Anaplan vs. Aprimo

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.

I think Aprimo is well suited when you are looking for a DAM to house all of your content. It will be easy to find what you need based on the metadata you are including. I think Aprimo works very well in situations where you are looking for both a DAM and project management system. We are using the DAM and Aprimo productivity and they pair well together

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.

• Audit - The trail of what you can look back on is so robust and the IDs are on every task and asset. You see a full picture of something that has been approved and can see any amends that have been made. Having the full view and timeline of any updates is essential for our teams.
• Reporting - Most if not all fields can be reported on. This is essential for us as we use reports to influence management decisions as well as managing day-to-day operations.
• DAM - The DAM functionality and connectivity is a big one for our future plans as well as existing ones. Connectors into the DAM help us integrate the systems we have already, plus plan and support the business with new plans in growing areas.
• Service - Aprimo support is amazing. The support we get as a company is always great, no matter how big or small any issues or queries are. The team at Aprimo is always so attentive and comes back with great answers and support.

• 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.

• Customer support is slow to resolve system issues
• Complicated configuration with no in-depth training amounts to a huge learning curve and expensive concierge services
• The consumer-facing UI does not have all of the functionality that is required
• Training videos are out of date or purport functionality that does not exist

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

While Aprimo provides the fundamental tools to track our actual spend, it has a major void when trying to plan for future programs. Our teams often have offline Excel spreadsheets to track actuals spend vs. our original budget, and lay out the future programs against which we plan to use budget funds. Would also appreciate reporting mechanisms which could splice data in non table format. For example, we often use marketing calendars to display programs/spend over time. This helps our team ensure that programs which are intended to run concurrent with in-store sales executions are happening in the correct time frame. The visual is simply easier to follow.

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

Really good search and upload process, and great functionality for workflow approval and editing. QuickConnect is handy for on the go, and the SSO keeps it simple. For customization, it is relatively complex and requires some technical knowledge. The user guides are very detailed, and the Aprimo Academy training modules provide lots of information, but there is a steep learning curve to get fully up to scratch with the system. The level of inter-relatedness of areas of customization could be complicated to work out if there is a problem. The support team at Aprimo is fantastic and the high customization potential is a benefit rather than a downside. A system champion is required to make sure it is fully utilized.

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

We have not yet experienced any downtime

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

We are struggling with it though I think it’s our firewall i.e. an internal issue. Accessing the software outside or on mobile is faster.

They have a multi-tenant and single tenant option (more expensive) . We bought the single tenant option in anticipation of using Campaign Management and based upon our scale. You get more capabilities with single tenant

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.

Support is support, so mainly reactive when it is about product inside and common issues. But when it is about specific enhancements and business concerns related to our own configuration and settings, we surely feel a gap. and this is why concierge is a must have solution when facing Aprimo support

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.

Aprimo offered a number of hands on sessions customized for each group. As such, they address specific needs and configurations of each team. These sessions also offered another round of cross-functional collaboration in process design.

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

It was very generic and we took it prior to configuration. It was however adequate to educate our user in the basic capabilities that will have become available to them after deployment.

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.

We were very well supported. TopRight who performed the process/requirements definition as well as project management functions came with ample experience with various marketing automation platforms. They also came with very good multi-channel marketing experience that allowed them to tackle this implementation as a marketing deployment and not a technology deployment. TopRight bring expertise in multi-channels strategy.

Aprimo performed the configuration and training functions. Their personnel were very well versed in their platform and brought much empathy to a deployment that required a great deal of change management.

I am stunned by how many people (from for-profit sector who work here) have not been exposed to these types of platforms. I want to make sure that folks are so accustomed to user interface. When I roll-out campaign management, teaching them the art and science of campaign management versus just learning the tool. TopRight are marketers. They are familiar with all these technologies. Their job has been to define processes, best practices and turn into training. Similar to training from Salesforce.com about funnel mgmt etc, vs. just the product. We will create training modules that are agnostic to the platform

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

Unica - Both platforms (i.e. Unica and Aprimo) delivered comparable capabilities. However, due to internal limitations around technical support and technical maturity of the organization we selected Aprimo as it delivered the more user friendly user interface. Unica requires more technical saviness. With Aprimo you can be completely non-technical.

We evaluated Epsilon, but they were too expensive and don’t compete on price.

We evaluated Axciom. They offered an outsourced full service and were very powerful, but we wanted to bring capabilities more in-house. The capabilities were more advanced that we needed today. We felt Aprimo or Unica could both carry us a long way.

We did not look at marketing automation vendors like Eloqua, Marketo. From a scale standpoint, we were looking for campaign management and not just marketing automation. Also wanted MRM (Marketing Resource Management) or internal workflow management capabilities. We did not take a deep dive as they didn’t have the full suite solution

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

• 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

• The stream-lined content process with agency partners who have access to our Aprimo client.
• In app creative review and redlining makes changes easy for client and agency.
• Cost saving in the way that we were able to build custom products and not try and use a costly less effective tool.

Incentivized