Anaplan vs. GoSpotCheck by FORM

Anaplan is best suited for strategic planning initiatives in industries like CPG, Manufacturing, FS, Pharma. It can handle multiple use cases for each function in the company like Supply chain, Finance, Sales and more. It is one of the best tools I have seen in scenario modelling. It is not suitable for very detailed level planning, essentially execution level eg. Production scheduling.

GoSpotCheck has been great when we want to collect data regarding price, number of items, yes or no responses and pictures, however it is not best used as a tool for audited large number or products. It is fairly easy to do this in the app but the data from the backend is a little bit of a nightmare! I'm hoping one day this can be looked into and provide a different way of collecting the multiple select question data to better suit audit data.

Incentivized

• Anaplan can scale as your business grows, for example adding new regions into to your geographical hierarchy.
• Anaplan is flexible and can do anything you want it to, there are no tables pre-configured that you need to fix your business process into.
• Reading formulas in Anaplan is straight forward with a quick learning curve.

• Ease of designing and creating survey questions for field team to answer. It was so easy to edit, add or remove questions so that I could alter what I wanted to see in real time.
• Ease of completing survey on mobile device. While it was important for the data to be collected, it needed to be done efficiently. The app was easy to use, navigate and made filling out the surveys quick.
• Customer Service- whenever we had a question or an issue, customer service was there to solve the problem quickly and effectively. Typically an email was the best way to get a quick answer. Their service and sales teams would also help us build missions to ensure we are capturing the data we want to capture and were able to export it and read it the way we wanted.
• Ease of the back end system, not just building missions as previously stated, but also reading and exporting the data and photos collected.

Incentivized

• Ability to decide if to apply the formula or a manual input on front end for each line item
• Real Time Data Transfer across models. Currently Data is transferred using Processes across different models. Having a functionality to access data from any model in real time would be great

• Updating reporting dashboard to see more info

Incentivized

Anaplan is a very strong multi-dimensional modeling tool that provides a calculation engine to empower a complex planning process. It is fairly easy to learn for those with experience in similar tools, or excel. It forces structure and auditability that spread sheets do not have, along with extensive security capabilities

Anaplan is interesting because it is at the same time easy to use and difficult to use. An end user can navigate a well-constructed app, being pointed in the right direction every time they feel a slight bit of confusion, and find everything they need in what feels like a straight line. Similarly, a model builder (developer of sorts) can have the exact same experience, but the journey is longer and more complicated. End users have great experiences with Anaplan, but sometimes model builders have a frustrating one. That is not to say model building is hard (because it truly is not), but things change, and when things change in complex systems, the effort required simply to investigate where a model builder needs to make an adjustment may frustrate them but also frustrate their non-technical bosses. However, the reality is that with complicated businesses, complicated business problems, come complicated solutions. It is actually a testament to Anaplan's capabilities that it has taken on the biggest problems at the biggest companies. It may be daunting to adjust it in those environments, but at least you know it did meet the needs there, which is more than most tools can say.

There are very few outages. Maintenance is scheduled on two or three Saturdays per month, so as not to affect businesses. When there is an outage, users are kept informed of progress to restore the platform and typically this takes no more than an hour. Anaplan customer support is very responsive if we ever have questions about platform issues

Everything is calculated in memory in the cloud. It's nearly instantaneous updates when you make changes. The only time things get a little slow is when you have a massive model with very intricate calculations...but "slow" for Anaplan is not what I would call "slow" for something like Hyperion. We used to have Hyperion calcs that ran for 60 mins before you could use data. The equivalent would be 60 seconds in Anaplan.

Incentivized

Support quality has dropped since Thoma Bravo has taken over. I think some serious re-focus needs to happen here -- part of the beauty of being in the Anaplan community was how involved you felt in it before. Before I didn't dread sending a support ticket, now I am starting to.

In my opinion, in-person training is always the best if you have the option to do so. This allows real-time interactions with the instructions, whereas the online training I took required me to write-down questions, email them, and wait for responses. This slows down the process, as you can imagine. That said, in-person training is an extra cost and it likely isn't needed for everyone. I would suggest selecting a small number of people to take in-person training and then having them act as mentors to the rest of your team. That way, as the rest of the team takes the online training, they have a resource to help them in real time.

Anaplan training materials are clear, simple, easy to understand and to follow. Visuals are excellent. The vendor is good at updating training materials in a timely manner and encouraging users and administrators to keep coming back to Academy site for refresher courses or new feature courses. I really like their interactive diagrams

The platform allows a flexible implementation mechanic to be put in place, since the possibilities and functionalities are vast and there are very few things the tool cannot do well. The solutions for the financial planning and the integrated business planning we put in place were easily adopted by the end users and their day-to-day work was made easier.

Anaplan and these other tools are very similar. I cannot say that I selected Anaplan over them as I have worked with and been involved with setting up a number of tools for clients. They all have their advantages and Anaplan is a very strong tool in the cloud planning space

We used to use a product called "Stay in Front." This was a product that was used prior to my arrival at Alliance so I don't know a lot of the ins and outs regarding comparison. I have heard that Stay in Front had a much better auditing system, however retrieving pictures from the software was a little cumbersome and not as efficient as what GSC has set up for its users. The ability to pull data quickly and consistently for our clients is so important and one of the reasons why we made the switch. GSC is also often updating and upgrading the software to include more functionality and this is something we can really take hold of.

Incentivized

The platform is highly flexible and can be deployed across multiple departments and locations, supporting growth and varying business needs effectively. Its cloud-based architecture allows for scaling model size and user access as required. However, there can be some challenges with performance and model complexity as the scale increases significantly, which slightly limits its scalability in very large or highly complex environments.

• Anaplan's implementation led to a significant reduction in planning cycle errors and bugs, streamlining processes and improving overall accuracy in data inputs
• Standardizing the planning process and enabling cross-functional collaboration through Anaplan enhanced our ability to adapt swiftly to changing business needs, resulting in improved agility in decision-making
• The platform's capabilities, especially in Demand Planning and Supply Chain, positively impacted our ROI by optimizing resource allocation and solving complex business problems efficiently across multiple functions

• The ROI was difficult to measure in dollars or units, but the data and intel we were able to collect and provide to our buying teams and use internally was invaluable. We no longer have the team collecting data in the field and it's a huge miss.
• Alerted marketing team of competitor's promotions, merchandising and POP
• Alerted product team of new products coming to market, feedback on new products in market, and consumer feedback on our products
• Visibility to inventory standings and areas that needed improvement
• A way to track in store planogram changes and total SKU count by brand - used to leverage our products in line review meetings
• Ability to capture endless photos of merchandising and new products to have a visual at meetings

Incentivized