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Anaplan

Anaplan

Overview

What is Anaplan?

Anaplan is a transformative way to see, plan, and run your business. Using its proprietary Hyperblock™ technology, Anaplan lets you contextualize real-time performance, and forecast future outcomes for faster, confident decisions. Anaplan enables connected strategy and planning across your enterprise…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Anaplan has been implemented in various industries to address a wide range of business challenges. Users have found that the software …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 45 features
  • Flat file integration (280)
    9.4
    94%
  • Forecasting (281)
    9.2
    92%
  • Scenario modeling (283)
    9.1
    91%
  • Management reporting (282)
    8.3
    83%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Unavailable

What is Anaplan?

Anaplan is a transformative way to see, plan, and run your business. Using its proprietary Hyperblock™ technology, Anaplan lets you contextualize real-time performance, and forecast future outcomes for faster, confident decisions. Anaplan enables connected strategy and planning across your…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.anaplan.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is PlanGuru?

PlanGuru is budgeting, forecasting and financial analytics software for SMB's, Nonprofits and the Accountants/ Advisors that work with them.

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Product Demos

Financial Consolidation demo

YouTube

Anaplan Demand Planning Demo

YouTube

See the Future Clearly by Planning Demand with Anaplan

YouTube
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

7.7
Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

9.1
Avg 8.3

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.8
Avg 8.2

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

8.2
Avg 7.7

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

9.2
Avg 8.7

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

7.9
Avg 8.0

Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting

These activities are designed to assist with both data-driven operational, short-term planning and strategic long term planning

9.1
Avg 8.3

Consolidation and Close

Consolidation of data from multiple entities with currency management, reporting and audit trails.

7.2
Avg 8.1

Financial Reporting and Compliance

Financial statements and regulatory filings

8.6
Avg 8.3

Analytics and Reporting

Dashboards and scorecards for KPI monitoring and benchmarking

9
Avg 8.0

Integration

Ability to integrate with external applications.

8.8
Avg 8.3
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Product Details

What is Anaplan?

Anaplan is a transformative way to see, plan, and run your business. Using its proprietary Hyperblock™ technology, Anaplan lets you contextualize real-time performance, and forecast future outcomes for faster, confident decisions. Anaplan enables connected strategy and planning across your enterprise to move your business forward. Based in San Francisco, Anaplan has over 200 partners and more than 2,000 customers worldwide.

Anaplan Features

Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting Features

  • Supported: Long-term financial planning
  • Supported: Financial budgeting
  • Supported: Forecasting
  • Supported: Scenario modeling
  • Supported: Management reporting

Consolidation and Close Features

  • Supported: Financial data consolidation
  • Supported: Journal entries and reports
  • Supported: Local and consolidated reporting
  • Supported: Detailed Audit Trails

Financial Reporting and Compliance Features

  • Supported: Financial Statement Reporting
  • Supported: Management Reporting
  • Supported: Excel-based Reporting

Analytics and Reporting Features

  • Supported: Personalized dashboards
  • Supported: Color-coded scorecards
  • Supported: Cost and profitability analysis
  • Supported: Key Performance Indicator setting

Integration Features

  • Supported: Flat file integration
  • Supported: Excel data integration
  • Supported: Direct links to 3rd-party data sources

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Customizable dashboards

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Report Versioning

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Mobile Application
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Anaplan Screenshots

Screenshot of Platform: The Anaplan platform is a unified cloud-based solution that connects people, data and plans to enable complex scenario modeling and drive growthScreenshot of OpEx Planning: Review revenue-target-setting goals by brand, season, and capacity all on one, unified, highly-visual dashboardScreenshot of Supply Planning: Break down costs across assembly production to project profitability and align your supply chain to market opportunitiesScreenshot of Territory and Quota Planning: Keep track of sales goals and quotas across territories and industries to optimize sales performanceScreenshot of Headcount Planning: Easily align workforce plans with your strategic plans and quickly see where the best qualified talent resides to fit your organization’s staffing needsScreenshot of Marketing: Eliminate spreadsheets to drive efficiency across planning and manage budget against planned activity

Anaplan Videos

The Anaplan platform supports detailed hyperscale models that can see a business from edge to edge, and plan with signals down to the transactional level.

Watch Anaplan transforms the way users see, plan, and run their businesses, to move forward with confidence in a complex and changing world.

Anaplan Integrations

Anaplan Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Mobile Web
Supported CountriesAll countries
Supported LanguagesMulti-lingual support

Frequently Asked Questions

IBM Cognos Analytics, Oracle Hyperion, and Prophix are common alternatives for Anaplan.

Reviewers rate Financial budgeting highest, with a score of 9.6.

The most common users of Anaplan are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).

Anaplan Customer Size Distribution

Consumers0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)0%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)10%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)90%
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(480)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Anaplan has been implemented in various industries to address a wide range of business challenges. Users have found that the software replaces duplicate spreadsheets and simplifies reporting processes, resulting in one version of the truth. Anaplan's inbuilt version control and access controls have improved forecasting accuracy and simplified forecasting processes. It has also helped standardize forecasting and reporting approaches across different asset classes, benefitting functions such as HR, Finance, Accounting, and Management Controlling.

The flexibility of Anaplan allows users to customize the software to meet their specific business needs. It supports a multitude of use cases including financial planning and analysis, customer success, collections, capex forecasting, opex forecasting, headcount and personal spend forecasting, balance sheet forecasting, cash flow forecasting, P&L forecasting, collections forecasting, and management reporting. Multiple users can input forecast assumptions in real-time, enabling dynamic results. Furthermore, Anaplan allows for faster implementations by providing a single platform and source of truth for multiple planning use cases.

Anaplan's powerful calculation engine enables users to run multiple scenarios in seconds, facilitating what-if analysis and scenario comparison during budgeting and forecasting processes. The software is widely used in sales performance management for functions like territory management, account planning, quota allocation, and incentive compensation planning. In addition to its extensive use cases in finance and sales planning, Anaplan is employed across various industries including real estate development, insurance, telecommunication infrastructure, and banking. The platform empowers organizations by providing scenario planning and sensitivity analysis capabilities that enable informed decision-making. With its user-friendly interface and real-time calculations, Anaplan assists businesses in centralizing data and maintaining a golden source of truth for better planning outcomes.

Highly scalable and flexible data integration and modeling capabilities: Reviewers have praised the Anaplan platform for its highly scalable and flexible data integration and modeling capabilities, allowing for easy evolution from simple calculations to complex formulas. Many users have highlighted this as a major strength of the platform.

Real-time data capabilities enabling informed decision-making: The real-time data capabilities of Anaplan have been widely praised by reviewers for enabling informed decision-making based on up-to-date information. Several users have mentioned that this feature has greatly contributed to their ability to make agile decisions in a fast-paced business environment.

User-friendly interface contributing to high end user adoption: The user-friendly interface of Anaplan has been consistently highlighted by reviewers as a key strength of the platform. Users appreciate the intuitive design, which resembles Excel and allows for quick task completion. This ease of use has contributed to high end user adoption and overall positive feedback from customers.

Limited storage: Some users have found the limited storage in Anaplan to be a hindrance in efficiently managing their data. They have expressed difficulties in storing and organizing large amounts of information, which can impact their ability to effectively utilize the software.

Expensive: Several reviewers feel that Anaplan is expensive and could be more cost-effective considering its features and capabilities. This pricing structure may make it less accessible for smaller businesses or organizations with budget constraints.

Glitches with the interface: Users report experiencing glitches with the interface, causing difficulties in navigating and performing tasks smoothly. These issues can disrupt workflow and decrease efficiency for users.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 302)
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Andris Ingiļāvičus | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We as an implementation partner have chosen Anaplan as a core technology to use for solving business process problems in a variety of areas: finance, HR, and supply chain. The main problems we typically address is performance, level of detail and scalability of existing legacy platforms or processes maintained in Excel. Due to Anaplans infrastructure, it is a great tool to use for addressing the issues of multiple departments and bringing the plans together in a single platform. That's usually where we see the biggest ROI of the tool, when there is buy-in from multiple departments, this breaks down communication barriers and adds new levels of transparency and speed at which decisions can be made.
  • Version comparison
  • Multi use-case implementations
  • Speed and scalability
  • Development speed and flexibility
  • Integration and data loads
  • Complex business problem modeling
  • Anaplan Community (a well established user forum and training centre)
  • User license management
  • Master settings from field formats (Model building related)
Anaplan revolutionizes the planning process by standardizing it, creating transparency in data, particularly in showcasing results to the management team. By replacing Excel-centric planning methods, Anaplan not only opens the door to handling larger datasets but also enables a more intricate level of data granularity at an accelerated pace. What sets it apart is its capacity to facilitate a seamless collaboration within a cross-functional model, accommodating diverse departments and business functions in a dynamic, real-time environment.

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Anaplan to centralize our sales data and hierarchies within our department. This core data is used for Planning and Forecasting across the business.
  • Centralize Data
  • Standardized Hierarchies
  • Quick Implementation
  • Easily accessible
  • Bugs are apparent for new features
  • Planned Maintenance times are frequent some times of the year
  • High learning curve
Anaplan is well suited to replace legacy excel based practices - particularly for planning and forecasting. It is also ideal to centralize data and best practices (Anaplan Way) for rolling out Anaplan appropriate projects. Anaplan is not ideal for unstructured data processes - for example being management of text-based data at a highly complex level - due to size constraints.
December 14, 2023

Anaplan fan

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Anaplan as tool to help our clients to optimize their business process. Our projects overs a lot of areas including supply chain management, FP&A process, Tax provision, BEPS etc. Our clients always want a solution that could consolidate the data from different external systems, track the edit history and manage the business workflow, and Anaplan could easily realize that. At the same time, Anaplan implementation is very flexible, so if the business environment changes after solution go-live, COE team can help to update the logic with less efforts compare to traditional systems.
  • Multiple native features (Pivot, filter etc.) in dashboard page to help end user customize their analysis.
  • Single source of truth for data, and real-time calculation
  • Flexible for future maintenance
  • Diagram to visualize the whole workflow process.
  • A summary to show like saved view is used in which action, module or saved view is published in which NUX page etc... More efficient for technical leader to review and refine the implementation.
In FP&A area, Anaplan can help to realize the various forecasting and budgeting activities. End users can add adjustment and all the edit record can be trackable. They can also perform what-if analysis based on different drivers. It supports multiple versions for Actual, forecasting and budgeting, and the actual numbers can be switch-overed with simple set-up. Our FP&A clients also wants to integrate the data from external systems, and Anaplan provide multiple options to support the data integration (incl. upstream system to Anaplan, Anaplan to downstream system).
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Within the organization, we use Anaplan to plan our end-to-end business. This includes all workforce planning, incentive compensation, SPM, and FP&A activities. Untangling a web of offline documents used for planning is nearly impossible. Without Anaplan, there's no way plans across the organization could be connected the way they are now. This is specifically applicable within the Sales Performance Management use cases. These use cases often need to be dynamic to the changes in the business and are less structured than Finance use cases. Having a tool like Anaplan, along with a solid COE and model builder team, adjusting to market and organizational changes is quicker and more dynamic. Anaplan also allows analysis and scenario planning to get ahead of and create new positive change within the organization.
  • Flexibility
  • Time to value
  • Scalability
  • Consistency
  • Standardization
  • Workflow
  • User management
  • Integration
Anaplan is well suited for an organization that wants to build and grow a planning-focused company. The tool opens many possibilities, but it requires proper investment in the people and process. Anaplan is not magic, but with the right focus on building a COE and a planning-focused company, the tool can help make significant impacts within the organization. I've found Anaplan to be a great Sales Performance Management solution because it becomes the source of truth for Sales Operations to execute planning. I've worked with several companies that couldn't answer basic cost of sales questions within a reasonable amount of time. By bringing this all into Anaplan, plans across the entire sales organization can be summarized and help provide meaningful insight in a shorter amount of time.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At CloudFlare, we use Anaplan for Finacial Planning and Sales Compensation Management use cases. Our goal was to diminish the reliance on spreadsheets while facilitating the oversight of these processes as our company scales.
- on the Financial Planning side, our implementation covers workforce planning, expense planning, depreciation + amortization, & costs allocation. We have also built comprehensive scenario features to facilitate "what-if" analysis and iterative planning.
- on the SCM side, our model handles the entire process from plan design and assignment to the release of the compensation statements which our sales team consults in Anaplan directly.
  • Adapts to any company's processes thanks to great flexibility
  • Handles big amounts of data
  • Actualization is easy thanks to switchover functionality
  • Fully interactive dashboards can be created with very few clicks
  • Granular security controls
  • Performance handling sparse data sets
  • Not flexible in handling of dimensions
  • Many features behind paywalls
Anaplan is a very flexible tool that can support many processes within an organization and bring them together to create a connected planning experience. As a general rule, I have found that it is well suited for use cases that rely heavily on numbers (financial planning, financial consolidation, sales performance management) and less appropriate for uses cases that rely more on text (ESG management for example).
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We mainly use Anaplan as our budgeting and forecast tool. It allows us to have a central hub for forecast owners from every department to to sign into, see their actual spend, and input forecasts. We then send the updated forecasts back out to our accounting and allocation systems. We also have various reports built to analyze the forecasts at different levels and by different dimensions of the data.
  • Forcing structure and auditability to processes that used to exist in spreadsheets
  • Strong calculation engine that can account for many dimensions
  • Formula Syntax that is not overly complicated and can be learned by the business in order to have ownership of their models internally
  • UX pages are not as customizable as most users would like
  • Anything that needs to be interacted with by different users simultaneously must be “dimensioned” by user. I understand this is the way the engine is set up and cannot be changed but it makes a huge challenge keeping the size of the models smaller
  • If you enter in a formula incorrectly, the model can “break” for minutes for all users
Anaplan is an extremely powerful calculation engine and planning tool that is much better suited for enterprise level planning than spreadsheets are. It allows for user or role specific security provisions. It has a new native workflow functionality (or custom workflows can be built within the tool thanks to its flexibility). The biggest problem with Anaplan has always been its dashboards for users to interact with, as they can be hard to make user friendly given business requirements. However, it should be known that it is not meant to be a reporting tool and you can always export calculated results to a better suited system.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization uses Anaplan to support various types and sizes of planning processes spanning Financial planning, Supply chain planning, IT investment planning, Cash flow forecasting, capital projects planning, and cost planning. This cuts across several different business types and regions with an overall population of around 1k users and about 20 use cases. While the problems are unique to the individual use cases, typically we see Anaplan used to streamline inefficient business processes that have disconnected and silo'd datasets, lack a clean source of truth, and are not responsive or agile.
  • Ingest and integrate disconnected datasets and sources that speak different "languages"
  • Flexible security and user-oriented customization of dashboards and datasets
  • Smart architecture allows creative license to connect planning processes that have different time horizons and granularities
  • Real-time ("live") collaboration is particularly useful for globally spread teams in different time-zones
  • The "new" UX front-end offers a lot of modern and intuitive features, but it lacks the ability to view multiple "tabs" of dashboards and reports. The "classic" dashboard had this feature but now with the UX, you need to be really smart about how to design a single page where the users won't get "lost".
  • Lacks the ability to "wrap text" (similar to excel) and auto-size grid rows
Anaplan is well suited for cases where you're struggling with processes that involve multiple users and teams, but lack a trusted source system or where you experience major breaks in the process. Typically, in these instances, the source is either some form of excel files or other enterprise systems that don't fit the need that are then "band-aided" by excel files. You may also find that you don't have a trusted source for your planning data...particularly a source that is also part of a process that can quickly respond to changing requests or external demands and requires a refreshed planning view.

Anaplan is less appropriate for cases where you need a "standard" planning solution "out of the box" and are less focused on asset-level customizations or considerations. This doesn't mean that Anaplan can't be an enterprise planning solution, but it doesn't really function as an "off the shelf" planning solution where you may not want to customize it. Implementing a standard planning solution is always easier...even in Anaplan, but you'd still have to build it with Anaplan whereas some enterprise competitors may offer more of a standard offering without the need to do any customizations.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Anaplan is used across our organisation. The use cases that I am familiar with are related for Finance, i.e. Budgeting & Forecasting, Workforce Planning, & Revenue Planning. All of our BUs are onboarded to Anaplan for the creation of our Annual Operating Plan while only a fraction use it for Forecasting. This number is expected to grow as we continue to build out features for our Forecast model. Currently, we are implementing models for Workforce Planning and expect to build out our Revenue model in mid to late 2024. The Workforce Planning model is expected to be used by all BUs for Budgeting & Forecasting cycles while the Revenue model will be piloted for one BU.
  • Anaplan is flexible, meaning it can be built to accommodate almost all business use cases
  • Implementations are quick - delivery of MVP products and phased enhancements is ideal
  • The UX is user friendly and Finance users enjoy the similarity of features to excel (like pivot, filter, etc)
  • Anaplan continues to enhance its product and listen to its customers / community
  • Audit Reporting - it's currently difficult to use / read the audit reports
  • Security - security is not centralised & too broad (actively being worked on)
  • Data Integration / Management - data management and orchestration could be centralised (actively being worked on)
Anaplan is a strong tool for finance as it can be built for a variety of business processes. Its flexibility allows us to customise the tool for each unique aspect of the business. While it is extremely flexible, it is important to have the right people in place to help manage the tool long term or else scalability / optimisation could be at risk. Implementations for Anaplan are quick and you can easily deliver an MVP and then continue to add on additional features throughout the year in releases. Users enjoy working with the tool because of the UX - if dashboards are built with a strong user journey in mind. The auditing feature is not very user friendly; the export of history must be exported, parsed and displayed on a separately built dashboard to be useful. Security is too broad and not centrally managed (but this is being worked on!). More work needs to be done to make integration and data management easier (again being worked on!).
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Anaplan for Financial Planning & Analysis [as well as] Customer Success & Collections. There are 25+ active models addressing different business use cases. To name a few, Capex forecasting, Opex forecasting, Headcount & Personal Spend forecasting, Balance Sheet forecasting, Cash flow forecasting, P&L forecasting, Collections forecasting, Management Reporting, etc.
  • Empowers business users to reduce dependency on IT teams
  • Cloud native product
  • Short implementation time
  • Excellent training content for self-paced online training
  • Zero code
  • Enable robotic process automation features
  • Sizing becomes an issue for newbie model builders
Well suited for Financial Planning & Analysis, Territory & Quota, Commissions, Collections, etc. Not so good for financial closing, costing, Bill of materials planning, Routing, etc.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
As an independent consultantcy, we have seen Anaplan as a core component of the technology stack that we recommend to the Alternative Investment Industries. The sheer breadth of use cases means that we have seen many companies completely replace excel-based modelling and reporting with Anaplan. Real Estate use cases include Asset Level Budget and Forecasting, Corporate Real Estate, Construction, and Development Appraisals. In Private Markets, we have also seen use cases across, Workforce Planning, Incentive Compensation, FP&A, Fund Modelling, Portfolio Analytics, Valuations and Waterfall calculations.
  • Full integration with source systems providing one source of truth.
  • Real time calculations.
  • Connecting planning across your organisation.
  • Secure and transparent.
  • User friendly.
  • Flexible.
  • Adding the TODAY function
  • Ability to add sub-totals or totals on selections
  • Management Reporting is a great addition but could still be improved
Anaplan is well suited to all aspects of Financial modelling and in particular in helping establish a fully connected organisation, I have worked on a large number of FP&A, Workforce Planning and more bespoke implementations and have really seen the value add in terms of dealing with large data sets and streamlining planning. It is most suited where there is a robust repeatable process and less suited to ad hoc/one-off modelling.
December 08, 2023

Anaplan Review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We currently use Anaplan for Workforce & Expense planning use case. Anaplan addresses both Tops Down and Bottoms Up planning with extensive scenario modeling capabilities.
  • Anaplan provides flexibility to develop any planning use case and organizations that leverage this end up using connected planning efficiently
  • Easy integrations to ensure upstream data retrieval and downstream reporting
  • Quick turnaround in terms of implementations and bug fixes
  • Better Reporting
  • Sub-totaling functionality to enable reviewing totals irrespective of hierarchy
  • Templates for initial build
Well suited scenarios:
  • Connected Workforce & Expense Planning
  • Scenario Modeling
  • Marketing Budgeting and spend
  • Territory and Quota Planning

Not suitable scenarios:
  • Consolidation
  • Operational Use Cases
Stuart McCash | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are a global consulting firm focused on delivering operational transformation and enabling technology solutions to the alternative investment industry. As such, we have implemented Anaplan for several of our clients for various use cases. It is a highly flexible tool. For instance, I have implemented it for FP&A, investment budgeting, and forecasting as well as several other use cases.
  • Budgeting
  • Forecasting
  • Asset modeling
  • workforce planning
  • A "Today" function
  • Error reporting while building
  • workflow
Anaplan is a fantastic tool for long-term budgeting and forecasting for a whole host of asset types. It is also excellent at consolidating information into usable and highly dimensionalised data sets that can be used in a whole host of calculations. With the addition of the new dashboards, it now has a front-facing end suitable for reporting to all levels of business.
Douglas Eaton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Anaplan is a cloud-based planning and performance management platform that allows organizations to connect data, people, and plans across the enterprise. It is used to address various business problems such as financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, sales performance management, workforce planning, and supply chain optimization.
[...] specializes in Anaplan implementations for Alternative Investments use cases (fund/investment cash flow forecasting, capital contribution/distribution, carry waterfall model, real estate asset budgeting & forecasting, FP&A, incentive compensation,...)
  • Replicate individual companies business processes (flexibility)
  • Live calculations
  • Scalability
  • Audit capability
  • Data integration
  • Workflow
  • Management reporting
Anaplan is well suited for complex financial forecasting models, scenario planning, multi-dimensional models (e.g. version, scenario, time, investment, currency,... ), data integration & automation, hierarchies. It is a fantastic tool for collaboration across the company functions.

Anaplan is not the best suited for automated workflows, financial consolidation (US GAAP/IFRS) nor advanced reporting capabilities.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I have implemented Anaplan for many different use cases. We have used Anaplan from FP&A, Inventory Planning, Territory and Quota Management, and Project Planning. In each of the implementations, Anaplan has been used to replace legacy Excel processes that have been causing issues for the users for many years. Anaplan enables thousands of users to access the tool without running into version control issues and Anaplan can integrate with external data sources and can easily store billions of data records.
  • Cloud based tool that can be access from any web browser and even mobile devices.
  • Can store billions of data records and helps centralize and standardize the data that users can view.
  • Has native security and user access management.
  • Has native Data Integration capabilities with using CloudWorks
  • Initial implementation can be tricky for teams that don't have an Anaplan expert.
  • Licensing can be an issue if many users need to access the tool.
  • Reporting capabilities are not the best in the industry.
Anaplan is an excellent choice to replace any manual planning processes in Excel where many users need to interact with the same file and conduct forecasting or planning. Anaplan can store a lot of data, has user access management, and stores all historical user changes making version control a non-issue.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Maintaining accurate and timely financial forecasts driven by professional services revenue drivers. Our business forecasts change on a daily basis when operational drivers change - such as landing new clients or projects and staffing changes, so it's important that we have 1) consistent driver data linked to source systems 2) ability to handle complex modeling needs, like complicated revenue billing models and 3) flexible and consistent reporting.
  • Financial Modeling
  • Flexiblilty to adjust to changes in business needs
  • Nice UX
  • Improvement in Excel add-in
  • Automated report delivery
  • Improvement in workflow
Well suited for:
  • Financial modeling needs that are relatively complex and/or currently done offline in Excel
  • Connecting financial plans to operational planning - such as sales, marketing, workforce, and supply chain
  • A business that is changing and may have frequent updates to how they plan and to what level of granularity
  • Modeling and forecasts that is more nuances than vanilla FP&A opex planning
Not appropriate for:
  • Being a data warehouse - i.e. storing tons of data
  • Being designed like a legacy "large cube" olap environment
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Anaplan was implemented in order to support the financial planning and P&L forecasting within the organization. The problem we were facing was the chaotic process and an Excel based tool that wasn't performing enough. There were issues with versions control, collaboration and security. Tool was not sufficient to pick up with the pace of company growth. Anaplan was able to address all the above points and improve the financial planning process completely.
  • Collaboration between business functions
  • Performance of complex calculations
  • Version control and scenario planning
  • The workflow functionality could be improved
  • Plan IQ (AI based functionality) could be more flexible
  • Platform Support could be a bit more responsive
Anaplan can bring a lot of value when implemented for multiple use cases. It can organize the whole planning process of the company promoting collaboration and improving the visibility on business processes. It fits well in the financial planning use cases but also sales and demand planning.
I don't think it's a good choice for small companies though. From my perspective the bigger the company the more it can withdrawal from the tool due to a scale of implementation.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Anaplan across the business, starting with a model that forecasts subscriptions to our publication using historical data and different business assumptions. From this we can forecast revenues, and combined with forecasts of revenues from other parts of the business, we can generate a P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow for the Group. Anaplan allows us to reforecast regularly throughout the financial year, at minimal effort compared to traditional forecasting tools, which allows our leadership team to make important business decisions as economic circumstances change. It is easy to integrate different models, so we have extended the platform to include headcount/payroll data which then feeds into the financial statements. We have identified a further half dozen use cases to build over the next 12 to 18 months, including a dedicated Cost Allocation model, a Scenario Planning model and an ESG model.
  • Scenario Planning and Variance Analysis
  • Workforce Planning
  • Cost Allocation
  • Sandbox area for quick calculations
  • Better integration with Microsoft Excel / Google Sheets
  • User list subsets
Anaplan is an excellent tool for budgeting and forecasting, particularly where this involves multiple stakeholders in different departments. The platform can accommodate complex business structures (regions, countries, divisions, departments, etc., right down to general ledger accounts) and it is easy to update these and make changes within the system, so that models can be adapted and reused as the business evolves. This speeds up the planning process, allowing more time for scenario modelling and variance analysis - much higher value added activities! Models can be rolled forward as time progresses and new use cases can be easily integrated into the system as required. There are numerous ways of uploading data and automating processes. It's an incredibly versatile system.
Nik Amin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I am a master anaplanner, and Anaplan certified solution architect. This year I've helped solution a number of solutions for our clients in use cases such as activity planning for a large oil and gas firm, direct + channel sales productivity planning and quota planning for a large cyber security services provider, and currently, I'm building a solution for another activity planning initiative for oil exploration at one of the large oil and gas firms.
  • Customer driven financial modelling
  • Sales and quota planning, HR and supply chain planning
  • Intuitive analytics and dashboarding
  • New UX can be further improved to make it more fluid
  • Workflow and approval process can be simplified
  • Simpler drag and drop functionality/engines for predictive analysis within pages
I worked on Oracle for about 8 years before making the switch to Anaplan. Building on Anaplan can be more intuitive for most customers as they would've already had substantial experience working in Excel. Anaplan, however, because of the increased capability can also have a higher, longer learning curve, which is typical for any professional service modeling software.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
As a partner, I implement best-in-class Anaplan solutions for our customers and their planning needs. Using Anaplan, comprehensive planning solutions that facilitate quick decision-making can be built for all critical functions - Finance, Sales, Supply Chain, HR and Workforce, Marketing etc. Some of the specific use cases I have worked on are Merchandise Assortment Planning, FP&A, Sales Forecasting, Business and Strategy Planning, Marketing Spend Management.
  • Connected Planning
  • Real-time calculations and insights
  • Easy-to-use interface
  • Auditability of line items can be improved by adding extra features like saved views references, filter references, UX page references etc.
  • Native support for allowing input/breakback and calculation logic in the same line item can be added to further boost platform adoption in Retail Planning use cases.
  • Model locking/freezing during concurrent action runs.
Anaplan is well suited for planning and analytics use cases and helps bring Connected Planning to life. With it's in-memory real-time calculation engine, low code configuration, collaboration features and reporting capabilities, the platform is able to provide a modern and robust solution for planners to make informed decisions with agility.
Anaplan is not suited for complex and granular allocations. It is also not a data storage solution and hence, runs into sizing challenges when dealing with extremely high volumes of data.
November 21, 2023

Anaplan a good tool

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Anaplan for Project Management, Hiring and Time Sheet Management. We've around 3000+ Employees directly using this tool for Time sheet filling and hiring activities. Anaplan has been able to help us to bring this many employees at the single platform and do all the collaboration. Anaplan has been a good tool but lacks reporting capabilities and as the model becomes big, its difficult to manage the space and optimization.
  • Connected Planning
  • Forecasting
  • Budgeting
  • Reporting
  • User Experiance
  • Usability
Well suited for Sales Planning, Forecasting, Budgeting and not well for Project Management. Anaplan is a planning tool so it best suits for the Planning and similar use cases where there are limited set of users but it does not behave good if we have many users on the platform, it sometimes shows performance issues and also the space limitations and Anaplan is a costly tool.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Resource planning, forecasting, executive reporting, project management
  • Easy to learn
  • Quick implementations
  • User friendly
  • Quicker enhancement rollout
  • More UX capabilities
most appropriate for forecasting and budgeting, workforce planning, executive / management reporting, sales and operations planning, treasury planning, capital planning, sales performance management, incentive compensation planning, scenario planning and what if analysis
less appropriate for close and consolidation accounting functions
November 20, 2023

Master Anaplanner Review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I implement primarily Finance and Supply Chain use cases. Standard Finance use cases - financial statement forecasting, budgeting, and actuals; zero-based budgeting, revenue and opex planning, and long range planning. Standard Supply Chain use cases - standard costing, capex, margin analysis, demand planning, supply/inventory planning, stat forecasting, BoM / Material planning, and capacity planning. My background is FP&A, Business Analytics / Market Intelligence, and Stats for Fortune 500 companies. Constantly experiencing similar bottlenecks with Excel - downloading the same data sets, manipulating them (moving formulas over and aggregating), and reporting / charting every month / quarter. Lots of human capital used on non-value added, repetitive activities. That's where I saw the value of Anaplan.
  • Automation
  • Data Hub
  • Connected Planning & Processes (Breaks down Business Silos)
  • Configurability
  • Ease of Learning (don't need to be a coder)
  • Multi-Select Capability for Dashboard Selectors (ex. select more than one product and see the results of both on a dashboard)
  • Numbered list actions in New User Experience dashboards (currently only available in classic dashboards).
  • Easy summary of which modules are used on what dashboards.
  • Anaplan being able to run its own integrations (no middleware).
Anaplan is well-suited for complex, planning processes involving multiple areas of the business. For companies that want to put the software development into the business user's hands vs running up IT development costs. Great for scenario and driver-based planning. Data Hub allows for all data to be pulled into a single source of truth within Anaplan and allows for faster development of additional models utilizing existing data hub data. Anaplan can be expensive for mid-sized companies to use with only one use case. Designed for enterprise planning.
November 20, 2023

AnaPLAN for Success!

Alexander Jackson, CPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am a strategic leader responsible for designing and implementing comprehensive Anaplan solutions tailored to the unique challenges and requirements of the sector. With a deep understanding of both Anaplan's capabilities and the intricacies of the oil and gas business. Drawing on extensive experience in solution architecture, I collaborate closely with stakeholders to gather and analyze business needs, translating them into effective Anaplan solutions. In regards to Capital Expenditure Planning, Anaplan can be employed to streamline the planning and management of capital expenditures in the oil and gas industry. This includes modeling investments in exploration, drilling, facility construction, and other capital-intensive projects. Another problem that Anaplan has addressed for our team is "Scenario Planning for Market Fluctuations". Given the volatility in oil and gas markets, Anaplan can be used for this problem. This involves modeling different market conditions, oil prices, and geopolitical factors to assess the impact on business performance and formulate adaptive strategies.
  • Connected Planning that allows a company to work together.
  • Multi-dimensionality that allows users to plan at many different levels.
  • An UX that allows ease of access.
  • "Toasting of the model" that freezes the model
  • Added flexibility with UX
The ability to collaborate with other stakeholders, such as the Demand Planning team and Store Managers, within the Anaplan platform to ensure that the allocation strategy aligns with overall business goals and store-specific requirements has been a great use of Anaplan and has proven to be truly successful in my experience. The ability to have truly connected planning is a true selling point of the product.
November 20, 2023

Efficient Planning tool

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Anaplan in our organisation for expense planning, revenue planning, HR planning, central planning & profitability planning. It allows us to plan on an icloud planning tool with transparency as to the drivers used for forecasting and to sync models together to create a seamless process in consolidating numbers. Our planning process would take weeks to do, now using Anaplan we can create a forecast and consolidate everything within minutes. It has allowed us to focus on more on strategic decision making rather than the labour intensive focus on compiling files into one etc.
  • Transparency of drivers
  • Consolidation
  • Multi dimensional reporting
  • Sync data from model to model
  • Built in Integration tool (cloudworks)
  • Unlimited dimensionality - Polaris - cost impact
  • Built in connector with more options e.g. Snowflake
Well Suited:
- Planning, forecasting, budgeting, scenario planning
- Versions
- Snapshot processes
- Transparency
- Model to model data integration
- Data integration (Cloudworks, API or Anaplan Connect)

Less Suited:
- Unlimited dimensionality in modules (However Polaris in pipeline)
- Unlimited Data volumes
- PowerBI maybe more suited for the granular/ unlimited reporting for that slice and dice capability

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
In our current project, we are bringing their production & material planning from excel spreadsheets into Anaplan.
  • Scenario planning
  • Connected planning since on a single platform, you can build any process/use case
  • single source of truth & real-time data sharing
  • unify data collection, analyzing & reporting
  • Limits of workspace or model size
  • User concurrency issues
  • since most of the formulas are excel equivalent, would like to see more functions coming in
It's mainly fall under EPM (Enterprise performance management) category so it best suitable to use it as a planning tool. It shouldn't be uses as an ERP tool because it's not well suited to handle big chunk data.
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