Anaplan Review - why 4.4 stars?

Shlomi Lavi / updated: Apr 11, 2022

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What is Anaplan?

Anaplan is a cloud-based business planning and business performance management software solution that helps connect leaders and teams in an organization to power their abilities to adapt, transform, and reinvent their businesses constantly. Some features of the Anaplan platform are explained below:

• User Experience: The Anaplan user experience puts the entire enterprise on a single platform, sharing continually updated signals in real-time across devices for flexibility and rapid decision-making. Intuitive model-building requires zero coding knowledge.
• Intelligence: Anaplan transforms intricate inputs into actionable recommendations with features that support embedded optimization, predictive algorithms, and AI capabilities. Users can also leverage machine learning for decision-making across use cases.
• Planning & Modeling: Users can model complicated business scenarios with Anaplan and remain ahead of change with multi-dimensional modeling and unlimited restraints. With Anaplan, businesses can maintain consistency across all model changes.
• Extensibility: Anaplan helps businesses centralize data collection and analysis in a single site to enable high-level and granular insights and facilitate data-sharing with all stakeholders. Users can also leverage APIs, ETL connectors, and built-in integrations.
• Enterprise Scale: With Anaplan, businesses can merge their entire enterprise, scaling as they experience growth and managing real-time changes at any size. Anaplan helps keep calculations consistent and swift for all data sets and an infinite number of users.

Anaplan was founded in 2006, and its headquarters are located in San Francisco, California, the USA, and the company has between 1000 and 5000 employees.

Who is it best for?

Anaplan target users are executives from sales, operations and finance, and its sales orientation that includes features such as modeling for maximizing sales per sale territory will apply to global companies with branches across the world.

Anaplan main market is big enterprises willing to improve the performance of their company. This is a market already invaded by big names like Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and IBM but Anaplan hopes to win its share of it by bringing in a new technology that would combine cloud with in-memory architecture.

Key customers currently using Anaplan are big technology multinationals like McAfee, Nokia and Hewlett-Packard, and companies such as Diageo, Taylor Wimpey, Pandora, Lexmark International, Inc. and Activision.

Main features and functionalities

Anaplan was designed to improve business performance, analysis, planning, forecasting and modeling. It is capable of scaling to meet the needs of the biggest companies in the world.

Anaplan allows you to update plans on the fly, collaborate with team members and turn complex business operations into easy to use models. Its true cloud SaaS model and in-memory architecture require minimal IT intervention, and its simple Excel-like UI allows quick user implementation. In addition, Anaplan self-service approach allows end users to quickly and easily build their own applications without consuming IT resources.

What is the actual cost?

ITQlick pricing score is 5.6 out of 10 (10 is most expensive). Access ITQlick pricing guide for Anaplan. You can also find here pricing information from Anaplan's website.

Pros

• Anaplan is an adaptable platform with which clients can perform a wide variety of activities
• The platform undergoes regular updates that come with new features and performance enhancements
• Anaplan has a Connect API feature that allows users to plug in different applications for added productivity
• Anaplan can be accessed anywhere, including mobile devices
• Anaplan's cloud-based platform delivers all information in real-time

Cons

• Metadata on Anaplan works well within a single model but becomes cumbersome when shared across several models
• Training and setup are usually time-consuming, and the product has a steep learning curve
• Does not support Google Apps, Open API and QuickBooks Intuit
• No native app for Blackberry

How it stacks up?

Access a head to head analysis of Anaplan vs alternative software solutions.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is Anaplan right for you or your business?

Anaplan is a cloud-based business planning and performance management software solution used by organizations in finance, sales, HR, supply chain, marketing, etc. The software is fit for organizations of all sizes, and customers like Bayer, Adobe, and Vena Energy are notable clients that use the Anaplan solution.