Item: Anaplan
Rating: 9
Author: Max Steckelmacher

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I help companies set up Anaplan for a variety of use cases, including Financial Planning and Analysis, Supply Chain Management, Workforce Planning, and Group Consolidation. The companies operate across a range of sectors: Property and Construction, Education, Banking, Insurance, and Retail. Anaplan is an incredibly versatile tool. With relatively simple steps companies can bring in data from other systems; end users can then provide further inputs and assumptions; calculations are set up to create financial statements or plans; and finally dashboards present these in a user friendly way. Anaplan is the perfect tool for multiple users to interact and contribute to a forecast or plan - the system can easily handle several hundred users working concurrently.

Pros and Cons

Financial Planning and Analysis
Supply Chain Management
Workforce Planning

Seeing where lists and modules are used on a dashboard in the new UX
Greater functionality with the Management Reporting

Most Important Features

Versions / scenario modelling
How Anaplan integrates with other systems to create a fully connected planning solution
Easy to set up workflow processes so end users can interact within the system
Easy to create visually appealing and informative dashboards

Return on Investment

Speeds up planning processes
Very good ROI

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Excel

Excel becomes incredibly slow when there is a lot of data and end users can't interact easily through spreadsheets. While it is good for quick calculations, it is not ideal for creating complex plans with lots of inputs and assumptions. I have never seen an Excel spreadsheet that contains multiple scenarios for regular (e.g. rolling monthly) forecasts. Anaplan can do this easily.

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 Excel, Microsoft Powerpoint, Informatica Cloud Data Integration, Unit4 Enterprise Resource Planning

Likelihood to Recommend

Excellent tool for FP&A, Supply Chain and Workforce Planning. It is an attractive and dynamic solution for end users and it is easy for beginners to learn how to build in Anaplan (doesn't require extensive IT knowledge). End users can model multiple scenarios/versions of plans and the system can be updated to accommodate new requirements or modified calculations with little reworking.

Perfect tool for in-depth scenario modelling

Overall Satisfaction with Anaplan