Item: Anaplan
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Anaplan is an extremely powerful and flexible tool for planning and modeling. My organization currently uses it for Territory & Quota Planning and Sales Incentive Compensation, however, in other organizations I have used it for functions as diverse as Sales Forecasting, Headcount Planning, FP&A, Sales Performance Management, and Trade Promotion Management.

Pros and Cons

Fast real-time calculations.
Collaborative inputs
Data security options by role, list item, down to the individual cell level.
Easy to learn model building.

User Management
All-or-nothing ALM
Minor build errors lock entire model for all users.

Most Important Features

Flexibility
Speed of Model Development
Accessibility

Return on Investment

Faster planning cycle
Reduced errors
Greater auditability

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

Anaplan is a great alternative for organizations that are used to running complex planning processes via Excel. Anaplan provides structure, security, and auditability, but also offers Excel-like flexibility and familiarity for end users. This allows for significant time and effort savings to an Excel-based planning process. However, Anaplan can be frustrating for end users if there are many end users attempting to run complex processes (list item creation, data imports, etc.) concurrently, as the previous process must finish entirely before the next one kicks off.

Flexible, powerful connected planning

Overall Satisfaction with Anaplan