Anaplan Valuable Features

JM
Founder and CEO at FP&A Strategy Consulting

In corporate performance management where you're looking at building out forecasts, modeling data, and have really heavy interaction with data, it's extremely useful due to the fact that, unlike using Excel to build out models and things like that, it's very collaborative.

While you can put Excel in the cloud, and try to collaborate that way, it doesn't necessarily work as well. Whereas, this works really well as a collaboration solution. You can build complex data models. You can have lots of people entering lots of different pieces of data into them, similar to what you have in Excel, and yet, it's in the cloud and it's designed for the cloud, and it's a bit more structured than Excel.

It takes out a lot of the risks you have in building models in Excel. On the other side of the spectrum, you have your consolidation tools. You've got your Hyperion, you've got your adapters. Their primary purpose is to consolidate large amounts of data. They're typically quite purpose-built with little ability to customize them and their core function is consolidation. You can also add driver-based solutions on top of that. It's very rudimentary, and it's very designed around the application. These solutions typically are for corporate performance management. If you're a smaller company, and you just need a basic consolidation solution, that's where you go. 

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.

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SA
Lead Analyst at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

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. It's all refreshed across the system. So let's say we have a central system that is connected to workforce planning, supply chain planning, demand planning, dispatch planning, etc. If you change one number, it will update everywhere. Reporting is instant. You don't need to load it, refresh it, save it—it auto-saves and is processed by the in-memory calculation engine. 

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DB
Senior Director at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

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.

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Buyer's Guide
Business Performance Management
March 2024
Find out what your peers are saying about Anaplan, Oracle, Board International and others in Business Performance Management. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
MM
Solution Architect and Model Builder at Changement pvt ltd

The modeling part of Anaplan, which is a model builder in which you can build whatever you want, has been great. There is no limit. The sky is the limit with Anaplan.

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

The solution scales well.

We have found the product to be very stable. 

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SA
Manager at Xceedance

The calculation capabilities are great. The reports on offer are perfect.

The initial setup is simple.

The performance is good.

The solution works very well for budgeting. 

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KC
Consultant

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.

Because of that flexibility and ability to build models in the way you want to build it, it means you can tailor it to the company's requirements. You can really tailor it, which is the big positive with Anaplan, and the fact that you can track what everybody does. There are more constraints within SAP and Oracle than in this kind of product.

It's like Excel but with a mix of VBA, and it's a bit more controlled. So you have, from a client's point of view, an internal/external audit trail. The audit trail logs absolutely everything you do. That's really useful when people build out these models for it because you want to know what people are doing. It's very difficult to do that in Excel. So it's like Excel, but a more controlled version of it. You are using formulas and you build it out with formulas.

Anaplan can be easily deployed and scaled.

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Kumaran Singaram - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at Metora

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.

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PJ
Technical Product Owner - EPM at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

It's real-time connected planning, so the calculations are pretty much seamless as far as your model is connected. That's the major advantage, and it's cloud-based and very UX friendly.

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HB
Manager Cloud EPM at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable features are the dashboards and Model Map, as they speak to the business and they are the backbone of the modelling.

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MS
Data Engineering Sr Analyst

I like updating the current model. For example, if the business wants to see a different version or a different report style, I'm happy to work, manipulate, and do some data visualization changes for them.

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DR
Anaplan Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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MI
Solutions Expert at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

It's simple to use and has a lot of functions suitable for many use cases. Here, you don't have to know how to code. So it's like Excel-based syntax.

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NC
Project Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

There is a full set of reports available for sales.

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KN
Anaplan model builder at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Anaplan is a three-dimensional cloud platform that is good for analyzing data, visualization, integration, terrific for visibility. Additionally, it is continually being updated and allows collaboration. When comparing it to Microsoft Excel, in Anaplan when you make a change to a sheet you do not need to make the same change to all the sheets as you do in Excel. 

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AL
Anaplan Application Analyst at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

The features that I have found most valuable are that it is web-based and easy to use.

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VM
Senior Anaplan Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The modeling is very easy. It's almost an Excel-like model building. It is very easy to change the logic or business rules. You can do it anytime. It's not like you need a different team set up for the changes.

The solution is very user-friendly.

The initial setup is very easy.

The solution is scalable.

The solution has been very stable so far.

We have found that the product integrates well with SAP and they have ready-made connectors. In fact, it is easy to integrate with any other system. They have plug-and-play software which makes integrations easy with very little time consumption required. 

You don't need to have a programming language to use Anaplan.

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ST
Anaplan Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Anaplan provides 130 GB of cloud storage for organizations to use as part of their license. 

It is easier to implement for the developer teams and client users who are using it. For example, if a client is using thousands of Excel documents, it becomes very easy for Anaplan to do all of the calculations and move things around inside.

The flexibility is very good, it is easy to make new changes to the deployments.

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Satheesh Satheesan - PeerSpot reviewer
Digital Transformation Director - Finance at Metora

Anaplan's strongest feature is that its GUI is very modern and user-friendly.

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RK
Lead Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

This product has a very good modeling feature, and its graphical representation of visualizations has also been valuable.

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it_user652950 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
  • Multi-dimensional
  • Easy to restructure
  • Cloud compatible
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it_user635439 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Solution Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
  • Ease of integration with Salesforce (Sales Cloud).
  • Flexibility - the ability to run several different sales forecasting models, but have those parts roll-up to a corporate model.
  • Extremely customizable (add fields, add dashboards/components, etc.)
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it_user653559 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Analytics at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
  • Serves as a platform: You can design your solutions on top of it
  • Allows you to do “what-if” analysis on the go
  • Allows collaboration across the organization: This is most essential for security
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AG
Model Builder Intern at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The best thing is that it's very intuitive and user-friendly. You don't need coding skills to manipulate the platform.

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JS
Senior Consultant - Sales at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

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).

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Buyer's Guide
Business Performance Management
March 2024
Find out what your peers are saying about Anaplan, Oracle, Board International and others in Business Performance Management. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.