Anaplan vs. IBM Apptio

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Anaplan
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Anaplan is a scenario planning and analysis platform designed to optimize decision-making in complex business environments so that enterprises can outpace their competition and the market. By building connections and collaboration across organizational silos, the Anaplan platform surfaces key insights.N/A
IBM Apptio
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
The IBM Apptio platform is a technology business management solution that enables organizations to make better decisions about technology investments. It connects technology spend to business value so organizations can adapt to changing market conditions.N/A
Pricing
AnaplanIBM Apptio
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AnaplanIBM Apptio
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalRequired
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AnaplanIBM Apptio
Considered Both Products
Anaplan
Chose Anaplan
I think Anaplan is a better and more mature product than SAP SAC, but SAC has a better integration with its core modules and BW platforms.
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan offers faster performance. The modelling tool is user oriented.
Chose Anaplan
We like Anaplan for its flexibility, out-of-the-box starting apps, speed to deploy, and ability to maintain long-term.
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan feels like the golden standard. Pigment lacks necessary functionality like actions.
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan vs Oracle Hyperion - Anaplan is far better calculation engine and way more modern. However, Anaplan still struggles to provide reporting, especially adhoc reporting in excel based off a data model.

Anaplan vs Pigment - Anaplan is a more proven product, however, Pigment …
Chose Anaplan
Definitely a leader in the space. Far ahead in terms of capabilities. On the high end in terms of end user experience.
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan is easier to implement, easier to use, easier to maintain than these tools. It scales easily with the business. Workflows are easy to implement. It is easy to drill down and understand how the tool obtained a specific result, giving confidence in its calculations. …
Chose Anaplan
Easy of use is Anaplan's main advantage. As Anaplan is code-less configuration, and the logic for model building is by far the simplest, it would make the learning curve less steep. This is very important when we are showing our clients that, their complicated planning scenario …
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan is one of the only tools flexible to handle bespoke commission calculations. In addition to Sales Performance Management, Anaplan can be used to support other business functions, such as workforce planning or financial planning & analysis. Anaplan provides the …
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan is a proven tool for scalable applications and is flexible to support multiple use cases. Its support is established and the user community is strong. Resources to support the product are readily available.
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan is more powerful than Pigment considering that it is an Enterprise class system and is able to manage bigger data sets. Anaplan allows for advanced scenario modeling and formula capabilities along with custom reporting functionalities. Anaplan has proven its …
Chose Anaplan
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.
Chose Anaplan
can be implemented across multiple use cases- also Anaplan is an enterprise solution. Had good reviews in market and also used by other competitors in industry
Chose Anaplan
Both platforms are excellent but come with some challenges. They are often complex to configure and offer limited customization options. Their user interfaces are not very intuitive, and their reporting capabilities are somewhat restricted. The total cost of ownership is …
Chose Anaplan
In my professional experience, I've exclusively worked with Anaplan. The tool's impressive features made learning it an ongoing, engaging process. Its continuous updates and capabilities kept me consistently learning and adapting, so I never felt the need to switch to a …
Chose Anaplan
The tools generally fill different niches, Anaplan is the best for corporate and enterprise planning, OneStream's strengths are in Consolidations and working with large data sets by IT, and Pigment is a strong contender for finance teams at small organizations with less-defined …
Chose Anaplan
Compared to OneStream and Venna Anaplan offers a more modern look and feel of the platform. It is better situated and maintained in regards of platform updates as it's a full SaaS software there are never any issues with the system version as it's always automatically up to …
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan is using hyper block, so calculation is faster. The implementation of Anaplan is also very straightforward, so COE team can quickly catchup on the solution. If additional functions are required after go-live, COE can also support the implementation by themselves. …
Chose Anaplan
Managing spreadsheets in Excel or Google Sheets becomes too time consuming as the business and team grows so transitioning to a tool like Anaplan is a natural evolution.
I have used Power BI as a complement to Anaplan in the past in order to make the data that was consolidated …
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan is cloud based which automatically removes the pain and risk that comes along with emailing around different versions of spreadsheets. Concurrent users can interact with different parts of the model at the same time greatly improving time spent adding inputs to the …
Chose Anaplan
We selected Anaplan because of the breadth of their vision and their approach to tackle "planning" of all kinds and integrate planning processes into a true Connected Planning ecosystem. We found that their flexibility and ease of use ultimately provided a better avenue to …
IBM Apptio
Chose IBM Apptio
I personally have not used or evaluated any other product similar to Apptio. I can say that this is a great service and we use it often and we are growing how we use it. We are planning on expanding the way we use this database. We are excited to hear about more of the apptio …
Chose IBM Apptio
I am not on the cloud team, but I believe they enjoy the aws integration with cloudability
Chose IBM Apptio
IBM Apptio, MDM Document Management and IBM watsonx BI
Chose IBM Apptio
We use Workfront and Apptio for different use cases, but they work complimentarily with each other in our downstream reporting.
Chose IBM Apptio
As an ITFM Tool, Apptio's capabilities are leagues beyond ServiceNow.
Its powerful TBM Studio really gives IT Finance admin users the ability to manage raw data more efficiently.
Chose IBM Apptio
Apptio is a more robust platform for larger enterprise needs, providing features that meet the needs of tech, product and finance.
Chose IBM Apptio
I mean Tableau almost kind of works similarly but very differently. Whereas Apptio allows us to kind of focus in on cost management and so it's leaps and bounds I think, in my opinion, probably better suited for what we need.
Chose IBM Apptio
Apptio has better and more flexible reporting
Chose IBM Apptio
N/a - business owner decision
Chose IBM Apptio
Apptio is more of a robust solution than AWS
Chose IBM Apptio
Pricing, reputation, and sales team have been key
Chose IBM Apptio
I would say IBM Apptio has a more complex background for all the data and can show the visuals well, other issue is that it is not as easy to show to a broad audience.
Chose IBM Apptio
So we've used Proven Optics, which is an add-on to ServiceNow. Well at least use it with certain customers and Nicus. Nicus is probably the biggest competitor of Apptio. The trouble with Nicus is their SQL-based ingestion process. It's a little bit more difficult. So the reason …
Chose IBM Apptio
I would say it's more focused on technology value, outcomes, outputs. It's not as distributed in terms of how the outputs are given to you. It's more focused on technology, a little bit more user intuitive would be another example and just more finance oriented.
Chose IBM Apptio
we looked at TP, didn't buy it
Chose IBM Apptio
Comparable except Nicus has an On-prem choice I believe.
Chose IBM Apptio
We had a home-grown tool. This one is so much more robust and reliable.
Features
AnaplanIBM Apptio
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
7.4
Ratings
3% below category average
IBM Apptio
-
Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports6.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
9.1
Ratings
11% above category average
IBM Apptio
-
Ratings
Drill-down analysis9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.4
Ratings
2% above category average
IBM Apptio
-
Ratings
Publish to Web8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Publish to PDF7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Versioning9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.2
Ratings
8% above category average
IBM Apptio
-
Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive Analytics6.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
9.3
Ratings
6% above category average
IBM Apptio
-
Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control9.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
7.6
Ratings
4% below category average
IBM Apptio
-
Ratings
Responsive Design for Web Access8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Application7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting
Comparison of Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.9
Ratings
7% above category average
IBM Apptio
-
Ratings
Long-term financial planning9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Financial budgeting9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Forecasting9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Scenario modeling9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Management reporting7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Consolidation and Close
Comparison of Consolidation and Close features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
7.7
Ratings
3% below category average
IBM Apptio
-
Ratings
Financial data consolidation8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Journal entries and reports7.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-currency management7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Intercompany Eliminations7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Minority Ownership7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Local and consolidated reporting7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Detailed Audit Trails9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Financial Reporting and Compliance
Comparison of Financial Reporting and Compliance features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.0
Ratings
1% below category average
IBM Apptio
-
Ratings
Financial Statement Reporting9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Management Reporting8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Excel-based Reporting7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated board and financial reporting8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
XBRL support for regulatory filing7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Analytics and Reporting
Comparison of Analytics and Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
9.2
Ratings
13% above category average
IBM Apptio
-
Ratings
Personalized dashboards8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Color-coded scorecards9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
KPIs9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Cost and profitability analysis9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Key Performance Indicator setting9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Benchmarking with external data9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration
Comparison of Integration features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.1
Ratings
3% below category average
IBM Apptio
-
Ratings
Flat file integration8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Excel data integration7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources7.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AnaplanIBM Apptio
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Centage
Centage
Score 9.4 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Enterprises
OneStream
OneStream
Score 8.8 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AnaplanIBM Apptio
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
7.8
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
4.2
(0 ratings)
8.4
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.5
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.9
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AnaplanIBM Apptio
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
Read full review
IBM Apptio: 1. Track and Allocate cloud and on-premise costs across departments. 2. Compare planned budgets versus actuals spend in real time. 3. Provide Business leaders with transparent insights into how IT Investment drive business outcomes. 4. Enable show back models to ensure accountability and optimize resource usage. 5. Report Usage, where we can see the actual data regarding the users information and activity and track.
Read full review
Pros
  • Ingest and integrate disconnected datasets and sources that speak different "languages"
  • Flexible security and user-oriented customization of dashboards and datasets
  • Smart architecture allows creative license to connect planning processes that have different time horizons and granularities
  • Real-time ("live") collaboration is particularly useful for globally spread teams in different time-zones
Read full review
  • Does very well at handling complex allocations and automation. Also great at bringing in data automatically, manipulating that data, and allowing you to feed that data into a complex model. So all the behind-the-scenes stuff works really well. It's also pretty good at visualization. It has some similar capabilities like a Power BI and Tableau, but generally provides most of the visualization technology that somebody would need with the tool.
Read full review
Cons
  • I would like there to be additional visualization improvements/features for reports
  • Additional technical support resources would be great to quickly resolve bugs
  • I would like for improvements around the ability to have a lot of dimensions in a table of data and the speed around processing those calcs.
Read full review
  • The CCM module does not always calculate cloud RI usage correctly.
  • Would like better functionality to switch between cloud usage metrics and cost data. Discount rate on cloud recently increased, resulting in lower cost, but with higher utilization.
  • Continue investing in the CCM product, we like it, feels like we are being pushed to cloudability.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Anaplan is already an established market leader in enterprise planning area. Its flexibility to build multi-dimensional models, real time scenario plannings are proven to be the best features and successfully implemented by global organizations. Anaplan's ambitious product team is ensuring to roll out new features regularly based on customer/ partner feedback. e.g their new improved polaris environment has strong potential to build very large models without worrying about sparsity. The integration with other tools/technologies is being easier (e.g. cloudworks). Hence, considering Anaplan as a platform that has proved to be successful tool in enterprise level planning, its focus on regular feature enhancements and future release roadmaps I believe this platform has potential to evolve further along with our business processes and requirements
Read full review
It is hands down the most innovative SaaS on the market today. In my humble opinion it will be just as big or bigger than Salesforce, Workday and all of the greats. I would advise any big company to take advantage of Apptio and renew on an annual basis with their support team!
Read full review
Usability
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.
Read full review
We use this currently where I work and we have the consultant Maryville helping us with our Apptio reports and data. I originally used Apptio a few years back and since then I have switched employment, and I was able to talk to the leadership team about what we did at my previous job, and now we are building the reports here at my new place of employment
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
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
Read full review
Excellent, so far. SaaS-based...assuming effective data links and connectivity
Read full review
Performance
Generally, pages load quickly and reports complete within a reasonable timeframe. However, when working with large or complex datasets or during times of multiple active users, performance can sometimes be impacted. That said, much of the performance depends on how the model is built and whether best practices have been followed. Optimized models tend to perform much better, so the experience can be somewhat subjective based on the setup.
Read full review
Excellent, so far.
Read full review
Support Rating
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.
Read full review
I have not been directly involved with the post sales support team. However, that team has provided training materials and recommended practices that have been very helpful in coming up to speed on how to more fully use the product. My understanding from both vendor management and our upline stakeholders is that our relationship with Apptio is strong.
Read full review
In-Person Training
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.
Read full review
Was awesome to have been taught by legendary Debbie Hagan for Cost Transparency in person. Her knowledge is extensive and she is an excellent trainer. Her years of experience really shined.
Read full review
Online Training
Learning made easy . One of the best trainings i have attended. Training was very detailed training by the trainer, which helped me understand the basics of the model building. Level 1 training was easy and instructor was most helpful here. Level 2 training was challenging but was able to go thru due to understanding of the basics.
Read full review
The all talented training organization crosses all the T's and dots all the I's. I am constantly learning and often refer to training documentation for post training real life issues.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Agile methodology and breaking the work down into sprints was very helpful. Implementation required a deeper dive into our data than expected for the consultants to be able to construct the data model. But once it was in place, the focus on knowledge transfer enabled us to be able to use the product effectively after the team rolled off.
Read full review
Well, so far. Apptio Consulting covered specific model architecting areas particularly. Most of the heavy lifting is being done in-house with support from Apptio as it relates to tool impacts and needs. Some administrative tasks were redundant
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Anaplan is one of the only tools flexible to handle bespoke commission calculations. In addition to Sales Performance Management, Anaplan can be used to support other business functions, such as workforce planning or financial planning & analysis. Anaplan provides the scalability needed for an enterprise-level solution. While taking longer to implement, it also can provide a greater ROI.
Read full review
I personally have not used or evaluated any other product similar to Apptio. I can say that this is a great service and we use it often and we are growing how we use it. We are planning on expanding the way we use this database. We are excited to hear about more of the apptio products/modules that would benefit our agency
Read full review
Scalability
We have managed to leverage Anaplan for financial planning and forecasting across the business. It is now used by almost every department, with more than 50 users (but I know of companies that have hundreds of users) and still the platform is quick and reliable. It is easy to make changes to divisions and departments or add users and apply different user settings - the core part of the model is not affected and end users can continue their work without any disruption
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Reduction in time spent by sales ops team in processing compensation by almost 20 %
  • Ability to drill down into each compensation calculation to understand the details of how the comp is calculated. This has provided more transparency / traceability to end users
  • we are able to release updates to the system faster as it is easier to maintain and sync
Read full review
  • Has saved hours on time in comparing budget expenditures of departments to their actuals
  • Has helped optimize the ability to analyze data and compare yearly financials
  • However, does not decrease time in comparing budgets of different departments or agencies as can't view both side by side
Read full review
ScreenShots

Anaplan Screenshots

Screenshot of a preview of the Anaplan login page.Screenshot of a preview of an Anaplan home page.Screenshot of a preview of an Anaplan board.

IBM Apptio Screenshots

Screenshot of Industry BenchmarksScreenshot of Planning OverviewScreenshot of Billing - Main ViewScreenshot of Costing - Control OpEx and Cut CostsScreenshot of Spend Analytics