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.
"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."
"Technical support has been good."
"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."
"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."
"The solution works very well for budgeting."
"You don't need to have a programming language to use Anaplan."
"I believe Anaplan is a new cloud tool, and from time to time, there's a lot of improvement that the Anaplan company deploys with the system. So, with that improvement, we need to really adapt and know the new system trends."
"This product has a very good modeling feature, and its graphical representation of visualizations has also been valuable."
"The solution is scalable."
"It has a lot of integrity of data, and it is fast. All the users feel that they can trust this data. So, data integrity is the most important value of SAP."
"The system can be integrated with other SAP functionalities - such as finance, production, sales, marketing, HR, et cetera, and can also be customized to become a model that's specifically designed for my business. That's the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The solution has made the most significant impact on our human resources function, specifically in HR operations and HR analytics. One feature of SAP ERP that I found most valuable is its use of codes for accessing specific functions."
"MDG provides a central location for governance of the creation/updating processes of master data. It allows you to change several fields in the same object. For example, we can change a field on the purchasing view and change another field on an accounting view to the same material at the same time."
"The most valuable features are the claim management."
"The most significant elements of this solution are the ability to create a virtual product, a service product, and delivery."
"The solution is quite scalable."
"Anaplan could be improved with a stronger consolidation module."
"The negative is that the higher the flexibility, the higher is the complexity. That can act against you as a negative because it does require a model builder or a coder/developer."
"The integration technique should be a little bit easier."
"The tool needs to work on its integration with MS Excel and MS Word. The tool does not allow data analysis in spreadsheets which is possible on other platforms. I want the solution to be more collaborative to facilitate decision-making in organizations."
"The price of the solution can improve."
"The solution could improve by better dashboards and while entering the form loss and project implementation the ability to use graphical shapes more effectively."
"There are workspace issues, like the limitation on model sizes."
"Anaplan's workflow component is probably the biggest area for improvement. I'd also like to see Anaplan add an ad hoc reporting tool that allows users to query things. It's going to factor into how you design your data set and your models, but I'd like the ability to create ad hoc queries against the data that's in there."
"Though SAP ERP's FICO module is a strong part of the product, its integration capabilities can be made stronger."
"The user interface could be improved. For example, sometimes you're missing some data and can't complete a task. There should be some built-in support and suggestions on how to solve your problem. I would also like the interface to be optimized to work better with mobile devices like tablets and smartphones."
"I would like to see more integration with other partners. Some of our customers already use specific or in-house applications for their business processes. They do not want to replace those applications."
"I believe there's room for improvement in terms of user experience."
"I think that implementation could be simplified."
"It could be more flexible, and the company should be able to adapt the system. Not the other way around. It's very rigid and difficult to change. Reporting could also be better."
"The system is very big. It is not exactly user-friendly, due to the fact that it's so massive and complex."
"SAP ERP needs to be more innovative when it comes to areas like mobility and the internet."
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 SAP S/4HANA, Oracle Hyperion, SAP Analytics Cloud, IBM Planning Analytics 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.