Anaplan vs. Roku OneView

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.

Dataxu is great for running multiple campaigns at the same time. It's reporting features are great as well as the exchanges it has to offer. For a company just wanting to run one campaign, I don't think it would be worth their time learning how to navigate Dataxu; however, for a company running to run multiple campaigns, Dataxu makes the process easier. Dataxu has great customer service representatives that provide superior training whenever needed.

Incentivized

• 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.

• The platform's mobile serving capacity is great; spending is always consistent and the impression numbers are some of the highest we've seen. We can always depend on this method of ad serving to get us the results that we and our clients expect.
• The intelligence and audience information (found under the Reports tab) is helpful when writing a "story" for the client; it assists us in determining future targeting strategies. Custom Queries are also available under the Reports tab and these are extremely helpful when we need to view specific details about the campaign.
• The dashboard's spend-to-date graphic helps us to immediately recognize what campaigns are falling behind so that we may adjust the budgets accordingly.

• 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.

• Website blacklisting
• Flagging problems. For example, if a campaign has been running a week and hasn't spent any of the budgets, there could be a setting enabling it from doing so. When you have multiple campaigns running, it's hard to track this.

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

It is not in my jurisdiction to renew or end contracts with DataXu. I know that the high cost to maintain a contract with DataXu can be off-putting

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

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.

At Haberfeld, we had our own customer service representative out of Boston. He provided superior and timely support for all of our questions and needs. He also ran test campaigns to show us what our potential impact could be before we put dollars towards anything. He even came all the way down to Nebraska to visit with us at one point. Whenever we needed something, he was quick to respond and provide appropriate resources and training.

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.

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

We work with multiple platforms, not solely DataXu. As of late, AdWords has proven more beneficial to us. AdWords is very user-friendly and they are easy to contact. If we need a question answered, we can simply hop onto a Google Chat and get the responses we need to move forward. DataXu is much harder to get in contact with and their Help Beta tab is not especially informative. If we need to serve impressions, DataXu is certainly the server to utilize

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

• Provided us with accurate and timely data to provide to clients.
• Enabled us to streamline our process for running PPC ads for over 80 clients.
• Allowed us to show our ads to households across multiple devices and relevant exchanges.

Incentivized