7

REASONS TO
CHOOSE ANAPLAN
to replace your planning
spreadsheets

Introduction
We all love spreadsheets and use them to manage our personal finances. But their limitations show up quickly in
business settings where a number of individuals need to access, update, and amend the data. Yet despite their failings
and frustrations, we persist in using them for planning and analysis. Perhaps their pervasive presence on our desktops
and laptops makes us think using them is a low cost option. Perhaps we hate letting go of them because we dread
losing control. Or, perhaps, its because enterprise software vendors have never come up with a viable alternative.
In many instances, Anaplan is a direct replacement for solutions that our clients have built themselves using spreadsheets
so they are all too aware of their short-comings. But after having deployed Anaplan to transform their planning
and analysis across numerous lines of business, they recognize they have hit a sweet spot where they enjoy both
the immediacy and user-friendliness of spreadsheets and the security and scalability that comes with an enterprise
solution. Here are the seven most common challenges they faced and how Anaplan successfully addresses them.

01

Gain tighter control

over corporate data

Much business data, such as sales commissions

and corporate budgets, is confidential. Although
passwords can be applied to spreadsheets and cells
may be protected, spreadsheets were never intended
to be shared among users where access rights and
authorization are imperative. Anaplan addresses this
issue with flexible security levels. This allows anyone,
from the corporate level to front-line users, to safely
participate in planning processes. Additionally, the
robust audit trail makes it easy to track changes. And
there is no danger of losing data as the built-in revision
control makes it easy to restore previous versions.

02

I was concerned
that so much sensitive
compensation information
lived in spreadsheets.
Brian Bayless, VP GTM Finance, McAfee

Eradicate
errors

We all know the nervousness that comes with

changing formulae in a standalone spreadsheet. But
only corporate users really know the white-knuckle
trepidation associated with tracking amendments
through a string of interrelated spreadsheets that share
cell values. Eventually, fixing the syntax errors and
repairing the broken macros make it all work again.
But because spreadsheets are so difficult to audit,
who knows what errors remain hidden? According to
business consultants KPMG, quite a few, with 90% of
spreadsheets they surveyed containing errors. Some
will be inconsequential, but it is not unknown for
companies to issue earnings warnings due to errors
in forecasts that were built using spreadsheets.

UK services provider Mouchel suffered just such

humiliation in 2011 when a spreadsheet error resulted
in a pension fund being wrongly valued by 4.3 million.
The subsequent profit warning resulted in the price
of its stock dropping by a third and the company
having to be rescued by its banks. But multinationals
run the same risks too. A little-mentioned aspect of
the notorious London Whale debacle at J.P. Morgan
in 2012 was how errors made while copying and
pasting data from one spreadsheet to another were
partly to blame for a single $6 billion trading loss.
Luckily for them, the bank is well-diversified and still
earned a record profit of $21.3 billion the same year.

Anaplan goes above and beyond Excel, enabling me to rely

on the information instead of worrying about the fact that data is
missing or pivot tables arent refreshing.
Scott Kempton, Senior Financial Analyst, Jive Software

Anaplan minimizes the risk of errors in a number of

ways. Business rules are written in natural syntax and
stored in a single worksheet, (the master repository
of custom business rules or Living Blueprint), where
they are easy to locate and audit. Additionally, the
complex and overlapping relationships between
core dimensions, such as responsibility centers,
locations, and products are intelligently mapped

03

so that when any member of a hierarchy is moved,

all its connections and history automatically
move with it without any of the restructuring that
would be required with spreadsheets. And Anaplan
dynamically synchronizes data across connected
plansautomatically aggregating and identifying
discrepancies for real-time consistency.

Leverage
existing skills

Undoubtedly, one of the main attractions of

spreadsheets is that users can build and modify
models without the need to become fluent in
a specialist programming language like they do
when working with the majority of enterprise

applications. Thats not the case with Anaplan

which uses natural language and drag and drop
functionality for constructing business rules, so that
it is instantly familiar to any spreadsheet user.

As for the learning curve; there wasnt much of one. Anaplan

has an Excel feel. Its not a programming language. Its logical; its
English sentences. But it allows you to do things you just cant
do with Excel.
Andrew Paston, FP&A Manager, 2degrees

04

Improve
productivity

The prevalence of spreadsheet software makes it

seem like a low cost option for planning and analysis.
However, building and amending spreadsheet
models is notoriously time-consuming, resulting in a
considerable cost of ownership. Our implementation
experience has repeatedly demonstrated that
Anaplans apps, intuitive modelling interface, and

intelligent mapping mean users can quickly and

easily build and restructure models and reports. This
leads to improved productivity, allowing staff to be
better deployed on more value-added analysis.

Our Board Report turnaround time used to take six to eight

working days. With Anaplan weve set a new record by turning the
report around in two days. That kind of efficiency has enabled the
team to put the A back in FP&A.
Bruce Dixon, VP of Financial Planning and Analysis, Central European Media Enterprises (CME)

05

Expedite business
processes

Managing processes such as the review and

approval of forecasts by attaching spreadsheets to
emails is also labor intensive, especially in a large
enterprise. Anaplans integrated workflow allows
users to configure and monitor the status of routine

processes, expediting submissions and approvals to

create a more agile enterprise. In addition, our realtime alerts ensure prompt attention to variances.

Almost overnight weve vastly improved communication;

Anaplan is saving people time and emails, making information easier
to understand, and allowing people to act more quickly.
Patrick OBrien, Senior Manager of Finance, Activision

06

Make data
management easier

The size limitations and flatness of spreadsheets

cannot cope with the complex dimensionality of
business data. That means reporting by alternative
hierarchies or by different time periods is laborious
and time consuming. So too is data management,
because every time an update is required, data
has to be manually uploaded from disparate
systems, dumped into various spreadsheets, and
cleansed before anything can be done with it.

With Anaplan, you can build models to any level

of granularity with any number of dimensions,
automatically switching between different time
periods, hierarchies, and versions quickly and
easily. Using our integration tools to automatically
upload data into a central repositoryThe Anaplan
Hubwhere it is synchronized in real time across
all models, ensures everyone is working with
the most up-to-date, consistent data set.

Coming from a two-dimensional Excel background, our first

impulse was to go and build lots of little modules. But Anaplan lets
you play with dimensions in a very intuitive way. It didnt take us long
to grasp the power and efficiency of multidimensional modeling.
Andrew Paston, FP&A Manager, 2degrees

07

Become
more agile

The improved user productivity, faster business

processes, and streamlined data management
that Anaplan provides gives business leaders
quicker access to the critical data they need to
make decisions. That enables organizations to
rapidly sense and understand internal and external
changes in their business and make an appropriate
response. Those are much sought after capabilities
in todays world and having moved away from
spreadsheets, our customers enjoy them today.

Depending on their security and access rights,

employees in the field can access Anaplan
on their tablet, copy and amend an existing
model to create a new scenario, and rapidly run
through numerous iterations that potentially
touch billions of data points to assess the most
likely outcome and then immediately share
it with their peers. Agility like that can never be
achieved by chugging away on spreadsheets.

Anaplans proof of concept ran reports off the model instantly;

from one week in Excel to a few seconds.
John Story, Story Homes

Now that you know there is an enterprise solution

for planning that delivers far greater capabilities than
spreadsheets, yet still leaves you firmly in control,

take a deeper dive by viewing one of our 20-minute

weekly demonstrations or request a personalized
tour. See [Link]/demo for details.

CONTACT US
[Link]/company/anaplan
[Link]/anaplan
[Link]/anaplan
[Link]/+anaplaninc

2014 Anaplan. All rights reserved.

About Anaplan
Anaplan is disrupting the world of business planning and execution. We built our in-memory platform from the ground up to
empower companies to plan, collaborate and actin real-time. Stay ahead of critical business events, rapidly model potential
impacts and course correct on the fly. With Anaplans cloud-based platform and planning applications, you can continuously align
your people, plans and spend to your market opportunities. Anaplan is a privately held company, headquartered in San Francisco,
CA with global offices on four continents. To learn more, visit [Link]. Join us on twitter: @anaplan

KPMG (1998).Review of Client Spreadsheet Models, KPMG Management Consulting (London).

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