ADP Workforce Now vs. Anaplan

The ease in which you can process payroll and year end (T4s). Ability to maintain payroll - enter upcoming changes (e.g. pay raises for a certain date) ahead of time. While we don't use it in my current company, in past ones the time & attendance integration with timesheets is fabulous. Our company uses a 3rd party scheduling & timesheet platform which also integrates with one click but is a little more work to maintain time off balances within ADP Workforce Now. We use the 3rd party platform (Evolia) for scheduling and timesheets as the management here wanted the ability to see salaried employees on site, have a chat feature, and some self-management on the employee side with the ability to swap shifts.

Incentivized

I've implemented a number of projects for Anaplan for Sales Performance Management use cases. It is obviously built for financial planning, but it allows for a lot of flexibility for territory and quota, ICM, sales forecasting, and other important use cases. Territory and Quota is very powerful in the tool as it organize complex assignment structures into hierarchies for easier analysis and reporting.

• HRIS that is personalized for the employee and addresses DE&I needs.
• Payroll, of course! The system addresses all needs, such as deductions, additional pay, premium OT, and shift differentials.
• Onboarding is an excellent way to stay in compliance and have all documents completed.
• Tax and Banking and resolution to any issues.

Incentivized

• Anaplan removes the time consuming process of integrating the results of individual spreadsheets.
• Anaplan facilitates the standardization of assumptions across all sub-processes
• Anaplan provides full transparency of the calculations and source inputs
• Anaplan allows us to automate certain planning processes that would have been impossible when relying on the computational capabilities of an individual computer.

• Customized pre-process payroll reports (Limited on pre-process payroll reports)
• Labor Allocation (Allocations make payroll reporting very hard to review and find any errors )
• Recruiting (ATS is very basic)
• Geofencing (should be able to change shape rather than a circle)
• Pay Classes (should be able to change at Practitioner level rather than reach out to support)
• Cookies and Cache have to be cleared on a regular basis
• Only able to see employee documents/acknowledgements one at a time in the employee file
• Timecards can only be managed/viewed by 1 person
• Timeoff emails do not have a link
• Cost per payroll - not just monthly fee so cost with off cycle payrolls
• Separate I9 step not needed - during onboarding - 2nd Everify step
• ADP Workforce Now does not pull in allowances for Houly employees into payroll ONLY Salaried employees

Incentivized

• Some end users don't spend the required amount of time to familiar themselves with Anaplan.
• Auditability, while good in theory, can be lacking and clunky when needed.
• Model building can become convoluted over time, leading to confusion over the specific use of line items.

Due to the lack of support from the sales and service center we are looking at other options outside of ADP. Again it is a good system, it just lacks the support it deserves from the company employees. It is just unimaginable that you will need to reach out to a service provider several times for the same issue and not get it resolved.

Incentivized

Anaplan is a very strong multi-dimensional modeling tool that provides a calculation engine to empower a complex planning process. It is fairly easy to learn for those with experience in similar tools, or excel. It forces structure and auditability that spread sheets do not have, along with extensive security capabilities

I would give it a 10 however I do not like when ADP does facelifts in Workforce Now which does not add any value other than having to relearn navigation. I am also not a big fan of being forced to refer to the Bridge. We have Google which gives the same results. If I understood the answer I would not contact our Account Rep.

Incentivized

As a user it is a very simple tool, but at the same time with a very mature and powerful calculation engine. It is very easy to switch from excel or traditional tools with added capabilities of multi dimensionality and real time calculation engine to see quick insights needed to create plans and scenarios

ADP outages are very rare

Incentivized

There are very few outages. Maintenance is scheduled on two or three Saturdays per month, so as not to affect businesses. When there is an outage, users are kept informed of progress to restore the platform and typically this takes no more than an hour. Anaplan customer support is very responsive if we ever have questions about platform issues

Overall, I think the functionality of the program works pretty well. Sometimes, certain browsers do not work well for the policy function of ADP, but that is the only issue thus far

Incentivized

Everything is calculated in memory in the cloud. It's nearly instantaneous updates when you make changes. The only time things get a little slow is when you have a massive model with very intricate calculations...but "slow" for Anaplan is not what I would call "slow" for something like Hyperion. We used to have Hyperion calcs that ran for 60 mins before you could use data. The equivalent would be 60 seconds in Anaplan.

Incentivized

Kelly La Rosa and Brian McLaughlin have been exceptional partners over the last few years and a tremendous source of support in my role. They are consistently solution‑oriented, highly responsive, and proactive in identifying opportunities to improve our processes. Both regularly brought forward thoughtful recommendations, including suggestions for new ADP products that aligned well with our evolving needs. Their expertise, reliability, and genuine commitment to client success have made a meaningful impact on my work and on our overall experience with ADP.

Incentivized

Support quality has dropped since Thoma Bravo has taken over. I think some serious re-focus needs to happen here -- part of the beauty of being in the Anaplan community was how involved you felt in it before. Before I didn't dread sending a support ticket, now I am starting to.

In-person training was pretty good - I think this significantly depends on the trainer. Our trainer was really good and showed what ADP can do - but I know that all trainers are not the same - and this truly makes such as difference. Overall, our training went pretty well.

Incentivized

In my opinion, in-person training is always the best if you have the option to do so. This allows real-time interactions with the instructions, whereas the online training I took required me to write-down questions, email them, and wait for responses. This slows down the process, as you can imagine. That said, in-person training is an extra cost and it likely isn't needed for everyone. I would suggest selecting a small number of people to take in-person training and then having them act as mentors to the rest of your team. That way, as the rest of the team takes the online training, they have a resource to help them in real time.

At the time training was not as expansive as it is now. If it could go wrong it did for me so the process was difficult and lengthy. I needed to have more in person walkthroughs of things to ensure the transition was done correctly. Not sure what else I can say, we were part of the initial move to Workforce Now when it was introduced.

Incentivized

Anaplan training materials are clear, simple, easy to understand and to follow. Visuals are excellent. The vendor is good at updating training materials in a timely manner and encouraging users and administrators to keep coming back to Academy site for refresher courses or new feature courses. I really like their interactive diagrams

Either assign more than one specialist to the implementation process, or assign less clients to the implementation specialist. The process requires attention to detail and the ability to test and re-test as well as verify the information. It also requires a lot of back and forth between the client ant the implementation specialist, so they need to be readily available during the whole implementation process.

One key insight from implementing Anaplan is that success comes from focusing on designing the process, not just building the model. Anaplan is extremely flexible—there are very few planning scenarios it cannot support—but that flexibility means the project needs strong governance, clear ownership of requirements, and a well-defined data model. When those foundations are in place, implementations are fast, iterations are easy, and users can quickly see value.
In our projects, both Financial Planning and Integrated Business Planning models were adopted smoothly because we involved business users early, kept the model design intuitive, and leveraged Anaplan’s Excel-like syntax and user-friendly dashboards. The result was more efficient day-to-day work, reduced manual tasks, and increased collaboration across teams. In short: when you combine Anaplan’s flexibility with a structured implementation approach, adoption and value realization happen quickly.

I also used UltiPro (way back -- it didn't even appear in dropdown). Recommend ADP Workforce Now above all others. Paycor and Paycom were both very clunky. I even helped implement Paycom and could never get it to work how the business needed it to.

Incentivized

Anaplan is more powerful than Pigment considering that it is an Enterprise class system and is able to manage bigger data sets. Anaplan allows for advanced scenario modeling and formula capabilities along with custom reporting functionalities. Anaplan has proven its capabilities and stability across various use cases and across bigger enterprises when compared to Pigment which is still in earlier phases of its development

We have several departments that utilize the reporting, utilize the timecards and the system. We also have self service that is nice for all of our employees. This system allows us to designate what each group can see, and what employees can change, or who can clock in and out offsite

Incentivized

We have managed to leverage Anaplan for financial planning and forecasting across the business. It is now used by almost every department, with more than 50 users (but I know of companies that have hundreds of users) and still the platform is quick and reliable. It is easy to make changes to divisions and departments or add users and apply different user settings - the core part of the model is not affected and end users can continue their work without any disruption

• ADP WorkforceNow has provided a positive ROI for our company. It has saved me countless hours in the time I used to spend preparing reports, managing benefits, and annual enrollment, recruitment tracking, and much more.
• The integration with Payscale has allowed our company to take every position in our organization and benchmark it to industries and job titles. This has allowed us to be more competitive on recruitment and retention.
• We have used the new DE&I dashboard to provide valuable information on the landscape of our workforce, as well as areas of our organization that may not be as diverse.

Incentivized

• Anaplan's implementation led to a significant reduction in planning cycle errors and bugs, streamlining processes and improving overall accuracy in data inputs
• Standardizing the planning process and enabling cross-functional collaboration through Anaplan enhanced our ability to adapt swiftly to changing business needs, resulting in improved agility in decision-making
• The platform's capabilities, especially in Demand Planning and Supply Chain, positively impacted our ROI by optimizing resource allocation and solving complex business problems efficiently across multiple functions