Item: Anaplan
Rating: 9
Author: Kris Sircar, MBA

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is being used by the FP&A team. We use it to track headcount and SG&A. In addition to that, we also track technical income that allows business users access to update forecasts and budgets based on changes and trends made to actuals. Actuals are updated on a quarterly basis.

Pros and Cons

Sets up dimensions.
Ease of onboarding new users.

Lists can get too cumbersome.
Formula syntax is not intuitive.

Return on Investment

Better SG&A visibility.
Able to provide accurate real-time headcount reporting.

Alternatives Considered

Adaptive Insights and a Workday company

I believe that Adaptive is more user-friendly. The reason being, every functionality is intuitive. Also, it has an out-of-box reporting solution that allows the use of Excel for reporting purposes. Also, Adaptive offers a planning tool that allows users access to Adaptive through Excel, allowing non-Adaptive users the ability to make revisions during forecasting periods.

Other Software Used

Adaptive Insights, a Workday company, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Dynamics GP

Likelihood to Recommend

Anaplan is good for headcount reporting. We allow staging tables that allows HR to keep track of new hires and current employees. With access rights, we are certain that other users do not have access to this information as it is sensitive. We have trouble with creating different views of headcount per department, per locale.

Anaplan: an overview

Overall Satisfaction with Anaplan