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Anaplan vs SAS Activity-Based Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Anaplan
Ranking in Business Performance Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Production Planning (2nd), Predictive Analytics (4th)
SAS Activity-Based Management
Ranking in Business Performance Management
19th
Average Rating
5.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Business Performance Management category, the mindshare of Anaplan is 6.2%, down from 14.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Activity-Based Management is 2.5%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Performance Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Anaplan6.2%
SAS Activity-Based Management2.5%
Other91.3%
Business Performance Management
 

Featured Reviews

Segun Oladele - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Manager, Accounting at BIC
Reporting and forecasting have become more automated through intuitive data organization and flexible number calendarization
I do not have any improvements from my own end at this time.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.
it_user530763 - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees
Helps to compare production costs across different departments. Try CostPerform from QPR.
Helps to compare production costs across different departments The data integration is very complex Visualization of the cost flow is not user-friendly It takes hours to build OLAP cubes to analyze the results of the model We have been using this solution for three years. I would rate the…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"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."
"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."
"Anaplan's connected planning feature is its most valuable aspect, allowing for seamless financial planning, HR planning, and updates."
"The multidimensionality helps significantly with scenario planning, allowing me to run various scenarios and check the outcomes, which suits my needs well."
"Anaplan paid for itself with what it saved on new hires."
"It has supported a global process change to sales forecasting and created a single method for this."
"Anaplan has positively impacted my organization by reducing the time my team previously spent hours on reporting, and now this time has been minimized, and they are easily maintaining things in Anaplan."
"There is a full set of reports available for sales."
"Helps to compare production costs across different departments."
"Cube generation is a valuable feature."
"The product allows us to calculate the distributed cost across activities."
"We use ABM as an expense allocation model and it has improved the awareness and accountability of the cost incurred due to the traceability feature."
"The product helped determine the organization's true cost of providing its products and services to customers."
 

Cons

"One key area of improvement is pricing."
"Anaplan is a relatively expensive piece of software."
"Right now, we haven't seen any ROI from using Anaplan."
"The ability of the end-users to manage the software is due to the fact that it becomes so sophisticated; on top of that, there are so many business rules to set up in the system that as a business user it's hard to gauge what they're doing and it's possible to get lost."
"The negative is that the higher the flexibility, the higher is the complexity."
"One area of improvement is conditional formatting. It's not very practical, and you need to specify additional formatting."
"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."
"I would rate scalability between six and seven. Anaplan had issues before, but the new Polaris engine solves them, although its implementation is more challenging compared to the Classic engine."
"The data integration is very complex Visualization of the cost flow is not user-friendly It takes hours to build OLAP cubes to analyze the results of the model"
"We experienced severe performance issues when the models created are getting more details and becoming more complex."
"The usability needs to be improved but bear in mind that we did not have the latest update."
"The interface is poorly designed and could really use an improvement to compete with other comparable software."
"It could be made much more simpler. Most of the time it looks like a black box for developers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are currently using a free workspace license for 90 days. We are satisfied with the price of the solution. There are additional costs if you want more storage, the default limit is 250 GB."
"This is an expensive product and if the price were reduced then it would attract more customers."
"The tool’s pricing is reasonable and competitive with other solutions."
"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."
"Anaplan is a bit pricier compared to its competitors - the license costs about $4,000 per user annually."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What are your main use cases for Anaplan?
Anaplan is an industry-leading cloud-based corporate performance management (CPM) platform that combines business planning and analytics in a single solution. It is designed to assist organizations...
Is Board better than Anaplan as a Business Intelligence (BI) solution?
We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simu...
Is Anaplan better than SAP ERP?
There are different aspects of both Anaplan and SAP ERP that I like and dislike. Anaplan improves forecast accuracy and drives up the quality of analytics. Rather than spending all of their time co...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

HP, ForeScout, DocuSign, EAT, Pandora, Aviva, Intel Security, Zalora
Bank of Queensland, Barclays Bank, BioMar, Danske Bank, Danske Spil, DPPS, First Allied
Find out what your peers are saying about Anaplan vs. SAS Activity-Based Management and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.