Our latest evaluation compares SAP ERP and Anaplan, drawing insights from user reviews across key areas.
Starting with the initial setup, Anaplan is noted for its agile and straightforward approach, albeit varying in complexity based on user needs, with deployment times ranging from a month to a year. In contrast, SAP ERP presents a more diverse experience, with some finding it easy but others viewing it as complex and time-consuming, often requiring years for full implementation.
In terms of valuable features, Anaplan users find its integration capabilities, user-friendly web interface, and no-coding platform valuable, making it adaptable for various use cases. Its real-time calculations and machine-learning capabilities also stand out. SAP ERP, on the other hand, is lauded for its robustness, extensive documentation, and real-time reporting, beneficial for comprehensive business process management.
Room for improvement for Anaplan includes enhancing workflow components, improving reporting tools, and integration issues with MS Office products. SAP ERP users suggest improvements in user-friendliness, technical integration, implementation ease, and customization processes.
Regarding pricing, Anaplan is considered affordable, with a $50,000 licensing fee and generally reasonable costs compared to its competitors. SAP ERP, while offering value, is considered expensive, especially for larger implementations, with license fees ranging significantly. In ROI, Anaplan shows a positive impact by reducing personnel costs and enhancing operational efficiencies. SAP ERP, though taking time to cover its cost, is perceived as valuable in the long term, particularly for large-scale operations.
Customer support experiences vary for both. Anaplan's support is generally viewed as responsive and helpful, whereas SAP ERP receives mixed reviews, with some praising its efficiency and others pointing out delays and communication challenges.
To summarize, Anaplan stands out for its ease of use, adaptability, and efficient deployment, making it suitable for a range of business needs. SAP ERP, with its robust features and comprehensive integration, is ideal for large-scale, complex business environments. It is important to note that while both solutions are used to manage business operations, they have different functionalities and focuses. Anaplan is not an ERP solution, it focuses on financial planning and performance management, while an ERP solution manages various day-to-day operations.
"You don't need to have a programming language to use Anaplan."
"Anaplan's in-memory calculation engine is super-fast compared to the old tools we previously used. You enter the data and everything shows up in one go."
"The solution works very well for budgeting."
"Technical support has been good."
"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."
"Anaplan integrates well into my clients' core systems. The ability to aggregate the forms within the dashboarding is also useful. Only one of my clients has implemented workflow. Their usage has been very light. Dashboarding capability is probably the biggest one. My clients like having the ability to aggregate, slice and dice, and dynamically adjust things in the dashboards."
"Anaplan's strongest feature is that its GUI is very modern and user-friendly."
"It's simple to use with a lot of functions."
"I like the solution's ability to close plans and resource requirements in deals."
"SAP has provided a much more integrated platform for managing our manufacturing business."
"It is an integrated application, and it has been working really well. Earlier, there were different companies for different applications for manufacturing, finance controlling, logistics, and quality. It probably was the first fully integrated application. Whenever somebody is entering any data, for example, invoice data or ordering data, everyone with a right to see this data can see it in the system."
"The most valuable features of SAP ERP are the general operations. It has a good way to manage a business and do financial reporting. Overall we are happy with the robustness of the solution."
"The solution can easily be standardized across processes."
"It integrates everything into one process."
"The most valuable features of SAP ERP are that its robust, user-friendly, and secure."
"SAP ERP has a good user interface with a lot of functionalities and good interface options."
"The integration technique should be a little bit easier."
"Anaplan is a relatively expensive piece of software."
"There are workspace issues, like the limitation on model sizes."
"Anaplan could be improved with a stronger consolidation module."
"One area of improvement is conditional formatting. It's not very practical, and you need to specify additional formatting."
"The solution could improve by better dashboards and while entering the form loss and project implementation the ability to use graphical shapes more effectively."
"Anaplan should come up with flexible options to connect to a data warehouse rather than an Anaplan hub."
"The cloud engine slows down when working with a large dataset. It still lacks a powerful engine."
"When evaluating the current version I am using now, the SAP GUI is old-style and needs to be replaced with something more modern and easy to use. However, the SAP GUI is very optimized for connection networks and is extremely good. Many people would like to have a WebGUI or something else to have access in a different way. Additionally, there could be some drag and drop functionality added because these features are normally in any website that this solution does not have."
"In previous generations, SAP was stable and the roadmap was very predictable, but currently it's very difficult."
"It is very expensive to customize to meet compliance with regulations in some countries."
"The system is over-customized."
"This solution could be made more user-friendly for development teams."
"Their support should be improved. Instead of giving a general solution, their consultants should first try to understand the problem and then resolve the same. They should properly investigate the issue before providing the solution."
"SAP is not making a big effort to make it easy to integrate solutions from other vendors. It's not easy at all... Integration is what they can do better."
"SAP ERP could improve by having better integration with other platforms."
Anaplan is ranked 1st in Business Performance Management with 24 reviews while SAP ERP is ranked 1st in ERP with 100 reviews. Anaplan is rated 8.0, while SAP ERP is rated 8.2. 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 SAP ERP writes "The amazing, robust framework with unlimited scalability earns its #1 status". Anaplan is most compared with Oracle Hyperion, SAP S/4HANA, IBM Planning Analytics, SAP Analytics Cloud and Board, whereas SAP ERP is most compared with SAP S/4HANA, Microsoft Dynamics AX, SAP Business One, Infor M3 and Infor LN.
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SAP ERP and Anaplan serve different purposes and actually work well together.
Think of SAP ERP focused on the Actuals, while Anaplan models the future. The reason why I’ve seen clients use Anaplan for planning vs. SAP BPC is Anaplan is more flexible and can easily keep up with constant changes in business planning.
While BPC is more of a consolidation tool, with Anaplan you can also have your driver-based models in a system vs. running them offline and only putting the answer into a system.
Therefore, my recommendation is to use both.