Likelihood to Recommend Anaplan revolutionizes the planning process by standardizing it, creating transparency in data, particularly in showcasing results to the management team. By replacing Excel-centric planning methods, Anaplan not only opens the door to handling larger datasets but also enables a more intricate level of data granularity at an accelerated pace. What sets it apart is its capacity to facilitate a seamless collaboration within a cross-functional model, accommodating diverse departments and business functions in a dynamic, real-time environment.
Read full review Appian works great for automating manual processes and integrating multiple systems through its toolset. It gives great flexibility for establishing rules for approvals, routings, escalations, and the like. Because of the low code toolset, it's very easy to deploy and make changes as needed as processes evolve and as the organization learns to utilize the system better. Minimal maintenance is required to support the applications build on the platform. Some of the automated testing integration with tools like Jenkins is limited so that may be an issue for some.
Read full review Pros Forcing structure and auditability to processes that used to exist in spreadsheets Strong calculation engine that can account for many dimensions Formula Syntax that is not overly complicated and can be learned by the business in order to have ownership of their models internally Read full review Allows at a glance workflow documentation which assists in the need we have for information readiation. Drag and drop interface for workflow development greatly speeds our apps time to market. Using the advanced features of Appian, we are able to create working sites in a fraction of the time it would take to do so using "traditional" development. Read full review Cons The "new" UX front-end offers a lot of modern and intuitive features, but it lacks the ability to view multiple "tabs" of dashboards and reports. The "classic" dashboard had this feature but now with the UX, you need to be really smart about how to design a single page where the users won't get "lost". Lacks the ability to "wrap text" (similar to excel) and auto-size grid rows Read full review Search issues when type ahead and database search are used in the same field. Buttons implementation where user is require[d] to click on the button description - if clicks on the button outside that text - button will not work. Problems with using certain off-the-shelf performance tools like WebLoad or Neoload. That is because of different dynamic variables being used internally in Appian - which these tools are unable to correlate. We are still investigating using other tools like Jmeter to overcome dynamic correlation problem for performance testing. Read full review Likelihood to Renew In any line of work, a tool that is flexible and would allow different departments of your company to easily interact and exchange valuable insights, is highly anticipated and needed. For me, what Anaplan provides to a business, be it a smaller one or an enterprise customer, is an easily scaling, agile planning and modeling platform that can meet almost any need and give a high-end solution to the problems any company faces on a daily basis.
Read full review We recently renewed our license with Appian. We are convinced that its flexibility, relative ease of use, the support they provide, there mobile advancements and their general willingness and desire to see us succeed all contributed to our reason to renew our agreement with Appian
Read full review Usability There is a dependency in this rating - in that I find Anaplan extremely easy to use, but I've spent the necessary time developing a strong understanding of the platform. Once you understand how to use it, the platform is flexible, easy to use, and fun to use.
Read full review Appian is a low code environment, because of this, a very good visual interface is required. Appian is providing a feature-rich dashboard [that] we can use for building the dashboards and other interfaces. Appian also provides patches and releases to enhance these features. A developer can start off development just by going through a basic course from the Appian learning community.
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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
Read full review Performance 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.
Read full review Support Rating 1. Anaplan has separate 24/7 customer support channel to help with queries, 2. Customer Partner from Anaplan to support vendor with their queries like license purchase, use case implementation support, customer advocacy 3. Anaplan Learning Platform to help learning new product features free of cost and Yearly Anaplan connect across globe to share success stories of various companies.
Read full review Appian is one of the leading low code business automation platforms that support RPA, decision rules, case management, workflow automation, and machine learning all in a single bundle. But it is also harder to implement and replace the traditional business process.
Read full review In-Person Training The in-person training is simply not worth the cost. After a few weeks of playing in Anaplan, I went to the basic training and knew more than the person teaching it. a year down the road, I was the first person to complete the advance training, and again could have been teaching the class better than the person running the session. Spend some time on your own trying out different things and you will get all the understanding you need to be successful.
Read full review As analyst I participated in a developer boot camp. At times it was hard to keep up but most of the time it made sense. Trainer took the time to explain and slowed pace down to answer questions etc.
Read full review Online Training 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
Larissa Lowe Director, Sales Operations Business Systems and COE
Read full review Very boring; hard to get through quickly, but rather effective in demonstrating the use of the platform.
Read full review Implementation Rating Agile methodology and breaking the work down into sprints was very helpful. Implementation required a deeper dive into our data than expected for the consultants to be able to construct the data model. But once it was in place, the focus on knowledge transfer enabled us to be able to use the product effectively after the team rolled off.
Read full review It was really seamless. SaaS in the true definition of the word. We logged on and started using the product. Very easy.
Peter Newnam Development Team Lead for BPM, Integration and Special Project Teams
Read full review Alternatives Considered Anaplan is what I would consider a modeling platform. It excels at taking a forecasting or planning process and systematizing it - and allowing for whatever nuances and granularity you need to perform that modeling. It is not positioned as "data collection" platform - which are typically designed to take data uploads from Excel to calculate basic opex and revenue models. It's much more customizable and flexible.
Read full review Appian has enormously transformed and keeps on updating the product every quarter to meet the latest needs of the world with new innovations & technologies being integrated within the platform. What gives more pleasure than a product that keeps on continuous[ly] improv[ing]?
Read full review Scalability 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
Read full review Return on Investment Speeding up the process of closing and updating the current month forecast Reduced work on the preparation of reports and presentations. We used different Anaplan approaches with varying success, but the overall result was there. It's hard to gauge, but the overall increase in process and algorithm transparency, along with data protection, has given an excellent platform for scaling up the company's processes. Read full review I believe it has negatively impacted our release dates. There may have been a misunderstanding as to the learning curve, even though it is "low code." The look and feel of the applications created using Appian have uniformity and it's easier to have "reuse" between applications. There is less developer control when it comes to features. I think this mainly has to do with the amount of plugins available. I would think there should be many more available plugins. But again, our use case is probably different than most others. Read full review ScreenShots