Anaplan vs. SAP S/4HANA Cloud

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.

In my company, SAP S/4HANA Cloud works best for managing global operations, real-time financial consolidation, and automating supply chain processes. We rely on its AI-driven analytics to optimize procurement, logistics, and compliance in regulated industries. However, it’s not ideal for highly customized workflows, as the public cloud version limits deep modifications. Smaller teams also struggle with its complexity and costs. For businesses needing flexibility or lower overhead, alternatives like Oracle NetSuite might be a better fit. While powerful, S/4HANA Cloud requires significant investment in implementation and training, making it more suitable for enterprises with strong IT capabilities.

Incentivized

• Anaplan can scale as your business grows, for example adding new regions into to your geographical hierarchy.
• Anaplan is flexible and can do anything you want it to, there are no tables pre-configured that you need to fix your business process into.
• Reading formulas in Anaplan is straight forward with a quick learning curve.

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud is entirely based on continuously monitored processes enhanced in numerous operational business areas.
• The solution allows the immediate analysis of company performance indicators due to enhanced functions.
• Ideally built on future technologies, the organization’s platform aims at providing a system intended to expand based on business complexity.

Incentivized

• 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

• I would like to have an offline functionality as well which is not available at the moment.
• I would like to see in-built templates that can be used according to organization needs and have to be industry specific.
• Navigation of this platform is quite difficult to learn and requires training. So, new users will find learning a steep curve.

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

The cost of SAP as an ERP is quite high and the switching costs associated with ERP systems are even higher. That being said moving from one ERP to another only happens once in a great while for large organizations. Those switching costs include retraining, IT hardware requirements, outside consultants and more

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

SAPs usability is great. If there is one ERP where one can adjust about anything there is to be adjusted, this is SAP. This sometimes also means having to maintain some extra master data, but this is to be expected and is well worth the extra effort. We wouldn't have it any other way!

Incentivized

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.

The technical support received by the ITT design teams and OS implementation team has been very useful in ensuring that the SAP ERP is well-tailored to our company's specific needs and operations. This coupled with the training materials, business process maps, and concept demos (sand-box demos) makes adoption easy on end-users.

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.

More effective

Incentivized

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.

SAP requires
a lot of internal and external resources to complete its successful
implementation. The cloud version requires a deeper understanding of the
different capabilities of the local systems (hardware) and the connection
towards your local IT team. We found several problems on our systems that we
couldn't foresee before the implementation and roll out.

Incentivized

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)

As I already mentioned, it automated our tasks such as Report creation, PR creation, and many others. That's the major advantage of the S/4 HANA cloud over our previous ERP. Its robust indication system and pre-analyzed data enabled ease of decision-making, which was not incorporated in our last software.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• The financial management part ensures every process is well planned and allocated resources are used efficiently.
• The development of payroll management ensures that all employees are happily remunerated and, hence, very productive.
• The creation of solid financial reporting acts as the primary driver in decision-making, which brings more insights into development.

Incentivized