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 If complex close items need to be done in the correct order or multiple subs, FQ makes it a breeze to track. If your close is simple, or done with only a few people, their system might not be a great benefit. With a team of 20, we need a tool like this to keep everyone on the same page!
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 Provides a clear status of the month end close. Allows us to analyze tasks by team member and reassign as needed. It syncs with our ERP Netsuite to ensure balance sheet reconciliations can be tied out directly. It also connects with Slack to notify users of key deadlines and changes in review status for team tasks. 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 A setting to allow for attachments to automatically be opened within the app (Adobe, Excel, etc.) rather than as a separate tab in the browser Some of our tasks are quarterly or annual so assigning a very specific date would be helpful Eliminate the need of "closing" review notes. Once we change the status to Resolved, that should be sufficient. Make Resolved and Closed one and the same 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 It has proven to enhance our procedures with closing. It is an effective tool that I would recommend to create a more efficient closing procedure and get the team more aligned. It increases the accountability among the staff and helps to keep us on task and on time. It is easy to sign into and has reminder emails for tasks that are coming up or late.
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 FloQast is incredibly intuitive and easy to use. The only reason I don't give it a 10 is that the Flux Analysis feature is not great in terms of getting the information into the system. Once it's in, fantastic! But some work is needed
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 We have only noticed a slight slow down in accessing FloQast on a couple of occasions (near the beginning of a month when many people were likely trying to get online to close their books). The issue has always resolved itself with three to five minutes, so it's never been a hinderance.
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 FloQast's performance is great. The pages always load quickly, and reports are completed fast! I've never noticed any slowdown in our ERP from the interface with FloQast.
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 They are rapid in their response. If they can't immediately offer a solution, they continue to keep in contact with you to let you know where they are in resolving your issues. The staff is friendly & speaks to you in layman's terms, not so high-tech that you can't understand
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 The FloQast team members are just so personable. FloQast has clearly done a great job hiring people who are not just good at what they do, but are also fun to work with! They have placed people in the right roles and the customer benefits from this. I have enjoyed every opportunity I've had to work with a FloQast team member on training.
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 The online training is good. But like all online, pre-recorded training, it is never quite as good as in-person or live training where one can ask questions or get clarification. That said, FloQast has an extensive training library and most of the time, if one finds they need help on a topic, it can be answered by going to the online training and watching appropriate recording.
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 Implementation occured before I started with the company (but despite the instruction to skip the question if I did not participate, the site required I put in a rating in order to move on to the next page)
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 We evaluated
BlackLine along with FloQast and ultimately decided to sign up with FloQast. Our team really liked the ability to leverage their existing Excel reconciliation templates that could link to the FloQast user interface. Comparatively, the pre-made reconciliation templates that were demonstrated in
BlackLine felt a bit more inflexible and felt like it would invite a longer implementation/conversion timeline.
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model I did not help in the purcase
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 We started using it with one client/customer and now use it with fourteen entities and plan to add two more in the next couple of months. It has made it possible to grow our business without hiring additional personnel. We can do more work with the same number of people
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 ROI has been quick. Using Floqast we were able to put off hiring additional headcount for a year due to the efficiencies we were able to garner. Floqast also helped with change management and process documentation. It centralized work papers into one easy to find location where in the past workpapers were disorganized. Read full review ScreenShots