Anaplan vs Workday Financial Management

• Anaplan allows data to be viewed and manipulated across multiple dimensions. Once you have the data in the system users can build virtually any model they want to evaluate and analyze.
• With Anaplan our data is centralized and stable. We replaced a number of spreadsheets which resided on individual's laptops and were constantly emailed back and forth. Time spent validating and manipulating data has been drastically reduced - not to mention the errors that always exist in a spreadsheet.
• Anaplan has allowed us to simplify our use of multiple hierarchies. Primary issues before Anaplan involved reconciling inputs and outputs that existed at different levels of a hierarchy and sometimes across different dimensions. In Anaplan once the relationship is mapped everything happens seamlessly.
• In our case Anaplan and our use does not rely on our IT organization. Superusers build the models and dashboards for regular users and all of the tool and the data reside in the cloud. Data is always accessible and as real time as you can feed to the system. Changes are instantaneous.

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• We specically wanted a cloud financial management system that we could use in China and communicate reports to the headquarters organization and roll-up reporting. It performs well.
• It was reasonably priced since we are not a for-profit company and need the Workday flexibility for finance and accounting operations. Most of our requirements are met with this one system.
• The system worked efficiently with the additional security we built on to keep confidential. Many reports are ready off-the-shelf or easy to develop, which is a strength.

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• Graphical feature: Anaplan should explore more graphical features. In my case, I have to export my data to MS Visio to get an org chart. The conditional formatting options are still very limited right now.
• Formula for List Properties: It's only allowed to key in the formulas for these list properties. I'm not sure about the design philosophy. But I wish it could be similar to the formulas in modules to avoid mistakes.
• Training Documentation Version Control: Training documentations have some many mistakes. It seems no version control at all. Since using Anaplan requires to set up time properly, the training documentations need to be updated. Before you publish any document, can you let one of your employees (who are not authors of the documentation) to follow the documentation to see if he can complete tasks based on the directions on the documentation? All the modeler in my company had hard time to teach ourselves by using the documentation so none of us was able to complete the intermediate training.

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• We were surprised by the lack of user guides and supporting information for day-to-day users. Granted, we could find this, but our users like guides.
• The system could improve with contact help and chat functions if you need the answers quickly. We figured this would all have been built in.
• Quite surprised by the lack of treasury management functionality. SAP and Oracle have it, although their modules are not that comprehensive or user friendly.

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• I'm sure the impact is positive. We have streamlined many processes and created capacity for our finance team.
• It's great to have "one source of truth" and know that everyone is looking at the same metrics.

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• As a new starup affiliate five years ago, we did not have a huge budget. The ROI was met relatively quickly, no surprises here.
• With minimal consulting assistance, this made the implementation cost reasonable, if any software implementation could be considered reasonable.
• It was a risk to implement Workday Financial Management in one country but we did leverage it with HCM in the states.

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