Anaplan vs Microsoft Dynamics AX

What users are saying about

Score 8.4 out of 10

Based on 207 reviews and ratings

Score 7.5 out of 10

Based on 109 reviews and ratings

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Feature Rating Comparison

Anaplan

7.5

Microsoft Dynamics AX

—

Long-term financial planning

7.4

—

Financial budgeting

8.1

—

Forecasting

7.7

—

Scenario modeling

6.5

—

Management reporting

7.7

—

Anaplan

6.5

Microsoft Dynamics AX

—

Financial data consolidation

7.7

—

Journal entries and reports

6.5

—

Multi-currency management

6.2

—

Intercompany Eliminations

5.9

—

Minority Ownership

6.0

—

Local and consolidated reporting

7.2

—

Detailed Audit Trails

6.0

—

Anaplan

7.6

Microsoft Dynamics AX

—

Financial Statement Reporting

7.0

—

Management Reporting

8.3

—

Excel-based Reporting

6.9

—

Automated board and financial reporting

8.3

—

Anaplan

6.7

Microsoft Dynamics AX

—

Personalized dashboards

5.5

—

Color-coded scorecards

6.0

—

KPIs

7.0

—

Cost and profitability analysis

7.0

—

Key Performance Indicator setting

7.5

—

Benchmarking with external data

7.1

—

Anaplan

8.3

Microsoft Dynamics AX

—

Flat file integration

8.4

—

Excel data integration

8.3

—

Direct links to 3rd-party data sources

8.3

—

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

7.9

Pay calculation

—

7.8

Benefit plan administration

—

7.6

Direct deposit files

—

8.0

Salary revision and increment management

—

8.3

Reimbursement management

—

7.6

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

8.0

API for custom integration

—

7.9

Plug-ins

—

8.1

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

7.6

Single sign-on capability

—

8.1

Role-based user permissions

—

7.0

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

6.3

Dashboards

—

6.3

Standard reports

—

6.2

Custom reports

—

6.6

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

7.7

Accounts payable

—

7.7

Accounts receivable

—

7.7

Global Financial Support

—

7.1

Primary and Secondary Ledgers

—

7.6

Intercompany Accounting

—

7.5

Localizations

—

7.7

Journals and Reconciliations

—

7.8

Enterprise Accounting

—

7.9

Configurable Accounting

—

7.7

Centralized Rules Framework

—

6.5

Standardized Processes

—

7.2

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

7.3

Inventory tracking

—

8.1

Automatic reordering

—

7.7

Location management

—

7.3

Manufacturing module

—

6.1

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

7.3

Pricing

—

7.7

Order entry

—

7.2

Credit card processing

—

7.1

Cost of goods sold

—

7.0

Order Orchestration

—

7.2

End-to-end order visibility

—

7.7

Order exception Resolution

—

7.2

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

7.3

Automated Invoice Processing

—

7.9

Shared Services Payments

—

6.9

Billings Management

—

7.6

Customer Receipt Applications

—

7.0

Customer Collections

—

7.5

Revenue Recognition

—

7.9

Cash Management

—

6.8

Asset Management

—

7.1

Travel & Expense Management

—

6.6

Budgetary Control & Encumbrance Accounting

—

6.2

Period Close

—

7.8

Transactions Tax

—

7.3

Subledger Reconciliations

—

8.1

3rd Party Accounting Systems

—

7.8

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

7.9

Budgeting and Forecasting

—

8.0

Project Costing

—

8.0

Cost Capture

—

8.6

Capital Project Management

—

6.8

Customer Invoicing

—

8.2

Customer Contract Compliance

—

7.5

Project Revenue Recognition

—

8.5

Project Financial Performance Analysis

—

8.5

Project Financials Dashboard

—

8.5

Real-time Financial Reporting

—

8.0

Embedded Business Intelligence

—

6.5

Project Planning Collaboration

—

7.5

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

6.5

Project Planning and Scheduling

—

8.0

Project Manager Dashboard

—

7.8

Resource Manager Dashboard

—

7.0

Task Insight for Project Managers

—

6.8

Project Manager Mobile Functionality

—

7.2

Team Member Task Collaboration

—

6.4

Team Member Mobile Functionality

—

6.2

Project Candidate Search

—

6.8

Project Candidate Comparison and Analysis

—

6.6

Defineable Resource Pools

—

5.8

Defineable Resource Pools

—

6.2

Talent Profiles

—

5.0

Real-Time Project Reporting

—

7.5

Absence Management

—

6.0

Product Lifecycle Management

—

5.0

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

7.8

Award Lifecycle Management

—

6.5

Spending Control

—

7.0

Indirect Cost Management

—

9.0

Billing

—

8.5

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

6.6

Sourcing Team Collaboration

—

6.5

Sourcing Analysis

—

8.0

Bids Analyzed and Compared

—

5.8

Catalog Shopping E-Commerce for Employees

—

6.7

Contract Authoring

—

6.0

Contract Compliance Management

—

7.1

Contract History

—

5.8

Contract Renewal Automation

—

7.0

Contract Repository

—

3.8

Contract Standardization and Enforcement

—

6.6

Electronic Signatures

—

8.5

Invoice Automated Matching

—

8.0

Purchasing Risk and Compliance Management

—

7.0

Requisitions-to-Purchase Orders Integrated

—

6.8

Spend Compliance Management

—

6.0

Supplier Assessment

—

7.3

Supplier Communication and Collaboration

—

6.1

Supplier Management

—

7.2

Supplier Portal

—

4.8

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

7.6

Risk Repository

—

7.0

Control Management

—

8.0

Control Mapping

—

7.0

Control Efficiency Assessments

—

7.0

Automated Control Assessments

—

8.0

Assessment Capture

—

8.0

Issue Detection

—

8.0

Automatic Notification

—

7.0

Remediation and Certification

—

8.0

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

6.2

Transportation Planning and Optimization

—

5.2

Transportation Sourcing Management

—

5.2

Transportation Process Integration

—

5.2

Transportation Execution Management

—

4.6

Freight Payment Automation

—

4.6

Trade Management

—

5.2

Trade Regulatory Compliance Management

—

7.6

Customs Entry Management

—

8.0

Customs Document Management

—

7.0

Customs Document Collaboration

—

8.0

Fulfillment Management

—

8.0

Inventory Visibility

—

7.9

Warehouse Workforce Management

—

4.8

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

7.2

Production Process Design

—

7.0

Supply Chain Business Flows

—

7.0

Production Management

—

7.0

Contracted Manufacturing Management

—

6.5

Configuration Management

—

8.0

Work Definition

—

8.0

Work Execution

—

8.0

Advanced Fulfillment

—

6.0

Manufacturing Costs

—

7.0

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

6.9

Forecasting

—

6.9

Inventory Planning

—

7.2

Multi-tier Supply Chain Planning

—

6.6

Performance Monitoring

—

6.8

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Dynamics AX

7.7

Ideation Management

—

4.5

Requirements Management

—

4.5

Proposal Management

—

8.0

Innovation Portfolio Management

—

10.0

Product Master Data Management

—

7.0

Vendor Portal

—

10.0

Project Portfolio Management

—

10.0

Pros

Real - time - the cloud based technology allows all changes & its impact is visible in real time.

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Szilvia Havasreti

PPS EMEA CEP Sales Coverage Program Manager

HPInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

View all 100 answers on this topic

It is a stable software that generally performs well.
It is integrated well with Microsoft Excel with relative ease of downloading tables, reports, and queries into Excel.
Adaptable to meet business needs.
Item master is comprehensive.

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Verified User

Analyst in Finance and Accounting

Tobacco Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Cons

Larger workspaces.
Ongoing support contracts based on LOE.
Better formula support and explanation within the model.

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Michael Lauer

Director of Quota and Territory Management

EquifaxFinancial Services, 5001-10,000 employees

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Inventory managment
User functinality

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Geomar Morales

IT Support Specialist

Ouray SportswearApparel & Fashion, 51-200 employees

View all 15 answers on this topic

Likelihood to Renew

Anaplan8.2

Based on 3 answers

I don't think we could function without the collaboration capabilities built into Anaplan that replaced disparate Excel files in the workforce planning model

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 3 answers on this topic

Microsoft Dynamics AX8.0

Based on 4 answers

N/A. I am exclusively on the implementation side.

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Verified User

Consultant in Human Resources

Gambling & Casinos Company, 1001-5000 employees

View all 4 answers on this topic

Usability

Anaplan8.2

Based on 2 answers

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.

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Chris Friederich

Director, Financial Planning & Analysis

Cherwell SoftwareComputer Software, 201-500 employees

View all 2 answers on this topic

Microsoft Dynamics AX9.0

Based on 1 answer

Dynamics AX MES is a good product, once deployed and stable, much easier to manage for the operationally than legacy systems.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Reliability and Availability

Anaplan10.0

Based on 1 answer

In nearly 3 years, I have only had 1 issue of being unable to access my model for an unplanned maintenance. Even planned maintenance windows are handled during low traffic hours on the weekend.

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Microsoft Dynamics AX7.0

Based on 1 answer

Some integration and high volume ramping challenges, particularly with BizTalk and SQL Server, but getting sorted out. Outages over time appeared to be more dependent on integration complexity than AX MES.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Performance

Anaplan9.0

Based on 1 answer

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.

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Microsoft Dynamics AX7.0

Based on 1 answer

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Support

Anaplan8.1

Based on 2 answers

I feel like the support team is a little lacking in product knowledge. Several times I have contacted them to get help, and ended up finding a solution to my own problem before the team could get back to me with anything useful. I have also submitted a few bugs, and never got updates to when they were fixed in later releases.

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 2 answers on this topic

Microsoft Dynamics AX8.0

Based on 1 answer

Microsoft did a reasonably good job supporting the deployment efforts to multiple factories and ongoing stabilization. I don't think that MES was intended for the large enterprise volume and complexity levels our operations required.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

In-Person Training

Anaplan3.0

Based on 1 answer

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.

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Microsoft Dynamics AX9.0

Based on 1 answer

It took a lot of work, but Microsoft ultimately did a good job with in-person training, including being onsite in multiple global locations for extended periods.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Online Training

Anaplan5.0

Based on 1 answer

I'm giving this a 5 simply for the anapedia outline of calculations. The online videos and trainings leave a lot to be desired, but having anapedia around to help you understand calculations has been helpful. The drawback to anapedia is the depth they go into for calculations, it is lackluster at times. Because of that, I have been working through a much more in-depth look at each calculation on my website for users to reference: http://www.anaplanguru.com/formulas/

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Microsoft Dynamics AX8.0

Based on 1 answer

Our solution deviated from a number of key out-of-the-box standards that were included in Online training. We just used that for introduction to the general functionality.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Implementation

Anaplan6.7

Based on 12 answers

Implementation using Anaplan's internal customer success team left much to be desired. We've found much better success with outside consultants

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Christopher Pope

Manager

Seagate TechnologyComputer Hardware, 10,001+ employees

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Microsoft Dynamics AX7.3

Based on 2 answers

Users in some cases were busy and not engaged, so those areas went slower. Configuration by the consultants was good, but at time complicated.

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Jay Omdahl

President and Principle Managing Consultant

Trusted Advisors ERPInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

View all 2 answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

In my previous life, I used Smartview and Essbase. I found this ERP system to be useful as it allowed the financial system to connect to any blank Excel spreadsheet and build custom reports as well as pull data in a direct, consolidated and clean fashion within seconds. Having this capability with Anaplan would increase value ten-fold for not just finance-based users, but all users

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Ramandeep Garcha

Senior Financial Analyst

New Relic, Inc.Computer Software, 501-1000 employees

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Oracle. Cost and mitigation of single platform risk, as we also use Oracle for Finance, Order Mgt, etc.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 15 answers on this topic

Scalability

Anaplan7.0

Based on 1 answer

It's going to handle most of what you can throw at it. The problem lies in the sparsity of some datasets. When you have over 5ish dimensions of sparse data, the size of the model gets bloated for not much value. In several cases, I have had to adapt my model to account for sparsity in a way that minimized use of space, but also made interacting with the data more cumbersome.

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

No score

No answers yet

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Ask the community to sound off

Return on Investment

I'm sure the impact is positive. We have streamlined many processes and created capacity for our finance team.
It's great to have "one source of truth" and know that everyone is looking at the same metrics.

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Kelley Haghighi

Sr. Finance Director

DaVita Kidney CareHospital & Health Care, 10,001+ employees

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Microsoft Dynamics AX helped us to get data faster then with our old ERP
Microsoft Dynamics AX's ability on getting reports might need to improve
Getting data cross-department is not that easy, i.e., we want to exclude sales tax in the credit hold report from a Sales Department's point of view.

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Verified User

Employee in Sales

Apparel & Fashion Company, 501-1000 employees

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Screenshots

Anaplan

Platform - Align business investment to corporate and departmental goals. Gain control over IT projects and reduce time and cost overruns. Easily manage IT shared service costs and allocations. Quickly report progress and impact to the business with live scorecards. Continuously optimize teams and priorities to deliver the most relevant value.

See All (6) Anaplan Screenshots

Microsoft Dynamics AX—

Pricing Details

Anaplan

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

Additional Pricing Details

Request a personal demo: https://www.anaplan.com/request-demo/ Free trial for existing customers for any app in the App Hub: https://apphub.anaplan.com/

Anaplan vs Microsoft Dynamics AX

Add comparison

Likelihood to Recommend

Anaplan

Microsoft Dynamics AX

Feature Rating Comparison

Long-term financial planning

Financial budgeting

Forecasting

Scenario modeling

Management reporting

Financial data consolidation

Journal entries and reports

Multi-currency management

Intercompany Eliminations

Minority Ownership

Local and consolidated reporting

Detailed Audit Trails

Financial Statement Reporting

Management Reporting

Excel-based Reporting

Automated board and financial reporting

Personalized dashboards

Color-coded scorecards

KPIs

Cost and profitability analysis

Key Performance Indicator setting

Benchmarking with external data

Flat file integration

Excel data integration

Direct links to 3rd-party data sources

Pay calculation

Benefit plan administration

Direct deposit files

Salary revision and increment management

Reimbursement management

API for custom integration

Plug-ins

Single sign-on capability

Role-based user permissions

Dashboards

Standard reports

Custom reports

Accounts payable

Accounts receivable

Global Financial Support

Primary and Secondary Ledgers

Intercompany Accounting

Localizations

Journals and Reconciliations

Enterprise Accounting

Configurable Accounting

Centralized Rules Framework

Standardized Processes

Inventory tracking

Automatic reordering

Location management

Manufacturing module

Pricing

Order entry

Credit card processing

Cost of goods sold

Order Orchestration

End-to-end order visibility

Order exception Resolution

Automated Invoice Processing

Shared Services Payments

Billings Management

Customer Receipt Applications

Customer Collections

Revenue Recognition

Cash Management

Asset Management

Travel & Expense Management

Budgetary Control & Encumbrance Accounting

Period Close

Transactions Tax

Subledger Reconciliations

3rd Party Accounting Systems

Budgeting and Forecasting