Anaplan - Burn your spreadsheets!
January 12, 2017

Anaplan - Burn your spreadsheets!

Richard Ankcorn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Anaplan

We are using Anaplan for sales forecasting. The information is currently used by sales, operations and executive management.

Pros

  • One data source that is live. No more discussions of when you ran your report, why is your number different from my number, etc.
  • Time saver! I used to spend three hours one Sunday every month to put our forecast data together for review. Now it's live and visible at any time. In addition, our annual planning took much less time for everyone involved!
  • Spreadsheets could not handle the statistical analysis we wanted to include in our forecast. Now we have years of data to draw on!

Cons

  • Anaplan is really meant to have dashboards and as many views as you provide (someone always wants something slightly different). Anaplan is not really a giant pivot table if you are dealing with lots of data. By providing a connection to Tableau, Anaplan has offered a solution, but I would rather see that functionality included.
  • Rather than having to create coded lists in order to avoid sparsity and blowing up your model size I would like to see "auto sparsity reduction". For example, if I drag in a customer dimension and part dimension Anaplan should automatically eliminate blank cells where that particular customer doesn't buy that particular part.
  • Blocking. My actions (read mistakes) as an admin should not block other users. I believe this is about to be solved in an upgrade, however.
Our sales forecasting process does not only rely on our opportunity funnel. Most of the forecasting tools out there rely heavily on your opportunity funnel. We also needed a flexible platform that would allow the business to update and modify our sales forecasting tool as needed. Anaplan is simple enough that I am able to make changes as required rather than needing IT or consultants for every small modification.
If you use spreadsheets for processes you need Anaplan!

Anaplan Feature Ratings

9.3
Long-term financial planning
Not Rated
Financial budgeting
Not Rated
Forecasting
10
Scenario modeling
10
Management reporting
8
8.0
Financial data consolidation
Not Rated
Journal entries and reports
Not Rated
Local and consolidated reporting
10
Detailed Audit Trails
6
10.0
Financial Statement Reporting
Not Rated
Management Reporting
10
Excel-based Reporting
10
8.3
Personalized dashboards
5
Color-coded scorecards
10
Cost and profitability analysis
Not Rated
Key Performance Indicator setting
10
9.0
Flat file integration
9
Excel data integration
9
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
Not Rated
BI Standard Reporting ()
Not Rated
Ad-hoc Reporting ()
Not Rated
Report Output and Scheduling ()
Not Rated
Data Discovery and Visualization ()
Not Rated
Access Control and Security ()
Not Rated
Mobile Capabilities ()
Not Rated

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