We performed a comparison between Anaplan and Board based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Business Performance Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Anaplan's most valuable features are that it's a no-coding platform, everything can be scaled to your other functions, and it's easy to learn and use (especially because Anaplan provides excellent interactive training)."
"I believe Anaplan is a new cloud tool, and from time to time, there's a lot of improvement that the Anaplan company deploys with the system. So, with that improvement, we need to really adapt and know the new system trends."
"I am impressed with the tool’s real-time calculations and intuitive interface. The tool’s user interface is the best compared to other software that I have worked with. I also find the tool’s management reporting feature valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Anaplan is machine learning. The solution is constantly evolving from feedback. Additionally, there is a wide range of training material online."
"The solution works very well for budgeting."
"You don't need to have a programming language to use Anaplan."
"Where we're seeing the opportunity in the market is at the Fortune 100 companies that have far more complex modeling type scenarios where you need to be able to have a lot of people collaborating together, and you need a lot of information all at everyone's fingertips. This is where you see the big advantage of a solution like Anaplan."
"It's highly flexible. If you've got a complex environment with complex calculations, you can build that out. So that's a really good positive."
"Our clients have improved a lot in terms of coordination and communication. This has improved their internal performance."
"My favourite feature of BOARD is the ability to write back to the OLAP DB, as well as the Rdb, and secure user data allowing databases to be flushed and rebuilt daily."
"I liked the way that I felt as a user and administrator of it. There were a lot of clicks, drops, drags, etc. versus writing code."
"The ability to do write back and visualization, with minimal IT development orientation."
"The drill down is good for people who have that high level view, because they can do some analysis based on it."
"All staff can now see their relevant scorecards online."
"The benefits are getting the data in one spot, the ability to report dynamically, and version control."
"Primary valuable features are its flexibility and versatility and, obviously, functionality goes along with that. Plus, it does that at a small footprint in the file servers, and does it very efficiently."
"The visualization tools in the product are limited in comparison to other reporting tools."
"The negative is that the higher the flexibility, the higher is the complexity. That can act against you as a negative because it does require a model builder or a coder/developer."
"The price of the solution can improve."
"The solution can improve by providing an easier form of integration to different platforms, such as receiving data from different Salesforce. There is a process to do it through the use of some APIs but it could be made much easier. This would be a large help to us."
"One area of improvement is conditional formatting. It's not very practical, and you need to specify additional formatting."
"The integration technique should be a little bit easier."
"Automation needs to be built into this solution."
"Anaplan is a relatively expensive piece of software."
"What could be better is the manual... nowadays, most people use a web client, but on the Board manual website, a lot of the information is only about the Windows client. If they could update that, it would be helpful."
"The setup was a bit complex."
"My analysts have used the technical support. Sometimes they have felt like they did not receive the answer that they needed, or you have to go and upgrade in order to address a problem. "
"If we could upload other data, e.g., pivot tables which can be done in BOARD already, that we have pre-existing and have that data distribute to more complex spreadsheets, I would like that going forward."
"It would be nice to see truly transferable processes from model to model, as well as a method of building repetitive processes."
"It can have more functionality for narrative reporting. They should also improve their training courses, which are currently very lightweight. When you get into more complex things, it is quite difficult to figure out what you're supposed to do, and you have to look at a lot of videos before you actually understand, which is a bit frustrating. Their training can be more comprehensive."
"We are looking for ways to distinguish zeros versus nulls in BOARD."
"Some of our users are still using an MS Office add-in for Excel for certain calculations, and when they export from Board, some of the values, some of the totals and column names, are not coming through into Excel."
Anaplan is ranked 1st in Business Performance Management with 24 reviews while Board is ranked 11th in Business Performance Management with 35 reviews. Anaplan is rated 8.0, while Board is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Anaplan writes "Great for large-scale modelling, easy to learn, and very stable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Board writes "A stable solution with good user-experience, easy deployment but needs some improvement with engine ". Anaplan is most compared with SAP ERP, Oracle Hyperion, SAP S/4HANA, IBM Planning Analytics and Planful, whereas Board is most compared with SAP Analytics Cloud, IBM Planning Analytics, Oracle Hyperion, Microsoft Power BI and CCH Tagetik. See our Anaplan vs. Board report.
See our list of best Business Performance Management vendors.
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We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simultaneous users to speed the planning process. We see Anaplan competing with Host Analytics, Hyperion, Adaptive, that sort of thing.
BI evaluations generally include Qlik, Tableau and whatever the team used at a previous job posting. We do sometimes recommend Power BI but only if the team is willing to put the budget behind it to properly implement and design. (Lots of companies operate on the 'we're a Microsoft shop' theory and try to set it up themselves - which is fine if your IT guys are also data scientists but kinda sucks otherwise.)
So - in our customer base, which is a limited sample set but we're working on that, we don't see Board and Anaplan in the same evaluations - not to say that we shouldn't, just that we haven't.
So your choice is Board's BI and CPM capabilities, vs Anaplan's FP&A and BI features. As is always the case, whichever specific capability or feature set offers more defined, measurable ROI in your companies' particular situation determines 'better'.
I would say that Board and Anaplan are mainly used for FP&A and not BI.
As a small company, I would suggest using either Power BI or ThoughtSpot. With Power BI you will need some technical, data, analytical expertise either in-house or from a 3rd party. ThoughtSpot MSP may be the answer depending on your use case as there are packages around smaller organizations where you pay for the software already hosted on AWS and services included, all you need to do is provide data, it will be modelled as part of the service then you can search across the data as much as you want. I have a good example of a non for profit organisation using this.
I'm happy to help if you would like some further advice.
Usually, we say Board provides lots of toolkits to achieve both CPM and BI. But, the Anaplan mainly focuses on CPM solutions.
If the enduser doesn't have any existing planning strategy, maybe they can refer to Anaplan solution directly and easily.
If the enduser already has a clear planning strategy, and they just want to find a tool to achieve it, maybe Board is a better choice because its smart toolkits can be used easily and give more possibilities.
BTW, if you want to fully use the BI function (colourful charts, dashboard, multi-dimensional analysis), Board will be absolutely better.
Just for your reference.
Charles as Investment Director for an industrial company with only 1-10 employees, you may find that the SaaS costs of both BOARD and Anaplan are beyond your budget or need.
Happy to engage in a 1-2-1 to analyse requirements and if necessary make appropriate recommendations.