Anaplan vs Microsoft Power BI

Likelihood to Recommend

Sales performance management, various finance scenarios - Anaplan is good for automating calculations. It is less appropriate for very complex business cases.

Read full review

Szilvia Havasreti

PPS EMEA CEP Sales Coverage Program Manager

HPInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

View all 103 answers on this topic

Power BI is great for power Excel users and what I call “data archeologists” or people who dig up old data and clean it up for modern usage. It strings many files together and lets you customize the connections and format of the data. It does not work well with large data set or pull data from large databases, you will find it timing out unless you limit the data set first with a SQL View or Tabular Model before going after it. Also, large data sets take forever to refresh and update, so if you have a lot if iterations, you will spend a lot of time going out for coffee while the data reloads. Other BI tools allow you to localize the data with the first load (Qlik QVD’s) so you can refresh quicker. Comparatively, a refresh of SQL data on Power BI took 45 minutes, the exact same data set would refresh in 30 seconds using Qlik Sense.

Read full review

Verified User

Manager in Finance and Accounting

Consumer Goods Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 71 answers on this topic

Feature Rating Comparison

Anaplan

7.2

Microsoft Power BI

8.2

Customizable dashboards

7.2

8.5

Pixel Perfect reports

—

7.9

Report Formatting Templates

—

8.1

Anaplan

8.0

Microsoft Power BI

8.1

Publish to PDF

8.3

7.9

Report Versioning

8.3

8.2

Report Delivery Scheduling

7.3

8.1

Publish to Web

—

8.6

Delivery to Remote Servers

—

7.7

Anaplan

6.9

Microsoft Power BI

8.1

Responsive Design for Web Access

6.9

8.0

Dedicated iOS Application

—

8.1

Dedicated Android Application

—

8.1

Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

—

8.1

Anaplan

8.5

Microsoft Power BI

—

Long-term financial planning

7.8

—

Financial budgeting

8.8

—

Forecasting

9.0

—

Scenario modeling

8.4

—

Management reporting

8.4

—

Anaplan

7.2

Microsoft Power BI

—

Financial data consolidation

8.7

—

Journal entries and reports

7.5

—

Multi-currency management

6.2

—

Intercompany Eliminations

6.0

—

Minority Ownership

6.0

—

Local and consolidated reporting

8.2

—

Detailed Audit Trails

7.9

—

Anaplan

8.0

Microsoft Power BI

—

Financial Statement Reporting

9.3

—

Management Reporting

8.8

—

Excel-based Reporting

5.2

—

Automated board and financial reporting

8.7

—

Anaplan

7.0

Microsoft Power BI

—

Personalized dashboards

6.8

—

Color-coded scorecards

7.2

—

KPIs

7.0

—

Cost and profitability analysis

7.0

—

Key Performance Indicator setting

6.9

—

Benchmarking with external data

7.1

—

Anaplan

8.3

Microsoft Power BI

—

Flat file integration

8.9

—

Excel data integration

7.4

—

Direct links to 3rd-party data sources

8.7

—

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Power BI

8.3

Drill-down analysis

—

8.5

Formatting capabilities

—

8.2

Integration with R or other statistical packages

—

8.4

Report sharing and collaboration

—

8.3

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Power BI

8.2

Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)

—

8.6

Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization

—

8.3

Predictive Analytics

—

7.7

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Power BI

8.2

Multi-User Support (named login)

—

8.3

Role-Based Security Model

—

7.6

Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)

—

8.1

Single Sign-On (SSO)

—

8.6

Anaplan

—

Microsoft Power BI

7.6

REST API

—

7.8

Javascript API

—

7.8

iFrames

—

7.4

Java API

—

7.1

Themeable User Interface (UI)

—

7.7

Customizable Platform (Open Source)

—

7.6

Pros

We really like the Data Hub concept. We are working on multiple projects with regards to aggregating data from multiple sources, and Data Hub has worked well for us thus far.
Agility is key for our businesses and we feel that Anaplan gives us the ability to remain flexible and reactive to the changes throughout our businesses.
As a administrator I really like the resources provided by Anaplan such as Anapedia. It makes it really simple to ask questions and find answers if we are having difficulty with certain items.

Read full review

Matthew Cantwell

Director of Business Intelligence Development

Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma- Division of CommerceGambling & Casinos, 5001-10,000 employees

View all 103 answers on this topic

Deep Integration with Microsoft Office Suit, Excel, Access, Power Point.
API compatible
Robust query design from basic to advance consults

Read full review

Litzi Saraí Gordils Ortuño

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 11-50 employees

View all 71 answers on this topic

Cons

Errors handling. If you make a mistake in formula, the model might freeze for all users for several minutes.
Multistage calculations may cause the app to work slowly.
Too few functions are yet available. Tons of simple actions are really hard to implement in some cases including PRODUCT, VLOOKUP and CASE SELECT.
Bugs that were reported months ago are not fixed.
Really poor technical support. There are only 5 or so tech support guys globally and you have to wait for their answer sometimes for too long. Mostly they only give you temporary workarounds because of the bugs that won't be fixed in the nearest future.
No Android app.
End users have no interface settings at all. Only administrators may save export views and all the useful tune-ups.
No friendly interface to edit user rights. When their quantity exceeds 30 or more changing the rights becomes a disaster.

Read full review

Максим Шилиманов

Planning Excellence Senior Specialist

UnileverConsumer Goods, 10,001+ employees

View all 103 answers on this topic

UX sometimes can be overwhelming, can be more intuitive
Free features always can receive more attention to gain client fidelity
Solutions like Power BI can always do better with their Mobile version

Read full review

Litzi Saraí Gordils Ortuño

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 11-50 employees

View all 71 answers on this topic

Likelihood to Renew

Anaplan 8.2

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

Read full review

Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 3 answers on this topic

Microsoft Power BI 10.0

Based on 1 answer

I find it helpful and easy to use

Read full review

jim paroly

Freelance Photographer

j. paroly photoGraphic Design, 1-10 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Usability

Anaplan 8.2

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.

Read full review

Chris Friederich

Director, Financial Planning & Analysis

Cherwell SoftwareComputer Software, 201-500 employees

View all 2 answers on this topic

Microsoft Power BI 9.0

Based on 3 answers

PBI is very easy to use because of its similarity with power pivot and excel. DAX is the basic foundation language to be mastered to quickly build reports. Custom measures have been introduce to write instant DAX functions (But doesnt work all the time and need a understanding of DAX to debug). Easy to chart multiple charts and also third party charts

Read full review

Rohit Acharya

Business Intelligence Manager

ZALORA GroupInternet, 1001-5000 employees

View all 3 answers on this topic

Reliability and Availability

Anaplan 10.0

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.

Read full review

Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Ask the community to sound off

Performance

Anaplan 9.0

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.

Read full review

Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Ask the community to sound off

Support

Anaplan 8.1

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.

Read full review

Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 2 answers on this topic

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Ask the community to sound off

In-Person Training

Anaplan 3.0

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.

Read full review

Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Ask the community to sound off

Online Training

Anaplan 5.0

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/

Read full review

Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Ask the community to sound off

Implementation

Anaplan 6.7

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

Read full review

Christopher Pope

Manager

Seagate TechnologyComputer Hardware, 10,001+ employees

View all 12 answers on this topic

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Ask the community to sound off

Alternatives Considered

Anaplan has a much more powerful modelling engine compared to Adaptive Insights. Adaptive might have prettier dashboards, but their product is inferior at it's core. We were impressed by everything Anaplan could do and are glad that we chose it over the competition. We also are very impressed by Anaplan's customer success team and their knowledge

Read full review

Jake Cosenza

Financial Systems Analyst

San Francisco 49ersSports, 201-500 employees

View all 103 answers on this topic

Power BI takes it to another level with the report and dashboard designing for a wide variety of purposes, and always gives you the option to be collaborative within their native sync features, that is also an advantage to set things up, for example, to promote reports into intranets or weekly reports.

Read full review

Litzi Saraí Gordils Ortuño

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 11-50 employees

View all 71 answers on this topic

Scalability

Anaplan 7.0

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.

Read full review

Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Ask the community to sound off

Return on Investment

Workforce Planning efficiency - so much easier than excel to maintain sensitive information planning
Long range plan lead time - the old excel model took weeks to update. The Anaplan model takes hours

Read full review

Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

View all 103 answers on this topic

It's a good start for setting up customized dashboards.
Available for all users based on Office 365 platform we have in place.
Doesn't really allow depth of report - specifically customization of visual displays.

Read full review

Mark Metz

Enterprise Services Consultant

Bristol-Myers SquibbPharmaceuticals, 10,001+ employees

View all 71 answers on this topic