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Why Anaplan and the benefits my organization gained by using it
Updated November 02, 2023

Why Anaplan and the benefits my organization gained by using it

Vignesh Murugaiyan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Anaplan

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.
  • As a cloud-based platform the developers, as well as the users, can easily access it from anywhere in the world.
  • Connecting multiple business processes helps to see what's happening in other areas and make decisions faster.
  • Governance over access of product/market, ability to control read access of sensitive data
  • Planning time reduced. Ability to what-if scenario plan adds more value to the business and helps planners come up with the best forecast.
  • Data consolidation time reduced to zero from a week.
  • One Single Source of Truth for everyone, one platform for all use cases and all user roles
  • Governance over user access and control is excellent
We used to plan everything in Excel. The problems we faced were data consolidation, slowness, multiple sheets, no real time reporting and access. With the help of Anaplan, users across globe able to collaborate in real time and plan to achieve business goal.

Do you think Anaplan delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Anaplan's feature set?

Yes

Did Anaplan live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Anaplan go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Anaplan again?

Yes

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

Anaplan Feature Ratings

10.0
Long-term financial planning
10
Financial budgeting
10
Forecasting
10
Scenario modeling
10
Management reporting
10
8.0
Financial data consolidation
8
Journal entries and reports
8
Local and consolidated reporting
10
Detailed Audit Trails
6
9.0
Financial Statement Reporting
9
Management Reporting
10
Excel-based Reporting
8
9.0
Personalized dashboards
10
Color-coded scorecards
9
Cost and profitability analysis
8
Key Performance Indicator setting
9
9.7
Flat file integration
10
Excel data integration
10
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
9
9.0
Customizable dashboards
9
Ad-hoc Reporting ()
Not Rated
10.0
Publish to PDF
10
Report Versioning
10
Data Discovery and Visualization ()
Not Rated
10.0
Role-Based Security Model
10
Report-Level Access Control
10
7.7
Responsive Design for Web Access
9
Mobile Application
7
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
7

Using Anaplan

  • Finance
  • Sales Planning
  • HR
11 -  I believe for successful Anaplan Implementation, Anaplan L2/L3/Solution Architect certified people are needed, people with Anaplan L3/Model Builder certificate is good enough to support regular Business as usual activities.
  • Insurance P&L
  • Expenses Forecasting & Budgeting
  • Real Estate Cashflow
  • Underwriting Properties to see the Return on Investment
  • Driver Based Planning model for running various what if scenario's
We have been using since last 9 years, growing from one Anaplan use case model to 40+ model.
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.

Evaluating Anaplan and Competitors

  • Cloud Solutions
  • Scalability
  • Integration with Other Systems
  • Ease of Use
We were looking for one cloud based solution as finance strategic tool to implement across various business domain use cases, the solution has to be cloud based connected and ease of use.

Anaplan Support

1. Anaplan has separate 24/7 customer support channel to help with queries,
2. Customer Partner from Anaplan to support vendor with their queries like license purchase, use case implementation support, customer advocacy
3. Anaplan Learning Platform to help learning new product features free of cost and Yearly Anaplan connect across globe to share success stories of various companies.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
We did not buy premium support, I believe it because Anaplan treats everyone in the same way, wants everyone to be successful.
Yes - Yes I remember reporting a bug a year back and was acknowledged/resolved within a week.