Anaplan is a scenario planning and analysis platform designed to optimize decision-making in complex business environments so that enterprises can outpace their competition and the market. By building connections and collaboration across organizational silos, the Anaplan platform surfaces key insights.
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Infor CloudSuite ERP
Score 7.3 out of 10
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Infor CloudSuite ERP is the company's cloud-based ERP suite for medium to large global manufacturers, distributors, and after-sales service providers—delivering flexibility to manage mixed-mode and complex value chains.
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.
We have had great success with inventory management and production planning/execution. Also, data and system integrity have been key to our overall solution satisfaction. We struggle when it comes to reporting and analytics. The base product leaves room for improvement as much of the core reporting is not easily configurable and lacks the ability to scale forcing us to build a reporting model outside the solution
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.
Very stable product. Some of its weaknesses are also its strengths. The lack of web services seems to actually increase stability.
No software vendor in this space is perfect. Lawson does perform as advertised.
Again, a weakness of this (limited functionality) is a hidden strength as well. In software there is a complexity/feature tradeoff. Where Lawson lacks in features, it does give you a more simple setup for your organization.
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
Other than the inherent pain of a new implementation, it's a great platform and Infor is a great partner to work with. Every system has problems, our are no worse than any other platform. Maybe even a little better, nothing to make us want to change platforms any time in the near future
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
Industry fit: Infor M3 is designed for specific industries, such as manufacturing, distribution, and food and beverage. If your organization operates in one of these industries, Infor M3 may be a good fit.Functionality: Consider the specific features and functionality that your organization requires from an ERP system, such as financial management, supply chain management, manufacturing, and sales and marketing. Review Infor M3's capabilities in these areas to determine if it meets your needs.
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
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.
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.
The overall support of Inform M3 is simply the best! There isn't a single flaw that I can detect or think of about this software! I can't possibly express the greatness of the availability and all of the possibilities achieved. The ease of use and a lot of functionalities such as flexibility [allows in] configuration to add new functionalities fast.
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.
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
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.
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
One of the products I have used is an Oracle accounting product. I feel that Infor stands up well when comparing to the Oracle product especially for the accounting functions. In comparing it to Microsoft Dynamics I feel that Infor is easier to use in some accounting tasks. The one thing the Dynamics has going for it is the ease of use with other Microsoft Products.
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
