Anaplan’s mission is to empower organizations to remain agile and confident amidst constant change. The company aims to make “Connected Planning” a reality for all people within a business, enhancing decision-making in dynamic environments. Anaplan’s primary goal is to provide a platform where businesses can connect their people, data, and plans to facilitate real-time, intelligent planning and decision-making. This enables companies to orchestrate business performance and transform their operations.
Anaplan has a strong market reputation as a robust and flexible platform for enterprise-wide planning, particularly for complex scenarios across various departments like finance, sales, and supply chain. It is recognized for its powerful calculation engine and ability to handle large datasets for forecasting and modeling. However, Anaplan is also known for its complexity and the significant investment required for implementation and user training. Its cost can be a barrier for smaller to mid-sized companies, positioning it primarily as a solution for large enterprises with dedicated resources.
Offerings, Capabilities, and Integrations
Anaplan provides a cloud-native platform for enterprise-wide planning, forecasting, and performance management. Its core offering is centered around the concept of “Connected Planning,” which aims to break down information silos and connect strategic, financial, and operational plans across an entire organization. This approach allows for real-time collaboration and decision-making, providing a single source of truth for all business units. Anaplan’s competitive edge is rooted in its proprietary in-memory calculation engine, Hyperblock™, and its Polaris™ Calculation Engine, which enable the creation of complex, multi-dimensional models that can process vast amounts of data with high speed and scalability. The platform is infused with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, offering predictive analytics and forecasting to guide business strategy. Anaplan’s ability to integrate data from various sources into a unified system enhances forecasting accuracy and aligns goals across departments. The platform’s extensibility is supported through a range of integration options, including APIs and pre-built connectors for various enterprise systems, which allows for a seamless flow of information and enhances its overall value proposition as a central planning hub.
Products and Services
Anaplan’s primary offering is its cloud-based Connected Planning platform, which serves as the foundation for a suite of specialized applications and solutions. This platform is not sold as a singular product but as a comprehensive solution tailored to specific business functions and industries. Anaplan’s flagship capability is enabling dynamic, collaborative, and intelligent planning across the enterprise.
- Anaplan Platform: The core of Anaplan’s offerings, this platform provides the tools for building and deploying custom planning applications. It features powerful modeling capabilities, a user-friendly interface, and robust security.
- Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A): A suite of solutions for finance departments that includes capabilities for budgeting, forecasting, long-range planning, and financial consolidation. A recent addition is the Integrated Financial Planning application, which offers out-of-the-box functionality based on best practices.
- Sales Performance Management: Solutions designed to optimize sales strategies through territory and quota planning, sales forecasting, and incentive compensation management.
- Supply Chain Planning: A set of applications to manage demand planning, supply planning, and sales and operations planning (S&OP), aimed at improving forecast accuracy and optimizing inventory.
- Workforce Planning: Solutions for HR departments to manage strategic and operational workforce planning, including headcount and compensation modeling. The recently launched Operational Workforce Planning application provides configurable, pre-built functionality.
- Anaplan Intelligence: A suite of AI and machine learning capabilities, including PlanIQ for predictive forecasting and Anaplan Optimizer for identifying the best outcomes for complex planning problems.
- Anaplan Applications: A collection of purpose-built, out-of-the-box applications that connect planning across the business. Recently, Anaplan has introduced AI agents such as Anaplan CoModeler, Anaplan Finance Analyst, and Anaplan Supply Chain Analyst to automate tasks and generate insights.
Target Customers
Anaplan primarily targets large enterprises across a variety of industries. The platform is designed for companies with complex planning needs that require collaboration across multiple departments and business functions. Anaplan’s solutions are particularly well-suited for organizations seeking to move away from disconnected spreadsheets and legacy planning systems towards a more integrated and agile approach.
The key market segments for Anaplan include:
- Financial Services: For budgeting, forecasting, and regulatory compliance.
- Retail and Consumer Goods: To aid in demand optimization and collaborative planning.
- Manufacturing: To support supply chain optimization and production planning.
- Healthcare and Life Sciences: For resource allocation, financial planning, and improving speed to market.
- Technology: To enable strategic planning and financial modeling in a fast-paced environment.
Target customers benefit from Anaplan’s platform by achieving improved operational efficiency, enhanced forecasting accuracy, and better-informed decision-making. By providing a unified view of data and plans, Anaplan helps these organizations to respond more quickly to market changes, align their operations with strategic goals, and drive business growth. The platform’s ability to model various “what-if” scenarios allows businesses to assess the potential impact of decisions and navigate uncertainty with greater confidence.
Cloud Integrations and Marketplaces
Anaplan offers a range of cloud integrations and maintains a presence on major cloud marketplaces, enabling customers to connect its platform with their existing cloud infrastructure.
- Anaplan Cloudworks is a native integration tool that facilitates connecting the Anaplan platform to external cloud data stores, such as those on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, without requiring coding.
Anaplan has specific integrations and marketplace listings with the following major cloud providers:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS): Anaplan is available on the AWS Marketplace. The platform integrates with several AWS services, including Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Forecast, the last of which is used for machine learning-powered forecasting capabilities within Anaplan PlanIQ.
- Microsoft Azure: Anaplan is available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. This allows for streamlined deployment and management for customers using the Azure cloud platform. Anaplan integrates with Azure services, including Azure Data Factory and Azure Blob Storage, to synchronize strategic planning data.
- Google Cloud: Anaplan is available on the Google Cloud Marketplace. The Anaplan platform itself can run on Google Cloud infrastructure. It offers integrations with Google Cloud services, such as a self-service connection to Google BigQuery for data import and export and a bidirectional add-on for Google Sheets.
Key People
- Chief Executive Officer, Member of the Board: Charlie Gottdiener
- Chief Product and Technology Officer: Adam Thier
- Chief of Staff and Advisor to the CEO: Brian Kober
- Chief People Officer: Carey Pellock
- Chief Legal Officer: Greg Giangiordano
- President and Chief Revenue Officer: Greg Randolph
- Chief Financial Officer: Hemant Kapadia
- Chief Customer Officer: Hyune Hand
- Chief Marketing Officer: Jim Freeze
Key Facts
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- Headquarters: Miami, Florida.
- Number of Employees: Approximately 2,500.
- Annual Revenue: $592.2 million (Fiscal Year 2022).
- Parent Company: Thoma Bravo.
- Subsidiary Companies: Examples include Syrup Tech and the applications division of Vuealta.
- Publicly Listed: No.
Analyst Recognition
Anaplan is recognized by several major analyst groups across various technology categories.
- Gartner positions Anaplan as a Leader in its Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software. Anaplan is also recognized as a Challenger in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Close and Consolidation Solutions and the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Solutions.
- Forrester designates Anaplan as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Collaborative Supply Networks. Anaplan has also been recognized as a Leader in past Forrester Wave reports for Sales Performance Management and Digital Operations Planning and Analytics.
- IDC names Anaplan a Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Sales Performance Management and the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Supply Chain Planning Overall.
- Everest Group does not feature Anaplan in the provided search results for its PEAK Matrix® assessments.
