Anaplan Pros and Cons

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 Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

From a partner's perspective, it is so easy to learn the programming language. From a user perspective, I like how easy it is to update front-end pages when I want to have a specific view. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The company is growing quickly, and sometimes they might not keep up with the client requirements. But they seem to always push for more which is fantastic. So far, there wasn't a problem for which they didn't have an immediate solution or a workaround. So that's great Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Most of my engagements on Anaplan have been around financial planning with very large and complex data sets. Anaplan's ability to allow you to slice, dice and join data to calculate forecasts is something I haven't seen on any other platform at this scale. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The main issue I have only applies to using the Polaris engine. In Polaris, there are functions and formulas that are unavailable that are otherwise available in the standard Anaplan platform. This requires the users to think through their build and construct the model in a way that avoids these issues. Additionally, when developing in Polaris, extra care needs to be taken to ensure proper syntax as the "toaster" can take longer than in a standard Anaplan model to clear when an error is made. In general, I would recommend customers weight the pros and cons of Polaris and work with an experienced Imiplementation Partner. This should help ensure a smooth decision-making process, model build and model rollout. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Anaplan allows the "business" to own the toold rather than IT. This allows areas like finance and sales to make changes and updates to the logic without having to wait for IT to make the changes. Plus, the changes are easy becasue the "logic" is behaves in the same way as other programs used by the business. Anaplan also allows the business to design the tool to cater to the specific needs of the business such as terminoly and allowing for unique processes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are quite a few ways to connect data to Anaplan, but not always a direct connection. However, Anaplan is constantly evolving as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love the ease of building in Anaplan compared to the Excel documents I used to work with. The syntax is straightforward, and the drill-down feature makes it very easy to troubleshoot any issues while building out a User Story. Anaplan takes out all the validation issues that come along with end-users "fat fingering" a key and erasing data. Also, the history feature where you can view any change to a specific cell has been incredibly useful. When troubleshooting issues with end-users since I can see the exact action they ran and what order they performed the steps. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My major issue with Anaplan is the concurrency issues when running processes or editing cells. The first complaint I hear from any client is that there is a blue box on their screen preventing them from entering data. I have minimized the time the actions run by following the best practices, but when there are multiple users in the system, it will inevitably happen. I know that I could remove actions from the end-users, but the clients ask for a way to input then submit. So therefore, I have to have a submission action. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Using Anaplan since 2012, seen how anaplan changed over period of time in every possible way from coding, user interface and enabling MLachine Learning and Artifical Interlligence....,

1. Anaplan continous focus on improvement of the platform,

2. Time to deploy the solution and scalability

3. Ease of coding Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like Anaplan a lot overall, however I believe there is space for improvement in UX to imporve usability, also some functionalities which exist in excel are not available and had to find a workaround which is not super complex. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that the user experience is really flexible and meets the main needs of most enterprises. The Connected Planning experience a good implementation can give to its customers is a high-end solution that works really well. The platform constantly expands and is market competitive, the multiple integration options allow the system to communicate and seamlessly fit in any existing environment. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Having been exposed to the gritty back-end work and not only the shiny front-end, there are things that can be enhanced in the way the dimensions work and the way the engine performs - being a live system means any blocking action cripples user experience for everyone involved. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Anaplan is an easy-to-use SaaS platform with global coverage. Over the last 10 years, they have adopted the best-in-class funcitonalities on their platform to rival other big players in the EPM space such as Oracle, SAP and TM1. It is used for enterprise wide planning and improving collaboration among various teams within an organisation from finance to sales, HR, marketing, tax, operations and treasury to name a few. The platform uses simple drag and drop functionality along with excel-like scripting to build models and front-end pages, resulting in quicker adoption times for both end-users and new model builders and making implementation a breeze. The Anaplan REST API can be leveraged to connect the system to other existing ERPs and master data source system to ensure integrity of data across an enterprise. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While Anaplan has recently produced some exceptional functionalities like geo-mapping and workflow, and has a strong roadmap with GenAI coming into the picture soon, a lot of these capabilities (such as Workflow, or the new Polaris engine) come at an additional cost to customers. A lot of times customers are discouraged from using these features due to the additional price tag. This prevents consultants and partners like us from leveraging the full power of Anaplan to implement for the customer. However, the minimum/basic features that come with an enterprise licence are sufficient for a great start to the Anaplan journey. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like Anaplan's planning and modeling features, intelligent engine, user experience, extensibility and scalability. Anaplan connects people, data and plans like no other with their unified cloud platform. New features and functionalities are incorporated into the platform on a frequent basis which enhance the product's value proposition and usability significantly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Auditability of line items can be enhanced by adding extra features like saved views references, filter references, UX page references etc. Ability to natively view the size consumed by a line item (not just cell count) can greatly help with size impact analysis. Detailed error logging and scheduler accuracy can be improved in Cloudworks. Native support for allowing input/breakback and calculation logic in the same line item can be added to further boost platform adoption in Retail Planning use cases. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.