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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 (281)
    9.5
    95%
  • Forecasting (282)
    9.3
    93%
  • Scenario modeling (284)
    9.2
    92%
  • Management reporting (283)
    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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Kepion is a cloud planning & analytics software company that connects all organizations' teams under a single view of their business performance. We enable more intelligent decisions to be made by companies about their financial and operational future. Kepion global offices and partners deliver…

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 8.0

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 7.6

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.

8
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 8.0

Financial Reporting and Compliance

Financial statements and regulatory filings

8.6
Avg 8.2

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

(479)

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 162)
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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
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 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.
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
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.
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Scope of the use case: Implement a solution to forecast revenue that is having an impact on Expenses, Balance sheet, Capital, Risk, and funding forecasts based on very low-level drivers. It should support sensitivity analysis and Attribution Analysis to analyse the forecast accuracy. Pros: Currently the firm uses very high-level forecasting where the forecast data is not being coded and justified with any tool. If there is any change in the market, the impact is also assumed based on the experience but not based on logical data points. After implementing the solution in Anaplan with clearly codifying the forecast data based on very detailed nodes, we can create multiple scenarios on the fly based on the market change or based on different drivers and we can accurately analyse the firm behaviour for the change. This solution provides a lot of transparency in the forecasting for all businesses and eliminates unforeseen impacts on the business revenue.
  • Real-Time Calculations.
  • Connected planning to help driver decisions faster.
  • Faster Implementation cycle.
  • Sensitivity and Attribution Analysis can be implemented easily.
  • Hyper workspace now solves for huge volumes of data.
  • Better user experience with added management reporting
  • Separation of dense and sparse engine helps in solving different use case efficiently
  • Huge user base in Anaplan community for better collaboration across Anaplan users
  • CloudWorks made Scheduling of Actions easy without external systems involvement
  • Workflow can be improved
  • common excel formulas can be supported in Anaplan
  • User Experience can be improved
  • Security around Cloudworks.
  • API Support library can be improved.
  • ALM Branching for multiple teams implementation and merging into target model.
Quota Planning, Incentive Planning, Sales Forecasting Sales, Operation Planning, Financial Planning, Integrated Planning and Expense allocation.
Brian Shepley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
As an Anaplan Partner, we work to implement highly successful connected planning projects at global leaders across myriad industries. Many companies will begin with a pressing use case, such as financial forecasting or OPEX planning, that stems from an overarching corporate objective. Once the first use case is stood up, companies find that having everything in one cloud-based system (vs. rogue Excel spreadsheets) creates synergies and increases productivity, and choose to build additional use cases. As a partner, we help guide companies on how to build these additional use cases out as a 'honeycomb', to ensure they aren't building silos, but rather, a connected planning ecosystem.
  • Native hierarchies help ensure data integrity and allow for real-time "slice and dice" of data (vs. flat data in Excel or other EPS systems)
  • Real-time calculation of multi-dimensional data spanning billions of cells gives the user powerful forecasting capabilities
  • Features such as selective access to lists, user roles, and dynamic cell access allow you to ensure each user has access only to what they need, helping to ensure data security.
  • PlanIQ is a newer offering from Anaplan that helps augment the platform's power through the use of AI and Machine Learning.
  • The UX continues to be a little buggy at times when building pages. It can seem sluggish at times when loading pages that have a lot of content on them. It definitely helps to plan pages out and focus them on logical areas, instead of trying to jam everything onto them.
Compared with other EPS platforms that I've worked on or interacted with, Anaplan is by far and away the best. The biggest advantage is the real-time multi-dimensional nature of the platform. Most legacy platforms work in flat data and create 'faux' hierarchies, whereas Anaplan has native hierarchies that you can navigate on-demand. This gives the user a lot of power when it comes to forecasting across regions, products, etc. For instance, Anaplan gives you the ability to view data at a Regional level on one UX Page, identify outliers that may be affecting the forecast, and then (on the next UX Page) zoom down to the most granular level to investigate. The smoothness of that ability to look at data between levels and across dimensions is something I haven't seen in any other competitor to date.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Anaplan is used as a solution to a myriad of pain points that exist within a firm's corporate planning cycles. The tool is extremely flexible and allows organizations to obtain forecasts and outlooks for almost anything in a much more timely, accurate, and detailed manner than old processes such as handing off excel spreadsheets around and organization to be updated. Anaplan is also much less error-prone since the manual manipulation of data is drastically reduced when implemented properly. Multiple-use cases have been addressed during my time from Biopharma, Technology, Manufacturing, Demand Planning, Workforce Planning, Revenue planning, all across the use case spectrum. These cases have been addressed effectively as well leading to major reductions in the effort it takes for an Anaplan customer to come up with a forecast.
  • Connectivity with other systems
  • Acting as a single source of truth for data
  • Powerful, Anaplan's calculation is very fast compared to a lot of legacy systems
  • More space at a base workspace level. 130GB just doesn't cut it for larger clients, I'm sure this has come up a lot
  • UX Changes such as on a worksheet the page selector at the top has to be driven by the primary grid which might be at a lower level and you are forced to use this.
  • Everything is custom so it can be quite tedious to build if you're not experienced.
Anaplan from my experience seems most appropriate when customers are willing to change their current business to work best with the tool. A lot of times this involves getting the client comfortable with planning at a higher level. Sometimes companies cannot do this and this limits the ability of the tool because of space. Anaplan is not well suited for detailed reporting if company leadership 'needs to see everything by 7 dimensions' and that is the way they look at it. The best thing to do here is export the plans out of Anaplan and view them in Power Bi or another tool that is better suited for viewing and manipulating large sets of data. This is because building a reporting module off of an example like this, (even 1) can take up most of the remaining space available. This I see as the largest limitation. This however has not been an issue as most customers already have subscriptions to those tools.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall 6+ year of experience in Anaplan we implement Sales Planning, Headcount Planning and Financial Planning. To manage monthly, Quarterly and Annual planning for all use cases. Anaplan helped to integrate many data sources, Prior to using Anaplan we used to excel and workday Planning, sometime it is difficult to maintain. We are now planning to implement demand , Capacity and Scenario planning in Anaplan..
  • We are use using cloud works to run the weekly data into Datahub to Account Metrics and then to Territory and Quota Planning.
  • While creating formulas with automatic suggestions.
  • We integrated the different sources example - SAP to IICS to Anaplan
  • For end user should have provided more options
  • Reporting should be more stronger
  • Sizing issues
During my 6+ year of experience have implement many uses cases, When we compare with other products with Anaplan is excels connected planning which covers all the uses cases, Very flexible to implement any uses cases and great platform for make integrations. Recently with new cloud works features helped our business to run the weekly data , we are able to schedule the time and with all the process in one time go. Hypermodel ability to hold large data of various use cases.
November 09, 2023

Anaplan- a great tool

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Our company moved completely from the standard locally stored data into Anaplan Cloud solution. It improved a lot the whole process of transforming source data into financial results. Many aspects of the daily job were enhanced - security, managing ability, accuracy, scalability, efficiency. I'd like to recommend Anaplan to all those people that need a solution having a database + calculation functions on big sets of data.
  • Flexibility.
  • Scalability.
  • Cloud experience.
  • Access management
  • Hearing community.
Anaplan is well suited for all the cases where the data sets need to be fully compatible without losing any numbers in between. If somebody had a database where numbers and master data are stored and wanted to use this data for calculations in many different aspects, then Anaplan would definitely be for him.
Vignesh Murugaiyan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are using Anaplan since last 9 years, and currently 30+business use case model in use. Before Anaplan, we had to consolidate 100+ spreadsheet from asset managers from various location to be collected/combined to produce one top level report by Fund and Group, more time was spent on data collection, error checking, and reporting. After Anaplan, zero time spent for reporting as anaplan is powerful enough to produce real time consolidated reports, one platform to manage 100+ properties. Key use cases are below, a.Real Estate - using Anaplan to underwrite new properties to see the ROI and budget/forecast the revenue/expenses for the existing 100+ properties across European b.Expenses Calculation - using Anaplan to budget/forecast the people and non people costs(salary of the FTE\contractors and expenses such as Capex\Opex) for the 3 countries (UK, Ireland, and Canada) c.Profit and Loss from selling an insurance product - using Anaplan to set up the target for the Canada Market and forecast the P&L for the next 2 years based on the historical performance of the products.
  • Customer support is excellent. All clarifications related to products are mostly answered within few hours.
  • Continuous product improvement, such as adding new features. In the last 5 years, I have seen more than 50+ new features be released.
  • Cloud-based planning tool, which provides users the flexibility to access Anaplan from anywhere in the world.
  • User security, which controls user access with read-and-write capabilities.
  • I believe there is room for improvement when it comes to UI, recent NUX release largely covered most of the gaps, still improvement required it to make more user friendly
  • Some functionalities which exist in excel are not available and had to find a workaround which is not super complex.
Anaplan is well suited for all the use case, solution can be customized/built as required as per use cases. Below are some scenarios I have experience implementing and using it, 1) What-if scenario planning: compared to other tools Anaplan takes less time to set up scenario planning 2) Forecasting demand based on historical data using Plan IQ
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Anaplan is one of the vendors we use in organization for EPM consulting. We provide EPM/Financial solutions to customers. Anaplan has come out as one of the preferred vendors for businesses of various sizes and scales. Its being used to address Financial Planning, Sales planning, Supply chain planning and Workforce planning solutions.
  • Financial Planning
  • Customizable Features
  • Integration Capabilities
  • Hot Reporting
  • Extended Capabilities like Cloudworks, PlanIQ
  • Performance and Model Locking
  • Integration Performance
  • Workflow customizations
Anaplan is best suited to Business of low and medium scale to support with their planning process of forecasting and budgeting. Anaplan provides customizable platform and is easily integrated with other tools. Anaplan is less appropriate for consolidations, Financial close and long range financial planning.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Anaplan is solving complex business problems. We are using Anaplan to forecast the revenue & the costs. It gives the capability to perform scenario planning/sensitivity analysis with the critical business drivers that could have a significant impact on the business in uncertain times. It gives management powerful insights for making the right decisions at the right time. This is one platform that orchestrates all the functions in the organization. Anaplan tool is very helpful in Scenario Planning & assessing the the impact of unforeseen business/market situation on business performance. It's management reporting capabilities have the lives of the planner easier. Now they don't have to make cumbersome Powerpoint presentations every month to their management. Instead they can get their entire set of Powerpoint slides automated with Anaplan will real time updates on the performance & commentaries.
  • Simulation of critical business drivers & impact on the bottom line
  • Allows users to slice & dice across different business scenarios
  • Provides real time insights for decision making
  • Automation of monthly presentations for Management Reporting
  • Workflow automation
  • Provides flexibility for complex Supply Chain Business processes
  • Workspace capacity limitations
  • Integration with source systems
  • Integration with communication channels like Microsoft Teams
  • Automatic triggers for alerts from the system
Anaplan is less appropriate where the volume of transactional data is very high & there is a looping logic scenario involved. It impacts the performance of the application. While there are no other scenarios that cannot be achieved with Anaplan. That's the best part of Anaplan. If there is a need to store transactional data Anaplan may not be the right tool.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Currently use Anaplan to address business management and planning. Anaplan allows for the improvement of many common problems facing organizations currently relying on tools such as Microsoft Excel for many complex business needs as they grow and need a product that will allow them to scale their models with their growth. Some common examples are the single source of truth nature of Anaplan vs. multiple versions of spreadsheet files, ease of auditability Anaplan provides, and the varying levels of control over access by user/role type.
  • Consuming large amounts of data for manipulation and calculation.
  • Low code nature allows business users to learn the tool and own it.
  • Easier to write, maintain, and audit complex models.
  • Great user interface to interact with the models.
  • There is a bit of a learning curve to get started, but great resources are available to help with this.
  • The user interface is somewhat limited in presentation, but data can be exported to more dynamic presentation tools (Tableau, PowerBI, etc.) if it better suits the users need.
  • Model size and constraints can become a factor in larger, more complex models.
Anaplan has a successful track record across many use cases such as supply chain management, financial planning and analysis, among many others. Personally, I've seen successful implementations for use cases including sales performance management, sales pipeline management, as well as many varying use cases in the private equity and alternative investments spaces. Anaplan is a great way to bring outdated tools and processes into the modern era and will add efficiency to most organizational modeling use cases.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am part of the Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) practice of a specialised consulting firm focused on creating value through technology and process transformation for private markets and financial services companies. Our EPM practice designs and implements solutions for financial and operational planning and reporting using tools like Anaplan and Workiva. We empower our clients to improve performance and achieve their goals.

Over the last 5 years, I have implemented Anaplan for clients in various industries including real estate, telecommunication infrastructure, and insurance. Use cases for the implementations I have done include leasing metrics reporting, operational income forecasting, asset cashflows, and traditional FP&A use cases.
  • Anaplan is great at unifying enterprise data and facilitates a very fast way of updating data from source systems which reduces (or eliminates) inherent risks associated with traditional MS Excel based reporting.
  • Anaplan enables forecasting processes to be streamlined and be collaborative making it easier for users to share data and insights that assists in improving communication and decision making across an organisation.
  • Anaplan can scale easily so that businesses can start with one use case and then easily add more users as other parts of the business decide to allow Anaplan to be used to solve their business problems.
  • The standard Anaplan integration tool (Anaplan Connect) seems very archaic compared to other available tools in the market and does not have the ability to transform data prior to it being ingested into Anaplan. They do offer another tool that does a better job and is more user friendly but it is for a fee. However, they will be introducing something called Data Management System in the next few months which is very promising and seems to be something that will handle all the things that an ETL tool does and more!
  • Calculations at various levels of a dimension can be tricky and requires more effort for a model builder. I have personally seen other tools make calculations at any level of a dimension so much more easy to build which in turn makes the drill through of those calculations less complicated and more easily understood by users. Would be great if Anaplan can improve on this area.
  • Companies requiring very large transactional data sets to be used in Anaplan have the option of using a different calculation engine called "Polaris" which allows larger "sparse" models to be built and can work side-by-side with the traditional Anaplan engine. Companies needing these very large models built may then have to have models built using the traditional calculation engine (for smaller, dense models) as well as the new Polaris engine (for larger, sparse models) which will make the model build a bit more challenging. Having said this, I haven't yet seen an existing client need the new Polaris engine as yet.
Overall, Anaplan is a great tool for the use cases I have dealt with over my 5 years implementing this solution. The only reason I didn't score it a 10 is for the reasons outlined in my comments for improvements.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization uses Anaplan across Supply Chain, Sales, Marketing, and Finance. We use Anaplan to help forecast sales from gross dollars all the way down to the standard margin. Anaplan helps us operationalize these forecasts in Supply Chain, and then realize these forecasts with our finance team. It is an extremely helpful tool for collaborative planning.
  • Forecasting
  • Collaboration
  • Automation
  • Integration
  • Easy to over-engineer.
  • Marketing materials always promise more than can be delivered.
  • CloudWorks limited to external sources.
It is simple to build (point and click instead of writing code). It is fully customizable. It can be architected to build any train of logic. Therefore, it forces the business to truly understand itself when building models. So not only does Anaplan helps teams plan more effectively because it puts structure around their process, but it also allows businesses to think thru, collaborate on, and develop the logic of their business in more detailed terms.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Anaplan is a highly versatile platform with the ability to seamlessly build for varied use cases, it also provides the data integrity and helps to maintain golden source of truth for large organizations. Drastically bringing down manual effort involved in business planning process and quick implementation cycle is its biggest win, which makes it the favorite choice for customer nowadays.
  • Business Planning
  • Single Source of Truth
  • Intuitive Data Reporting
  • Integration with legacy systems is complex and resource intensive
  • Highly complex models require performance and workspace efficient approach
  • ALM sync process involves movement of all changes together and doesn't support individual change release
Financial Planning, Sales Performance Management, Supply Chain Management, Headcount Planning
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