Anaplan for Microsoft 365

- Easy to understand from the business perspective - Simple to consolidate and roll up planning data - Easy to plan at different levels of detail for each part of the process

- Can be performance issues - User access can be difficult to configure - Difficult to plan at extremely low levels of detail which is required for some companies

Anaplan solves many business problems which helps clients. - Standardization across regions / teams - Single source of truth for planning data - Ease of consolidation of reporting

It relatively easy to learn and intuitive to use.

The occasional availability of the models and the platform compare to other cloud services.

It allows for data integration with databases, allows for better control of formulas, reduces number of errors compare to old spreadsheet process. It speeds up decision making due to automating manual tasks.

High flexibility Anaplan's high flexibility allows it to replace most of the work done in Excel. It is like writing code. High Performance Anaplan can handle huge amounts of data that Excel and spreadsheets cannot handle. If designed well, there is no waiting time. Quick development Since a wide variety of components such as functions, batch processing, simple ELT, and AI functions are provided in advance, the system can be developed much faster than if you had to write code from scratch.

Fewer graphs While we already have simple graphs that are commonly used, in rare cases we are unable to meet our client's needs due to graph limitations.

It consolidates data siloed by planning work done in Excel into one single source of truth. And it will rapidly accelerate the speed of your business.

Anaplan is a great planning platform which is easy to use and scalable. Anaplan continues investing in its product roadmap. New products either organically developed like Anaplan Workflow and Data Orchestrator or externally acquired like Fluence provided Anaplan a range of capabilities required in the planning space. Anaplan has excellent online learning centre. Courses for recently acquired products were developed using the same standard as the Anaplan core courses. This made learning experience easy. Customer support is easily accessible with new Customer Care portal.

Anaplan may need to consider drill down functionality. While this can be achieved through different workarounds on UX pages, standard drill down that people are familiar with by expanding and collapsing parent item is good to have.

Anaplan is used to replace Excel-based model for real estate budgeting starting from the asset acquisition, development, and operation. Users can perform scenario analysis easily and hence are able to make informed decisions whether to hold or dispose an asset. Anaplan is able to handle multi-year budgeting easily.

I like Anaplan is flexible in it's modeling and does not hold you to 1 use case. This is very valuable to bring to a firm and have endless growth with the tool. The tool is relatively easy to learn and can be picked up my anyone.

Some aspects of the developer experience could be improved. Knowing what line items are used for what actions could be improved. Also, cloudworks having a snowflake connection would help. "Toastering" of the model when a bad formula is inputted is very aggravating for users.

Anaplan real time design is very helpful for our business. They can input their assumptions and see in real time the impact of their plans. This makes it so the tool can always be used as a conversation piece. Anaplan was able to help allocation use cases, where we didn't previously have a tool to help us with completing large allocations. Users can assign drivers and see the impact in real time, where user's can truly "integrate easily on creating their allocated financials. Anaplan allows for data to be exported to Power BI, which is helpful for storing data and merging with other data sources in a data lake.

Anaplan is an excellent EPM tool for business process planning. Its computing power allows you to produce real-time simulations of several scenarios based on complex sets of hypotheses defined for and by the business. Data processing is comprehensive, covering a wide range of business needs through a large number of native functions and formulas. A large number of use cases can be modelled. The user experience is simple to set up, pleasant to use and allows a large number of graphical displays.

Despite its many strengths, Anaplan could benefit from better rendering tools for modelbuilders to manage complex models. The lack of a ‘saved views’ parameter-setting page, similar to the ‘lineItem’ page, can lead to a loss of time when analysing complex models. There is also not easy to find indication of the publication of modules, and this information could be needed for a detailed analysis, particularly in the case of models with a very large number of pages in their app. These few elements could improve the modelling experience.

Before using this EPM tool, the exchange file formats differed depending on who was involved. The business process was neither clear nor fluid. Implementing a management system with Anaplan means more accurate decision-making, thanks to real-time scenario simulation, more reliable results, a single, well-defined process for everyone involved in the business, and a single, reliable data source.

Anaplan's platform continues to evolve in an incredible way. Just in the last 18 months, the following has released: app native workflow, build in data management, AI, brand new tech that builds models for you ("T&Q app"). It's changing what you expect from an EPM tool

Anaplan's pricing can be confusing and opaque. This is due to an evolving platform, technology, and GTM model. Customers from just 3 years ago may have completely different expectations on pricing and that can cause friction. However, the GTM model had to change - the platform, which did not drastically change from 2014-2022, has received an incredible overhaul in terms of technical functionality, and old pricing models did no capture that at all.

I will specifically answer this question regarding the territory and quota (T&Q) use case. T&Q represents a widespread, needed-everywhere planning problem but it doesn't have any of its own big software players. The reason is that Anaplan is so well-suited to the use case, that you'd waste your time trying to create a bespoke competitor. And Anaplan's offering is only strengthening. T&Q has the hallmarks needs of planning: nuanced, many disparate data sets, very large data sets, operational and financial considerations, many distributed stakeholders, and consistent collaboration. Anaplan checks each of those boxes an we see it at our customers. Our customers tell us they love a prescriptive approach that they still can own (the new T&Q app comes out of the box), where they can merge what they love about their current process with the best-in-class they need. These streamlined T&Q apps help our customers create fairer territories with better account scoring, build better quotas to set the right incentives and reach the right attainment curve, and do it all significantly faster. Our happiest customer now deploys territories and quota before the yera begins when it previously took them until 6 weeks into Q1.

Its flexibility and scalability make it suitable for various use cases across different industries. Easy to use, Ease to implement, Reliable customer support, Easy to integrate

Limited offline flexibility, integartion is complex

Anaplan addresses a variety of business challenges and provides solutions that are particularly valuable for organizations involved in planning, budgeting, and performance management.Some of the common problems that Anaplan helps customers solve include: Spreadsheets Limitations Disconnected Planning Processes Inefficient Manual Processes Difficulty in Scenario Analysis

Anaplan strong focus on customer success makes achieving project goals easier. With its high-quality training resources and supportive community, customers get to learn not just how to use it but also to maximize the product’s potential. Also, Anaplan continuously delivers new features and functionalities, ensuring the product remains relevant and effective in achieving the objectives.

Unplanned system downtime significantly affects a use case that requires frequent daily updates.

As a retail company, Anaplan helps us plan the timing, location, duration, and pricing of a product to achieve target revenue.

The fact that Anaplan can be tailored to almost any type of business problem is fantastic. This makes it a great tool for almost any use case. The tool is also very powerful and I have built calculations that would have taken hours to run in legacy systems which are more or less 'instantly' (make a change, takes about 1 second to flow through) processed. I'm talking HUGE corporate processes and things like that.

Customized reporting at a very low level with lots of members and dimensions can lead to size considerations. Reporting needs should be thought out prior to starting reporting sprints. Reporting that assists in the planning process is always worthwhile.

The problems I have solved with Anaplan run the gamete of corporate use cases, from Biopharma to Oil and Gas. It really can do anything. The biggest benefit in my humble opinion is the time savings realized by using Anaplan. Employees can focus on other more important tasks versus constantly trying to compile data for forecasts as Anaplan removes a lot of this legwork.