Item: Anaplan
Rating: 10
Author: Nik Amin

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am a master anaplanner, and Anaplan certified solution architect. This year I've helped solution a number of solutions for our clients in use cases such as activity planning for a large oil and gas firm, direct + channel sales productivity planning and quota planning for a large cyber security services provider, and currently, I'm building a solution for another activity planning initiative for oil exploration at one of the large oil and gas firms.

Pros and Cons

Customer driven financial modelling
Sales and quota planning, HR and supply chain planning
Intuitive analytics and dashboarding

New UX can be further improved to make it more fluid
Workflow and approval process can be simplified
Simpler drag and drop functionality/engines for predictive analysis within pages

Most Important Features

Hyperblock engine
New UX
Ease of building alongside customers

Return on Investment

Quick turnaround in developing a pilot and showcase to customers
Very impactful ways of validating/visualizing metrics in UX
Can take a bit longer from a learning curve standpoint to be a master anaplanner/solution architect

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

Microsoft Azure, Tableau Desktop

Likelihood to Recommend

I worked on Oracle for about 8 years before making the switch to Anaplan. Building on Anaplan can be more intuitive for most customers as they would've already had substantial experience working in Excel. Anaplan, however, because of the increased capability can also have a higher, longer learning curve, which is typical for any professional service modeling software.