Anaplan vs BlackLine

• Allows the business to link different planning streams into one place
• Gives users a single source to view data, no more comparing offline templates in excel
• Intuitive new UX that allows us to be more customizable when tailoring to needs of end-users

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• Task Management is straightforward. Ownership, review, and approval are straightforward and pretty easy to configure and follow.
• Account Reconciliation works similarly. Supporting documents can be attached to a given rec to ease the audit. If balances change after approved, the approval is peeled back.
• Integration with our financial system works seamlessly. Configured to run every 4 hours each day, it's helpful to know even when balances change, BlackLine is up-to-date.

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• Enablement -- Anaplan should invest more in both its training capability and training content. Anaplan is not the most difficult tool to learn, but having more foundation in this area would make the ramp-up process significantly easier
• Storage -- Anaplan is not a data warehouse. This is understandable given data warehousing is not their primary value proposition, but many times we run close to the storage limits of Anaplan, and it would be great if Anaplan had different storage size options for its workspaces.
• User Interface -- Anaplan's user interface could be streamlined and improved to become more intuitive and accommodate more shortcut keys.

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• There is some inconsistency in design of some of the pages (e.g. the Atlas grid is not always available).
• Some navigation is frustrating (e.g. you have to use a drop-down menu to add a team rather than being able to start typing and use autocomplete to find the team, some selections such as Designate multi-currency on reconciliations take you back to the top of the page rather than just marking it, etc)
• Can't delete unused data sources.

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• Anaplan has been good to plan future fiscal years, by doing the planning in here and seeing the financial impact certain variables can produce it is easier to make decisions within the company such as hiring, eliminating certain costs etc., to achieve the financial results as set in the company goals.
• Dashboards have been really helpful for the financial executives as very specific data can be analysed and presented in the dashboards focused to specific financial teams, so it is easier to see the actual results and forecasts.
• On the negative side, since Anaplan is a complex tool to handle, it is better to have a dedicated resource or resources to the handling in Anplan. Regular business analysts could not handle their regular tasks and doing complex configurations in Anaplan without the help of well trained Anaplan resources, extra dedicated resources are needed to work with Anaplan.

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• Reduction of audit fees due to auditors having full visibility of global entities
• Reduction of hours preparing reconciliations as the reconciliations roll forward from one month to the next
• Auto-certification feature lets the accounting team focus on the more complex accounts

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