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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Varicent
Score 8.0 out of 10
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From quotas to sales and compensation, Varicent helps revenue leaders in enterprise organizations chart a more effective, connected path to revenue by providing vital data, insights, and sales go-to-market planning tools.
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Community Pulse
Anaplan
Varicent
Considered Both Products
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Chose Anaplan
Anaplan was cheaper or similar cost to the competition. Anaplan was able to fit more use cases. Anaplan was a flexible modeling tool that had greater future project potential compared to other tools.
Anaplan is an evolution of classic EPM tools like SAP BPC. It is simply a much easier system to maintain and roll-out. Dashboards are very user friendly and the Excel add-in is just as powerful. Anaplan excels at connected planning where all models are connected and rolled up …
Anaplan is not a point solution. Instead of having multiple systems that each do one business process (and can only do that business process in one way), Anaplan can do many different business processes for multiple business units. Sales, Finance, HR and other parts of the …
Jedox has limited the standard dimensions to 6 only in the financial workspace. If you need any other custom dimension, it has to be defined in analytical workspace. However, data interchange between Financial Workspace and Analytical workspaces are not real-time and rely on …
Essbase/HFM were hosted on-prem and required regular maintenance from the vendor. The tools were good at the simple tasks of consolidation and relatively simple allocation/calculations. Anaplan is a cloud-hosted platform that can be accessed almost anywhere with an internet …
Creating financial forecasts in Anaplan was a big improvement over doing the same activity in Microsoft Excel. The main difference is that Anaplan makes it easier to build models based on large amounts of data and to forecast concurrently with many users across your …
Anaplan vs Oracle Hyperion - Anaplan is far better calculation engine and way more modern. However, Anaplan still struggles to provide reporting, especially adhoc reporting in excel based off a data model.
Anaplan vs Pigment - Anaplan is a more proven product, however, Pigment …
Anaplan is easier to implement, easier to use, easier to maintain than these tools. It scales easily with the business. Workflows are easy to implement. It is easy to drill down and understand how the tool obtained a specific result, giving confidence in its calculations. …
Easy of use is Anaplan's main advantage. As Anaplan is code-less configuration, and the logic for model building is by far the simplest, it would make the learning curve less steep. This is very important when we are showing our clients that, their complicated planning scenario …
Anaplan is one of the only tools flexible to handle bespoke commission calculations. In addition to Sales Performance Management, Anaplan can be used to support other business functions, such as workforce planning or financial planning & analysis. Anaplan provides the …
Anaplan is a proven tool for scalable applications and is flexible to support multiple use cases. Its support is established and the user community is strong. Resources to support the product are readily available.
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 …
Anaplan and these other tools are very similar. I cannot say that I selected Anaplan over them as I have worked with and been involved with setting up a number of tools for clients. They all have their advantages and Anaplan is a very strong tool in the cloud planning space.
can be implemented across multiple use cases- also Anaplan is an enterprise solution. Had good reviews in market and also used by other competitors in industry
Varicent is the leader in the ICM space because it is scalable and is always making improvements / enhancements based on customer input. However in my opinion based on my own experience, all ICM providers operate similarly in that they over-promise to get a customer's business …
Varicent was selected 1) because we had an incompetent independent contractor managing the process; 2) Varicent misrepresented both scale & cost as well as support.
Budget-wise, reporting, and System availability-wise. Varicent hands down provides a better environment for compensation deliverables and management reporting which includes all of the financial needs we require. The following components were able to determine our pick. …
Varicent is an all-in-one platform that provides database access, UI, and ability to create calculations, reports, etc. from data. I like this better than traditional databases as it takes what would've been additional coding and makes it an easy process to go through with just …
Varicent outperforms other Incentive Compensation Management I have used in the past. Its user interface is far more user friendly, data is more accurate and up to date. The whole look and feel is modern and polished.
We have both PeopleSoft and Varicent. The tools are used for similar process (compensation review ) but on different entities with different (not compatible) requirements.
In 2015, we used a scorecard containing 80 attributes in our review of Oracle, Callidus, and Xactly & Varicent. Oracle did not have true self serve capabilities- programming was heavily required, not intuitive, out of the box functionality was limited. Callidus & Xactly could …
With its versions and native time features Anaplan is well suited for all activities around planning in time and scenarios. Tasks involving calculating across multiple dimensions make Anaplan shine - the easiness to build complex calculation and present results on customizable pages. With its access restrictions it's well suited also for working with sensitive data (employee and customers personal data).
For the use cases we have at the bank, ICM is a perfect solution. For any bank or institution that has similar requirements, ICM would be a perfect solution. But I also think for any use case that has any sort of incentives based on Sales done, this would work amazing, as both Calculations and reports are handled by ICM very well; it's an all-in-one solution, I feel like.
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.
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
Automated rebuild Indexing of tables and calcs, or next best thing, automated reports to list what should have its index rebuilt.
To have the functionality for a conditional entry on the ICM scheduler. E.g. if ICM table has fieldx = 'Y' then we run a specific row in the ICM scheduler else it's skipped.
The ability to download data in csv, Excel … from the "History Viewer" of tables that have changes tracked.
Anaplan is already an established market leader in enterprise planning area. Its flexibility to build multi-dimensional models, real time scenario plannings are proven to be the best features and successfully implemented by global organizations. Anaplan's ambitious product team is ensuring to roll out new features regularly based on customer/ partner feedback. e.g their new improved polaris environment has strong potential to build very large models without worrying about sparsity. The integration with other tools/technologies is being easier (e.g. cloudworks). Hence, considering Anaplan as a platform that has proved to be successful tool in enterprise level planning, its focus on regular feature enhancements and future release roadmaps I believe this platform has potential to evolve further along with our business processes and requirements
Varicent is a system you build for your unique needs and business objectives. Once this is in place you can adjust and change accordingly. This system has the flexibility to change in correlation with the needs of your business. From simple viewing adjustments to changing the whole landscape of your operations this system can be modified in whatever direction necessary. Also with the growing popularity of handheld devices this system is at a huge advantage by being accessible from the Ipad
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
Any calculations can be implemented as there are hardly any limitations on complexity. However, online real-time usability is lacking - a simple user enters, and the system calculates work in a way that it is in the browser and hence still needs overnight to be properly reflected in the batch calculations and backend tables.
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
Unless a model is poorly constructed, the platform can accommodate tens or even hundreds of users without any impact on model performance. Dashboard pages load quickly, reports can be exported to Excel or pdf quickly, and integrations with other systems can be scheduled for quiet times of the day. Adding new use cases to the platform should also have minimal impact on performance if done in a careful way and following best practice principles
All is fast, but with API's it is sometimes slower due to the application we are pulling data from. Reports are loaded directly or within seconds and our reports are very detailed with many columns and rows.
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.
Giving a 10 would suggest there is no room for improvement. I don't feel like their support is perfect. However, I have never met another team that was more dedicated to making sure we get what we want and need.
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.
Learning made easy . One of the best trainings i have attended. Training was very detailed training by the trainer, which helped me understand the basics of the model building. Level 1 training was easy and instructor was most helpful here. Level 2 training was challenging but was able to go thru due to understanding of the basics.
Agile methodology and breaking the work down into sprints was very helpful. Implementation required a deeper dive into our data than expected for the consultants to be able to construct the data model. But once it was in place, the focus on knowledge transfer enabled us to be able to use the product effectively after the team rolled off.
Test test test. Make sure that the product is calculating everyone 100% correctly. DO NOT accept a 70% pass rate as some companies would like to have you believe is acceptable. This means conducting thorough testing by providing 100% of all expected results, but it will be worth it when you know that the compensation plans are working entirely as expected.
Anaplan is not a point solution. Instead of having multiple systems that each do one business process (and can only do that business process in one way), Anaplan can do many different business processes for multiple business units. Sales, Finance, HR and other parts of the business can go to one place to get their work done.
In 2015, we used a scorecard containing 80 attributes in our review of Oracle, Callidus, and Xactly & Varicent. Oracle did not have true self serve capabilities- programming was heavily required, not intuitive, out of the box functionality was limited. Callidus & Xactly could not provide us a demo using our data, statements could not be sent out in bulk form, difficulty in importing/exporting to CRM. Varicent excelled in most areas and was the clear winner.
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
It is very scalable and adaptable to changing complexities of calculations and business rules under a variety of different scenarios. It does not get full points because in large data loads the time needed to calculate and import the data increases exponentially and may cause issues related to timing potentially.
You will see greater accuracy within your forecasts by leveraging Anaplan to look at historical values while including projections such as seasonality.
You will save time, resulting in team members spending more time on value-add opportunities.
You will have happy end users that have access to self-service reports, removing any bottlenecks through the workflow.
Compliance - with a central system used for calculation incentive payments and commissions, we are able to provide reports and data showing every detail of how payments are calculated and why they are justified. We can also identify anomalies and outliers.
Integration with our payroll system is seamless. Except for regular pay, nothing goes to payroll without going through ICM. The process for paying incentives/bonuses/commissions is now very structured and efficient.
