Anaplan for Modeling of Sales Incentives
Updated July 17, 2017
Anaplan for Modeling of Sales Incentives
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Anaplan
I purchased Anaplan to perform complex modeling of potential changes to our sales incentive programs. In addition to our usage, our finance team is beginning to explore the use of the tool for sales forecasting. With a sales organization in excess of 5000 people, it is critical to be able to adjust multiple variables across lines of business and understand the impact on each of our operating areas. Anaplan allows us to model multiple "what if" approaches simultaneously, perform side-by-side scenario analysis, and convey to our executive team what the specific tradeoffs are between options. Our responsiveness has been accelerated by orders of magnitude, and our conclusions are rooted in data.
- I think the greatest strength of Anaplan is that the entire model is interconnected. The ability to update a single variable and have that change propagated through the entire model is unparalleled.
- Another strength is the ability to have multiple users working in a given model simultaneously. We have had the experience of actively modeling to meet a deadline and realizing that some of the underlying assumptions and/or layout needed to be changed to support a new approach. While our model-builder made the back-end adjustments in Florida, our analyst continued to work through a new set of variables. We ended up with a completely refreshed approach in less than a half hour. With only two hours before our deadline, we NEVER would have even entertained making the change in Excel.
- The thing that Anaplan does -- that I haven't seen elsewhere -- is the ability to get to data-driven analysis of the future. BI tools are great for reporting what has already happened, but fall short of predictive analytics and sensitivity analysis. Anaplan handles those with ease.
- The reporting/dashboarding capability is adequate but could be enhanced.
- Anaplan is somewhat intuitive ... but it DOES require an investment of time and energy to become proficient in it. The ability to use it for more and more use cases is limited by the number of personnel who truly understand the tool. The corollary is that unless that knowledge is spread to multiple people on the team, there can be substantial risk were a key resource to leave the group.
- Building a new model does require a fair amount of up-front planning and construction. So there are some things we would rather do in Anaplan than Excel ... but unless they have continuing utility, we find ourselves unlikely to perform quick analyses in Anaplan.
Honestly, having implemented Anaplan at another company, I knew it would suit our needs here and convinced management to get the tool on that basis. We already use a mix of Cognos BI, Tableau, and Excel ... but our need was something apart from what those can provide.