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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SAP Ariba
Score 8.0 out of 10
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With advanced tools to automate manual processes and support close collaboration with suppliers, SAP Ariba helps streamline source-to-pay processes across organizations.
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.
Adopted by various vendors, hence easy to reach out to do business. Enables centralized supplier onboarding and integrates with other CLM SAAS products. In general, it’s a great tool that has streamlined procurement and supplier management, though there’s still some room to improve usability and integration. Overall, it’s reliable and delivers strong value.
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.
Complete Procurement of Inventory step easy through GUI-Ariba integration once Purchase order is created and it is sent to the SAP Ariba Supplier Network. Vendor confirms the order and sends notification of Inbound Delivery to the warehouse through ASN and the Inbound process, Goods Receipt Process, Unloading, Put away process easy.
SAP Ariba integrates the different SAP Sourcing platforms, services and their tools in order to optimize operations, saves cost and meeting customer requirements through its easy to use tools. Such as integration with SAP S/4 HANA, SAP EWM using Idocs for End to End sourcing and Procurement coverage.
As a part of the SAP Direct Sourcing suite, it helps allow customer manage their direct materials in the single dashboard and helping customer to have view of the comprehensive info about BoM and the structure. Based on requirements, buyers can run materials and/or entire Bill of Materials. When these are sent from ERP to SAP Ariba, managers can manage them in the direct spend dashboard. Can search for desired items in the dashboard and view details of BoM or deeper view of information of the material. Buyers can run sourcing, run details for materials, create material quotes, and create pricing using book quotes.
While SAP Ariba offers workflow capabilities, users have suggested more advanced customization options for workflows
SAP Ariba has a mobile app, users have suggested improvements in terms of functionality and responsiveness. Enhancements to the mobile app could provide a more seamless and efficient experience for users on the go
SAP Ariba integrates well with various enterprise systems, users have reported that the initial setup and integration processes can be complex. Improvements in integration tools and documentation could facilitate a smoother onboarding experience
AP Ariba provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, some users desire greater flexibility in creating and customizing reports. Improvements in the ability to generate ad-hoc reports and customize dashboards could enhance analytics capabilities
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
User Satisfaction: The end user are at times not very happy with the solution. Return on Investment (ROI): SAP Ariba delivered measurable benefits in terms of cost savings, efficiency. Integration Capabilities: The system is easy to integrate with backend SAP ERP system. Support from Ariba team is a bit sluggish in terms of Service Requests
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
After implementing SAP Ariba, our procurement operations have improved significantly. We know what to order, when, how much to order, and the dollar value we will spend. This helps us manage our inventory better and improve cash flow. Also, API enables us to integrate with external modules like logistics and freight booking and tracking.
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.
Customer support has always been top notch. From small configuration changes to overall process changes, support has the teammates in place with excellent knowledge and is able to provide solutions based on business challenges quickly. Their customer support through their Account teams continues to be hands on and very responsive to needs in a timely fashion.
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
It improves over all vendor management system of an organization by providing less costly ways of procurement and making business simple. AribaSAP Ariba digitally transforms your supply chain, procurement and contract management process. acts as supply chain, procurement service to do business globally In today’s world, there is a need to control your supply chain and to collaborate with your suppliers in an efficient way. To enable healthy supply chain, you need to have suppliers with visibility to every part of procurement process so that they can maintain an efficient supply chain and help organizations to grow their and own business..
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
We saved nearly 10% of planned costs due to the large database of vendors we created within the company as a whole.
Saving in time due to shortening of procurement cycles. Procurement activities were never on the critical path and were accomplished with less Supply Chain resources than originally planned.
In the process we created a huge database of Vendors and Pricing which well be beneficial in our future projects.
It is an excellent tool and just what are business required and could afford.
