Anaplan vs. Kyriba

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.

Kyriba is a fully featured TMS that offers SaaS ease of maintenance and implementation. Because of the amount of customization and feature set, cost is higher, implementation time can be longer against some of the other other options in the market. That said - for those looking for a SaaS platform TMS, Kyriba offers almost everything that can be asked for and often beats competitors in pure capabilities and features. There is also a steep learning curve - so for simpler Treasury orgs, the cost likely isn't worth it.

• 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.

• It is a very dynamic system, it does not require training and we keep our cash management in order.
• I like that it is cloud based, because it is safe to use and results are seen quickly.
• It is a very predictive and automatic software to achieve great treasury management.
• Perfect daily reconciliations, no errors, Kyriba has bank account management features, has a short learning curve.

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.

• There are a few downsides as well for this product like the system processing is different with different modules which are quite strange and sometimes get pretty taunting for the users.
• Also, the debt module needs improvement and should become more relevant to the overall software. This is one of the biggest cons I would say and it also needs to be fixed immediately for a better user experience.

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

Very powerful treasury management tool, the reason it's not a 10 is implementation and support lags behind competitors. It can take a long time for issues to get resolved. But once it's set up properly, everything works well most of the time. Few if any other providers will have the same range of features.

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

Kyriba is very easy to use and offers Elevate training for continued growth. It is extremely customizable which makes it easy to adapt the system to any organization and connect with any ERP or financial institution. There is also continued support and webinars to continue to build on it’s functionality.

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

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

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.

We have weekly calls with our support team to discuss ongoing implementation projects and other issues we find from time to time. They are very responsive to any questions we have and can escalate issues to a higher level of support if they do not have the expertise necessary to fix the problem. They are helpful in coordinating testing with banks if necessary, and provide regular statistics regarding support calls, causes of problems, and resolution.

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.

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.

We had some issues with one of the implementation people provided by Kyriba. The communication skills were lacking, with assumptions being made as to what we knew already. It was very frustrating. Once that was resolved, further module implementations have been smoother.

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

In previous companies, the payments were processed from an AS400 based module, which required a deep technical knowledge for every action required, turning simple things like adding a bank account into a nightmare With Kyriba, most of the processes and updates just requires a couple of clicks and copy/paste updated information

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

• 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

• Kyriba saves our department time, which is the most valuable thing we have. Before Kyriba we had to log into each bank to pull data for the prior day before we could enter our current day activity. Now the banks send the data right to Kyriba! It saves us about 3 hours of work each day from our old process.
• Kyriba has given us visibility into all of our bank accounts in a centralized platform. We can better monitor activity and use that information to make better business decisions.
• Kyriba has given us better transparency because of dual approval. One person has to enter information and another person has to approve information, so we have tighter controls.