Item: Anaplan
Rating: 10
Author: Brian Shepley

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As an Anaplan Partner, we work to implement highly successful connected planning projects at global leaders across myriad industries. Many companies will begin with a pressing use case, such as financial forecasting or OPEX planning, that stems from an overarching corporate objective. Once the first use case is stood up, companies find that having everything in one cloud-based system (vs. rogue Excel spreadsheets) creates synergies and increases productivity, and choose to build additional use cases. As a partner, we help guide companies on how to build these additional use cases out as a 'honeycomb', to ensure they aren't building silos, but rather, a connected planning ecosystem.

Pros and Cons

Native hierarchies help ensure data integrity and allow for real-time "slice and dice" of data (vs. flat data in Excel or other EPS systems)
Real-time calculation of multi-dimensional data spanning billions of cells gives the user powerful forecasting capabilities
Features such as selective access to lists, user roles, and dynamic cell access allow you to ensure each user has access only to what they need, helping to ensure data security.
PlanIQ is a newer offering from Anaplan that helps augment the platform's power through the use of AI and Machine Learning.

The UX continues to be a little buggy at times when building pages. It can seem sluggish at times when loading pages that have a lot of content on them. It definitely helps to plan pages out and focus them on logical areas, instead of trying to jam everything onto them.

Most Important Features

Realtime multi-dimensional calculations
Strong ALM capabilities (important, especially for large-scale projects)
Hyper Models allow for very large models for very large data sets
The addition of PlanIQ providing the power of AI/ML

Return on Investment

I have yet to see an implementation of Anaplan where the client was unhappy about the endeavor or did not find significant ROI on the project within a year after completion

Alternatives Considered

Anaplan has the best real-time, multi-dimensional calculation engine that I've worked with. This is core to creating a highly accurate forecast that provides the level of detail necessary to be useful to planners. Their addition of PlanIQ brings in the power of AI/ML to the platform, without the need to add an integration to another platform to fulfill that need. Finally, their addition of Polaris gives more flexibility for large models, especially large and sparse models.

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?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Anaplan go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Anaplan again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

Compared with other EPS platforms that I've worked on or interacted with, Anaplan is by far and away the best. The biggest advantage is the real-time multi-dimensional nature of the platform. Most legacy platforms work in flat data and create 'faux' hierarchies, whereas Anaplan has native hierarchies that you can navigate on-demand. This gives the user a lot of power when it comes to forecasting across regions, products, etc. For instance, Anaplan gives you the ability to view data at a Regional level on one UX Page, identify outliers that may be affecting the forecast, and then (on the next UX Page) zoom down to the most granular level to investigate. The smoothness of that ability to look at data between levels and across dimensions is something I haven't seen in any other competitor to date.

Training Types Used

Online Training
In-Person Training

The future of planning is connected - Anaplan

Overall Satisfaction with Anaplan