Item: Anaplan
Rating: 9
Author: Iain Briggs

Overall Satisfaction with Anaplan

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Anaplan is a versatile and powerful business modeling platform. I have primarily used Anaplan for finance use cases (FP&A, overheads cost allocations, and long-term contract accounting) as well as investment analysis (including portfolio and fund modeling). It has a large number of potential use cases beyond finance and we often see it being adopted by other departments after the initial use case. The key benefits realized are greater collaboration and shorter model turn-around times (primarily made possible through less manual intervention and less manual error). With much greater confidence in the results, this frees up time to interpret results and have better conversations across the business.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Reliable, fast and consistent calculations are applied across very large datasets.
Intuitive User Experience facilitates real-time collaboration. There is no need to email files to colleagues as everyone is viewing real-time data.
All the data in Anaplan's hyperblock is like a giant pivot table meaning new reports and tables can be repivoted and published in a matter of seconds.
Easy to learn and intuitive platform with natural language syntax. With no particular IT background, I found it easy to learn as an experienced Excel user.

Cons

Anaplan has a limited (but fast-improving) range of formatting options within the UX. Its new Management Reporting capabilities are a positive step forward, however.
Anaplan is a sophisticated platform and it can be tricky for end-users to drill down through certain calculations.
Model building in Anaplan requires skilled and experienced resources which can be hard to find, although the Anaplan community is growing fast.

Most Important Features

Scalability - it is a true multi-dimensional modelling platform.
Speed - the Anaplan hyperblock recalculates across large data sets in real time.
User Experience - the platform is intuitive and easy to learn. Anyone with decent Excel knowledge can become a proficient model builder relatively quickly.

Return on Investment

Anaplan has enabled clients in some instances to complete quarterly re-forecasts in nearly half the time it previously took.

Key Insights

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?

Yes

Did implementation of Anaplan go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Anaplan again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Harvest, Smartsheet

Likelihood to Recommend

Anaplan is a powerful planning and modeling engine that is scalable, flexible, and performs at speed. Of particular interest to many end customers is the fact that the platform can be owned by business users rather than their IT departments. Thanks to its versatility, it is well particularly suited to overhaul any business-wide processes currently performed on manual spreadsheets, including FP&A, supply chain management, and workforce planning.

Anaplan Feature Ratings

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation

Powerful planning and modelling platform