger project with more than two hundred reports, which obviously takes more time, regardless of the finance side of it.

The number of people usually involved in implementation, such as configuration and deployment, depends on the size of the project. It depends on the size of the use case being implemented, and it is not fixed that a certain use case will require a specific number of resources.

For benefits utilization and measurement, I do not have any specific metrics for using Anaplan's real-time insights for decision-making.

When talking about cheaper options, I refer to Pigment and Board, which come at a slightly cheaper cost; it depends on what is being selected, and Onine is also somewhat on the cheaper side or perhaps equivalent.

Anaplan does not have on-premises deployment; it is all on cloud.

I have not found clarity in the basis of questions regarding what the best features in Anaplan are or why customers choose this solution over others on the market.

I still use Anaplan, though I have seen many peers moving out of Anaplan due to pricing scenarios.

I have not utilized predictive analytics in Anaplan.

I would rate this review a seven overall.

My client is using Anaplan for budgeting and planning purposes. They execute their budgeting and planning processes by utilizing this tool.

Both Hyperion and Anaplan serve the same purpose for budgeting and planning, but Anaplan is cloud-based. Previously, my client was using Oracle Hyperion Planning and Essbase, which was on-premises. Anaplan, being a cloud-based platform, allows customers to adapt easily. It is easier to enter data, load data, and develop reports compared to Hyperion.

In Anaplan, once you create a system, the end user can utilize the reports immediately. Users can create UX pages with boards and worksheets. The boards contain different cards such as bar cards, chart cards, map cards, KPI cards, and field cards. These cards are used for high-level reports and top-level management reporting. For plant-wise location, worksheets can be created for analysis purposes, analyzing data at the plant level, while reports are used for top-level purposes.

The board functionality works similarly to a dashboard, where users can add different cards. Users can drag data and add chart cards, field cards, map cards, and KPI cards to a single board.

Anaplan can handle large sets of data and models within its ecosystem. Data volume is not an issue for the platform.

The tool is very effective from a user perspective, providing good analysis and reporting capabilities. It is an excellent tool for financial planning, supply chain planning, and territory and quota planning.

I have a total of 3.5 years of experience in Anaplan.

I provide technical support for clients but have not had experience contacting Anaplan's technical support directly.

Positive

The setup of Anaplan is very straightforward.

Currently, Anaplan is more expensive compared to other tools. This pricing is based on the tool's demands. However, I believe the price might decrease after some time.

I previously worked with Hyperion Essbase and Hyperion Planning from Oracle, and now I work with Anaplan technology.

I provide technical support to users for security-related issues, creating new administration roles, and workflow management. We assist with security provisioning, user creation, workflow issues, and technical business logic modifications. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Anaplan a 9.

I have been using Anaplan mainly for financial planning and model building from the beginning.

One of the recent projects that I worked on was for the financial planning of a China-based company. We obtained their data and used it for planning and analysis, which allowed us to conduct a profit analysis for them. This represents the recent use case that I have been part of.

I have mainly worked on financial planning, and beyond that, I have also been part of a project briefly that included a supply chain project. I also recognize that we can use Anaplan for validation.

Anaplan helps us in connected planning by allowing us to connect other software such as Excel and PowerPoint to Anaplan, making it very useful for obtaining reporting details and enabling integration between the tools very easily.

The integration process between Anaplan and other tools such as Excel and PowerPoint is quite smooth. The integration is very seamless compared to any other tools in the market, making Anaplan quite easy to integrate with different tools.

CloudWorks in Anaplan is a valuable feature that makes the integration and the scheduling of processes very seamless. I believe most people should know about it.

Since we began using Anaplan, our firm has been very organized, and we have been gradually moving up in the market. I attribute this success to using a very firm and seamless tool.

One improvement that could be added to Anaplan is to stabilize the models when data complexity increases, allowing us to manage our time and space well. This area does need some improvement.

Another feature that Anaplan should have is the ability to validate data already in the module in the form of a chart or a pie chart directly without needing specific apps or pages. This would greatly help in the visualization aspect.

I have been working in this field for almost three years.

Anaplan is stable.

Anaplan's scalability is quite good.

The customer support for Anaplan is good.

Negative

I have been using Anaplan since the beginning, so this is the primary tool I have used.

We evaluated other options such as Pigment, but due to Anaplan's more refined software and flexibility, we chose Anaplan over Pigment.

The main improvement was in productivity, where productivity actually increased compared to other tools, and time optimization has been a very key component in that tool.

What matters is how polished the software is, how flexible it is for the people, and how much it can help the company in scalability, making Anaplan a go-to software for them.

My main use case for Anaplan is financial planning and supply chain. In financial planning, we receive historical data and forecast by adding a percentage of increase and growth percentage to obtain forecast data for the next couple of years. We generate gross revenue, profit, and margin reports based on these forecasts.

Anaplan offers excellent features including workflow and cloud integration, along with cloud and integration management. Recently, I came across Data Orchestry, which represents the main features Anaplan currently provides. I also work with many features inside Anaplan's classic engine, and I would appreciate exploring that further.

Cloud integration management is straightforward. We have a Windows system where we perform scripting, and based on those tasks we handle in Anaplan, such as data loading and data exporting, we can accomplish our objectives.

Data Orchestry functions similarly to cloud integration management but is provided directly by Anaplan, where users can view the data directly, whether they are standard users or Anaplan developers. It is very useful and represents an extended version of how cloud integration works, with incremental load functionality.

Anaplan has positively impacted my organization by reducing the time my team previously spent hours on reporting. Now this time has been minimized, and they are easily maintaining things in Anaplan.

Anaplan is performing well currently and is introducing many new features, which is positive. I chose a rating of eight because there is one backlog item: we are currently not using Anaplan for data reporting purposes. If that feature becomes available in the future, I would rate it ten out of ten.

I have been working in my current field for almost four years.

I estimate that my team is saving sixty percent of the time compared to before.

My advice for others looking into using Anaplan is that it is a better tool you can use for your purpose; it is truly a good tool. Anaplan is growing significantly, so you can build a career around it. I would suggest that freshers or any experienced candidates who would like to learn should definitely explore Anaplan, as it is a zero-code tool requiring no coding at all. I would suggest one thing for future interviews: when conducting reviews or similar assessments, it is better to ask scenario-based questions or something more interesting rather than standard questions. I rated this product eight out of ten.

Positive

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.