Anaplan Functionality and Optimum Uses
Updated July 07, 2017
Anaplan Functionality and Optimum Uses
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Anaplan
We are currently using Anaplan exclusively in the finance organization. It was initially built to be a budget tool but has since shifted to help with childcare labor alignment and pricing tools. We're exploring the opportunity to use Anaplan as a reporting tool to help with company realignments and movements. Other departments are interested in getting into Anaplan for their own tools and processes.
- The amount of users that can be in Anaplan and making changes is HUGE. It's great being able to walk end users through the process and then immediately let them explore and check their understanding.
- Real time changes. Being able to make a change and instantly see the impact, even across several complex modules, helped immensely during the budget build. Making changes and being able to immediately tweak them, cut our build time and made the budget more accurate.
- Reduced blackbox budget calculations. This goes hand in hand with real time changes. We were able to walk our end users from start to finish through the process and show how changes in one section impact the final product. Even if the users didn't know the exact process they could see the impact from one input box to the next.
- The most challenging part of Anaplan was getting over its steep learning curve. It was very challenging to adjust logic from the excel language to Anaplan's language. Unfortunately it seems to be a necessary evil to really understand and use the tool.
- Unhelpful error messages. The error messages rarely help diagnosing the problem at hand. Better explanation on error messages could help significantly.
- Lack of formula formatting. This is not a con by itself but a huge opportunity going forward. Being able to add additional, even redundant, brackets would help itemizing formula logic.
I was not involved in the evaluation and selection of the Anaplan tool. Unfortunately I cannot speak to why Anaplan was selected.