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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Microsoft Excel
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application available as part of Microsoft 365 (Office 365), or standalone, in cloud-based and on-premise editions.
$6.99
per month
Pricing
Anaplan
Microsoft Excel
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Excel with Microsoft 365
$6.99
per month
Excel for 1 PC or Mac
$139.99
perpetual license
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Anaplan
Microsoft Excel
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Anaplan
Microsoft Excel
Considered Both Products
Anaplan
Verified User
Manager
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan system/structure is not a far departure from Microsoft Excel which many people are most familiar with - this allowed for an easy transition during our first implementation as well as onboarding new users. Anaplan presents itself in a somewhat familiar structure while …
Verified User
Analyst
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan is cloud based which automatically removes the pain and risk that comes along with emailing around different versions of spreadsheets. Concurrent users can interact with different parts of the model at the same time greatly improving time spent adding inputs to the …
Anaplan is a cloud-based, real-time planning tool that offers more flexibility and scalability, making it suitable for various business functions. It emphasizes collaborative planning and provides a user-friendly interface. Hyperion Essbase, now part of Oracle, is a more …
We used to plan mostly in Excel spreadsheet, the problems we faced were data consolidation, slowness, multiple sheets, no real time reporting and access control. With the help of Anaplan, we were able to bring solution into cloud and connect team across various location to …
Verified User
Director
Chose Anaplan
Easy of use is Anaplan's main advantage. As Anaplan is code-less configuration, and the logic for model building is by far the simplest, it would make the learning curve less steep. This is very important when we are showing our clients that, their complicated planning scenario …
Verified User
Employee
Chose Anaplan
Scalability, Performance and UX is key from above two tools versus Anaplan.
Verified User
Consultant
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan provided a much more flexible backend that allows for modeling out any use case.
Verified User
Professional
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan has already been used in the company for several years and Pigment has only been evaluated to see what other technologies have emerged on the market since. Pigment is worth considering for business still not using any technology and seems easier to set up and run …
The tools generally fill different niches, Anaplan is the best for corporate and enterprise planning, OneStream's strengths are in Consolidations and working with large data sets by IT, and Pigment is a strong contender for finance teams at small organizations with less-defined …
Compared to OneStream and Venna Anaplan offers a more modern look and feel of the platform. It is better situated and maintained in regards of platform updates as it's a full SaaS software there are never any issues with the system version as it's always automatically up to …
Verified User
Engineer
Chose Anaplan
Managing spreadsheets in Excel or Google Sheets becomes too time consuming as the business and team grows so transitioning to a tool like Anaplan is a natural evolution. I have used Power BI as a complement to Anaplan in the past in order to make the data that was consolidated …
We selected Anaplan because of the breadth of their vision and their approach to tackle "planning" of all kinds and integrate planning processes into a true Connected Planning ecosystem. We found that their flexibility and ease of use ultimately provided a better avenue to …
Anaplan is leaps and bounds beyond Excel with versioning, multiple models linking to one data set giving one source of truth, and full audit history of changes available in the system. It enables you to fully trust the numbers you're seeing and working with and [give you] the …
Verified User
Employee
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan is a cloud-based tool that can store billions of data records. It can be accessed by any web browser and even mobile devices and significantly reduces version control issues that users run into with Excel. Anaplan is extremely customizable and can cater to any planning …
Verified User
Manager
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan has a clear advantage comparing to Excel when it comes to complex planning and forecasting, especially for bigger companies. Anaplan can perform much smoother but still is giving the same amount of flexibility.
SAC is much more analytical comparing to Anaplan. SAC can …
Customizability and ease of learning (not a coder, similar to Excel formulas). Not confined to the existing configurability of software's planning process/tables. Low IT involvement. Scenario and driver-based planning (can make inputs). Can be used for more than just Finance …
The only platform with the flexibility that matches Anaplan is Excel. However, excel is not scalable. There are also many great point solutions out there that can do one thing well, but I have not seen anything else that can do as much as Anaplan can, and do it well.
Verified User
Consultant
Chose Anaplan
Excel can be incredibly cumbersome, inefficient, prone to human error, and difficult to audit. Anaplan helps solve for this by providing an easy-to-use interface, connected planning modules, and security and tracking around the input and approval process. Anaplan is a much …
Verified User
Consultant
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan brings Excel functionality into the modern era and improves upon it. Anaplan's robust calculation engine can handle large amounts of data and calculations that will usually cause issues in other tools. Add to that all of the additional user functionality plus a better …
Anaplan has obvious advantages over Excel and is a favorite in financial planning. Another important selection criterion was the SaaS format with quick startup and self-support/development of the system without the involvement of IT (No-Code philosophy). The minimal license …
Anaplan is a great tool for complex modeling of the future. When you are planning your actions for the future, have multiple, disparate datasets to interact with, have dozens if not hundreds of stakeholders who must contribute and need to be guided via a streamlined workflow engine, require complex logic that can grow with your org, require real-time reporting, and you need it all in less than 6 months.
For tasks like financial analysis, budgeting, forecasting, and data visualization, I frequently use Microsoft Excel. I can develop financial models, use pivot tables to examine enormous datasets, and produce eye-catching visualizations thanks to its comprehensive features. I have, however, also come across circumstances in which Excel isn't the best tool.Excel falls short of alternatives like Google Sheets when I need to collaborate with my team in real-time. I favor employing robust database management systems or data analysis tools like SQL, Python, or R for managing very big data sets or sophisticated calculations. I use specialized tools like SPSS, SAS, or programming languages for better outcomes when complex statistical analysis or machine learning are necessary. And finally, for formatting elaborate reports, In conclusion, even though I consider Excel to be a great tool for many finance jobs, there are some limits in collaborating, processing big amounts of data, performing complex analysis, and creating documents that I take into account when choosing the best tool for the job.
It is very good at embedded formulas and tying cells to one another
It allows me to compare deals terms on a side-by-side basis and talk my clients through it easily.
It is very helpful as well in terms of allowing me to filter/sort results in many different ways depending on what specific information I am most interested in prioritizing.
Ability to decide if to apply the formula or a manual input on front end for each line item
Real Time Data Transfer across models. Currently Data is transferred using Processes across different models. Having a functionality to access data from any model in real time would be great
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
It comes with MS Office. Unless we stop using PCs or Microsoft Office, it's highly unlikely, even imperceivable to not continue to use Excel. It would be nice to see more Excel functions used, though, beside basic tables and calculations.
Anaplan's usability is very good. Users can customize reports and make adjustments with very little training. They can quickly plan and collaborate very easily. Making large adjustments or creating complex functionality may require more experience or training but a lot of tasks can be completed by users with very little experience
Microsoft excel stands out in its User Interface as compared to any other software which offers same functionality. It can be used by a beginner as well as the expert in the same field. It is having many features as we dig deep in it like advance functions, dynamic arrays, pivot, VBA and Macros.
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.
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
The platform allows a flexible implementation mechanic to be put in place, since the possibilities and functionalities are vast and there are very few things the tool cannot do well. The solutions for the financial planning and the integrated business planning we put in place were easily adopted by the end users and their day-to-day work was made easier.
Compared to OneStream and Venna Anaplan offers a more modern look and feel of the platform. It is better situated and maintained in regards of platform updates as it's a full SaaS software there are never any issues with the system version as it's always automatically up to date with no backward compatibility issues. Due to the flexible nature of the modelling engine, it is also better suited to perform larger multi-department use cases, like IBP (Integrated Business Planning)
We utilize Tableau and Alteryx in addition to Excel. We use Excel since we have a data dump that could be utilized in feeding for these two solutions. We select Excel for some manual work then plug the data into the other two tools for further analysis around text analytics like word clouds in Tableau, or text mining in Alteryx. Excel is an input data source that we use in conjunction with these two.
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
We've typically seen an average of 40% removal of time from processes using Anaplan an enabler
Though difficult to quantify, we consistently find our processes less error prone than in the past. Essentially, we've removed a previously "hidden cost" of risk due to poor data quality that was buried in our processes.