Anaplan vs Essbase

Anaplan has garnered a reputation for its robust modeling capabilities, allowing users to create intricate financial models with ease. Reviewers frequently praise its flexibility and ability to handle complex calculations, making it a powerful tool for forecasting, budgeting, and scenario planning. The platform's "Connected Planning" approach, which links various planning processes across an organization, is seen as a major advantage, enabling better collaboration and alignment between departments. However, some users find the interface to be less intuitive than other performance management systems, requiring a steeper learning curve. Additionally, the platform's extensive customization options, while powerful, can sometimes lead to complexity and require specialized knowledge to manage effectively. Compared to competitors like Oracle Hyperion and SAP BPC, Anaplan stands out for its cloud-based architecture and user-friendly interface. Reviewers often highlight its ease of use and accessibility from any device, making it a popular choice for organizations with distributed teams. While Anaplan may not have the same level of industry-specific functionality as some of its competitors, its flexibility and ability to integrate with other systems make it a versatile solution for a wide range of planning needs. The platform's scalability is also a significant advantage, allowing organizations to easily adjust their usage as their needs evolve. Anaplan is best suited for mid-sized to large organizations with complex planning requirements and a need for collaboration across departments. Its ability to handle large data sets and perform sophisticated calculations makes it ideal for financial planning, sales forecasting, and supply chain management. However, smaller organizations or those with simpler planning needs may find the platform's capabilities to be excessive and the learning curve to be a barrier to adoption.

Essbase is a multidimensional database with a fast querying engine and an intuitive interface. Available both in the cloud or on-premises, it enables users to build and manage analytic applications, which can be migrated to the cloud. It features a robust set of tools to perform planning, forecasting and analytics. Users can slice and dice intersections easily to find specific data. It can be integrated with Excel, enabling users to build budget and forecasting models, with ad hoc reporting capabilities. Users liked the flexibility offered when designing reports, or changing hierarchies. With access to all optimization and tuning options, users are given control of hardware utilizations and other settings. However, users complained that they needed to learn multiple languages, such as Calc scripts, MDX, business rules and Groovy, to leverage the platform’s capabilities. They also found it difficult to export data or integrate it with a data warehouse. Some users reported performance and stability issues, with rare instances of crashes and connection loss. Reviewers also complained about the low level of support provided when critical tickets are submitted, some of which are closed without providing any solution. Overall, it’s a flexible solution with a powerful calculation engine to drive business insights.