Anaplan vs Salesforce

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

The only instances I've encountered where I did not think Salesforce was best fitted is for very small companies where the price didn't make sense for 2-5 users. A lot of the benefit of Salesforce is being able to customize it however you need, and true customization is only available with Enterprise and above

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

Cloud based and future looking - Salesforce has either set or kept pace with the latest in technology. At least two major feature releases a year allow an organization to keep up with the latest changes. Mobile and the release of their new analytics platform are just two examples of how Salesforce continues to innovate.

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.

Salesforce delivers standard forms with standard fields with each object (Campaign, Lead, Opp, etc.). By nature, this cloud-based application is relatively intuitive. A proper implementation - the way you add fields, configure forms, assign permissions and develop workflows - can greatly increase usability, enabling each role to efficiently and effectively manage their day.

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.

All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years. Accordingly, I only recall our instance of Salesforce having one unscheduled, brief down time over 6 years. I can't remember for sure, but it may have been due to our Internet Service Provider (ISP) versus Salesforce itself. Also, Salesforce does it's best to keep customers in the loop:

Trust.salesforce.com is the salesforce.com community's home for real-time information on system performance and security. On this site you'll find:

Live and historical data on system performance
Up-to-the minute information on planned maintenance
Phishing, malicious software and social engineering threats
Best security practices for your organization
Information on how we safeguard your data

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.

Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day."
Points per Salesforce -
1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs.
2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers.
3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years.
4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed.
5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale.
6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com.
7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements.
8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training.
9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure

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.

They have excellent response, we also are subscribers of their premium services. Occasionally, they do pester you to close a case before you ar ready to but they do escalate and work the case well.

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.

All instructors are Salesforce certified. If you have done any type of customization, then it probably makes more sense to use the consulting partner who implemented your instance of Salesforce for training

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/

The premier level of training is capable of preparing any individual from infant user, to technical architect. That is not hyperbole.

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

Executive involvement is critical. Make sure you have a good handle on the metrics you would like to ultimately manage. Work as a team to document your business requirements. Whiteboard often. Understand Salesforce's best practice capabilities.

Have a central person identified to handle all report and analysis requests (ie - don't allow multiple people to create reports; have one person create reports and distribute them to decision makers via the Salesforce dashboard or whatever form). Make sure you understand critical dates and develop the project plan accordingly

They have a chatter function which is great! You can easily create group dashboards and reports.

It’s real-time, quick access, and easily compatible with over systems.

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.

Salesforce has the unique ability to scale to new products and offerings quickly growing with your enterprise.