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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Oracle PeopleSoft ERP
Score 6.7 out of 10
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Oracle's PeopleSoft ERP (or PeopleSoft FSCM) is a software solution used to reduce costs by automating and centralizing global transactional processes and the enterprise entire supply chain. Oracle states they have extended support for PeopleSoft to 2034.
Anaplan was selected due to the ease of implementing a bespoke solution that is tailored to the given business. Anaplan is not just limited to finance applications and can be used to model other areas of the business. It is essential that the Anaplan solution is embraced and …
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.
You really need a big enterprise to take advantage of PeopleSoft. It is not entirely user-friendly, and it often requires massive amounts of customization to make it work for layers if you will. Business experts can figure it out, but if you are expecting someone to easily learn how to use the timekeeping modules without heavy customization, it's really not for you. You need to know going in, that this is not for a small business at all, and not even a medium-sized enterprise. It's geared to massive organizations that need to integrate business processes over geographic areas and multiple departments.
One of the best thing it does is it is customizable. You can implement any business logic you need. This is one of the very key assets of PeopleSoft Financials.
PeopleSoft Financials's accounting methods are in line with industry standards. You can use the process as is and ledger will be taken care of.
It supports multiple ways to integrate with other systems.
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
PeopleSoft Financials does not address the needs of small organizations that do not have a large enough staff to maintain the software or utilize the features it provides as it requires a moderate staff to keep track of all of the transactions and processing
PeopleSoft licensing costs are significant, which are relative to the features provided but in many cases those features may not be necessary
PeopleSoft licensing structures can be frustrating at times when certain modules would allow you to perform the complex task needed but it would require the entire module to be licensed for just that one feature (e.g. Cash Management for loading bank statements in certain formats)
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
PRISM is a great tool to track and watch numerous financial documents. I would like to see more of an integration platform that would control tracking for specific project details. There is currently only a little section for job notes which I would like to see improve. I think navigation could be improved, but isn't the worst compared to some platforms I have worked with as it provides a tree like structure on the backend which helps synchronize information together for fiscal financials.
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
I am aware of better systems, but this is what the employer I work for has to offer. Overall, there are fewer negatives than positives so I would support the usability. New staff members can quickly obtain access and go through a 5-10 minute training video that we build in house. The speed at which someone can become a proficient user speaks to the usability of ePro.
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.
I can't give them a perfect rating because it does often take a long time and usually more [expensive] to resolve trying issues that cannot be solved by our in-house team. PeopleSoft is complicated, and the mix and match of user-created and stock modules cause problems very often. These usually require more customization to completely fix, requiring more money spent with
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.
I recommend that everyone pay special attention to developing a solid testing and training plan if you are even thinking of implementing PeopleSoft. Be ready to obtain good trainers and developers, otherwise, your journey can be unnecessarily painful and much more expensive. Try to stay with an implementation partner who really has your needs at heart, and actually takes the time to understand your organization!
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)
PeopleSoft is much more appropriate for large organizations than the software programs listed here. I'm involved in a project to bring billing and accounts receivable functions out of "shadow systems" like those listed here and into PeopleSoft, and PeopleSoft is more robust, flexible, and standardizable. We've found it to be an excellent solution.
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.
Provides better controls to ensure that spend does not increase beyond the PO amount.
sPro reverse invoicing provides a mechanism to only pay our staff aug firms for only the hours that entered into PeopleSoft. There is no more reconciliation between the vendor invoices and the hours that were charged within the internal time tracking system.
PeopleSoft Financials increases employee efficiency through the use of dashboards and work centers.
