Anaplan vs. Brightpearl by Sage

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.

Brightpearl is very well suited for small-medium companies that are growing quickly and need a way to improve their operational systems and functionality to handle increasing volume of orders. Particularly if you use multiple SKUs, sales channels, and/or warehouses, the features offered by Brightpearl are excellently well suited to handle these types of needs. I don't believe Brightpearl would be very applicable for very small companies with a small number of SKUs, as many of the features offered would be unnecessary and underutilized.

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.

• Brightpearl tracks order changes and communications very well. It documents all activity in a feed that anyone can see, including status changes, notes made, emails sent, etc.
• Brightpearl makes it incredibly easy to find orders fitting certain criteria through the use of statuses that you can customize. For example, as a multichannel seller, we can easily create statuses for each channel that we sell from, where our orders will (oftentimes automatically) land in. We also deal often with things like back ordered items; we can also create statuses for certain brands, so that when we expect a shipment in from that company, our back order specialist can easily sort through her orders that are waiting on that shipment.
• Brightpearl makes it easy to take orders over the phone. Everything I need is right there on one screen; not often do I find myself needing to deviate to other tabs. The steps I take (from "new order" to finish) are straightforward and understandable, and go in steps that make sense.

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.

• Supports only a small number of marketplaces and in a limited way only. When I signed up with Brightpearl they claimed that you could list directly onto eBay from within Brightpearl but this turned out to be untrue as Brightpearl did not support eBay postage policies (eBay's semi literate way of saying shipping tables).
• Not only can you not list directly onto eBay, you cannot list directly from within Brightpearl to any marketplaces whatsoever. With other software you can list directly to all the marketplaces they integrate with.
• Brightpearl is abysmal at VAT. Brightpearl calculates VAT on Channel Islands and Canary Islands orders even though there is no Vat in either of them. So when you pay HMRC you will be paying them a bit extra unless you check all your orders which makes the software somewhat redundant.
• When I signed up they advertised Brightpearl as the software to automate your online selling. But it didn't really do that. A couple of years later at considerable extra cost they released an add-on app called Brightpearl Automation that does seem to deliver on automation. However other software offers that at no extra cost.
• Brightpearl claims that it integrates with Amazon, but this is only partially true as they have completely ignored the new marketplaces that Amazon have opened. If you list on those marketplaces you have to input the orders manually and Brightpearl will not update the stock, putting you at risk of negative feedback. Other software integrates fully with all Amazon marketplaces.
• Now that I am leaving it was suggested that I might benefit from read-only access so that we could easily double check things like warranty claims. They offered me a year's read-only access for £10,080 which is more than double my yearly contract for full use of the software. Now, if that isn't taking the mickey, I don't know what is!!!

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

Brightpearl has proved to work out for our company and we have no need or intention to let it go. Rather we intend to build on what we've accomplished and it will no doubt help us scale our business and meet our ambitions.

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

Brightpearl can be a little confusing to begin with, there are a lot of options to look through and working out the intricacies takes some time depending on what you would like to be able to do on it and what your account is set up to do. It is however very thorough and once you can work your way around it most of the functions are fairly simple to use and very detailed.

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

Brightpearl is always easily accessibly anywhere that you can find an internet source. I have checked our stock levels when we have been off site at Ham Rally's at home and on my way home or to work if needs be. That is probably one of the best features of this system.

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

Brightpearl performs very well and integrates very well with our Metapak packing and despatch system. IT also intergrates very well with Amazon and we have used Ebay although there have been complications with Ebay and stock levels. We use Ebay mostly for second hand items of which we only have one so have skipped using Brighpearl for these products.

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.

Brightpearl was ALWAYS great at responding to us. Their customer service was quick and responsive. Unfortunately, the responses were often that "engineers were working on it" but nothing seemed to ever come of that. I realize that Brightpearl is a large company that a lot of businesses rely on. But when you can't hit "enter" when trying to search in the front-end POS, that type of behavior should be changed very quickly and it never was. Admittedly, small things, but those annoyances tend to ultimately affect the overall experience.

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.

No in house training was given.

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

The online training was very helpful in the areas we were shown and was implemented very well via a Skype call and an presentation done via the internet. However it was not thorough enough for all of our needs in certain areas. More training in person on site would have been very helpful.

Incentivized

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.

Implementation was generally perfect, but if you are coming across from Sage I personally would recommend doing this as baby steps.
We tried to import our entire Sage history in one batch and that was a bad idea hence the 9/10. That was mainly our fault and nothing on Brightpearl.

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

Initially we went with Brightpearl because it was an all in one solution. Salesforce CRM capabilities right out of the box far surpass Brightpearl's, but there's no inventory or accounting system pre-built in. We are currently moving away from Brightpearl for both CRM and accounting functions however.

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

Brightpearl's ability to increase or expand its capacity and retain its performance levels to accommodate growth were acceptable but not fantastic. The program was constantly making changes which can be useful, but was also confusing & hard to keep up with since we were never updated that changes were about to be made or had been made.

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

• It's really difficult to say. While everything is now in one place, we've spent a ton of time with support and figuring things out on our own.
• We've also had to spend a ton of money with our CPAs fixing our financials every month.
• However, the sales piece has streamlined our process for shipping orders out in a timely basis.

Incentivized