How is successful integration into Anaplan achieved?

Ensure seamless integration into your system landscape!

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This is how you can quickly and reliably expand Anaplan within your IT infrastructure

valantic - your integration partner

valantic offers a range of integration options with the connected planning platform Anaplan, from a selection of standard tools in the Anaplan ecosystem to customized API (Application Programming Interface) implementations. Leverage your investment in Anaplan through seamless integration with your IT environment and business processes to generate meaningful insights and make reliable, data-driven decisions.

With valantic as your partner, you are set to enjoy the power of an award-winning planning platform that features true interoperability with your existing systems.

Anaplan is, by design, source-system, data-structure and paradigm-agnostic, and it enables integration with on-premise and cloud-based solutions or both at the same time. Anaplan is working consistently and continuously to achieve and maintain its stated vision of being “An open, extensible platform that provides true planning agility by connecting data across disparate sources to seamlessly orchestrate with other enterprise tools.”

Since there is no “one size fits all” approach for every company’s data integration needs, valantic is happy to guide you through the process of assessing your needs, advising you about the best options, and assisting with or handling the implementation.

How to achieve seamless integration with SAP and Anaplan

Learn how you can easily connect your SAP system to Anaplan for improved data visibility and accurate insights in our 3-minute demo video from our valantic data integration specialist.

Interested in a free Data Integration Q&A with our valantic specialists? Just leave your contact details here and we will get back to you with an appointment!

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Anaplan Integration API
Business Intelligence Integration
Your integration partner
Webinars
References & Blog posts
Your contact

The Data Hub Architecture

Anaplan is a modular platform by design. When integrating with Anaplan, one of the central modules is the data hub, which serves as the central data storage. Strict adherence to this paradigm is essential to exploit the following advantages.

The data hub:

… serves as a single source of truth
… prevents redundancies
… allows reusability
… enables the incorporation of data validation
… ensures availability of the data in the required granularity
… allows different displays of the data

Integrations to and from Anaplan typically only provide one connection to this data hub model, which drastically reduces the complexity of your integrations and thereby also the implementation overhead. If you are using an ETL-tool, for example, you can achieve your entire integration with only one newly added connection.

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What are the Anaplan integration options?

File Upload via Web UI
Import of a flat file containing target data through the web UI.
Flat File Upload via Anaplan Connect
Data can be exchanged from cloud or on-premise systems with Anaplan as flat files or through JDBC.
CloudWorks
Brings together data from your Anaplan model and cloud service providers: AWS, Azure, Google BigQuery.
SAP FastTrack
Seamless, native Integration for SAP ECC and S/4HANA Systems. Provided as an add-on, runs directly on the SAP system.
Informatica Cloud Data Integration (CDI)
Access various data sources using different internal or 3rd party ETL-tools such as Informatica. (MuleSoft, Boomi, snapLogic, and others are also possible.)
Custom-built API Integration
A tailored integration using Anaplan’s Rest API.

Anaplan integration options

Anaplan Connect

Anaplan Connect is an (on-premise) command line interface for automating the exchange of flat files or connecting to compatible databases with JDBC. In theory, you can deploy Anaplan Connect in the cloud, but if the need to do so arises, it is likely that you should reexamine the architecture and consider a solution better suited to your needs.

Anaplan Connect enables you to quickly and efficiently implement batch- or shell scripts in order to achieve fully automated data exchanges that are reliable and offer comprehensive, built-in logging every step of the way.

Anaplan Connect

You can use Anaplan Connect most efficiently when paired with a system that automatically dumps and or uses flat files from a given directory. This is the preferred approach, since it allows the system to remain in full control of the data exchanged. Anaplan Connect can be set up to accommodate any exchange model and run in cycles, specific intervals, or be triggered by file changes.

Implementing separate scripts to fulfill your company’s needs also enables you to combine both JDBC and flat-file based connections in either direction, which can be called simultaneously.

Anaplan Connect layers an abstraction over the Anaplan Integration API which is built in a synchronous manner. This offers the advantage that you do not have to asynchronously poll task statuses, but it also means that the entire runtime of the process will be blocked.

Advantages of Anaplan Connect

Available at no cost
Easy and fast to implement
Combines the automated exchange of flat files and bi-directional JDBC connections
Fully supports 0Auth and certificate authentication

You can use Anaplan Connect in various ways

Implement custom batch- or shell scripts to run in the background
Integrate with your planning tool of choice
On-demand execution by a business user
Event-triggered exchanges

Anaplan CloudWorks

Anaplan CloudWorks is a powerful, Anaplan-native integration service, that enables direct connection to Amazon Web Services S3, Google BigQuery & Microsoft Azure Blob instances and eliminates the complexity and manual work required by traditional integration methods. From the set-up and configuration of the connection, the definition of the import & export processes, to the scheduling and validation, everything can be done from within Anaplan.

Anaplan CloudWorks

For the table-based integrations, Anaplan also provides an interface to perform the mapping of the dimensions in Anaplan to the ones found in the cloud system.

With CloudWorks, business users can leverage an easy-to-navigate user interface to access a wider data set to help make more agile, better-informed plans and decisions. This also enables business partners to become sole owner of the integrations, while allowing IT-stakeholders to maintain ownership of the connection and access control.

CloudWorks also provides full interoperability of all the listed cloud service providers, so you will not be forced to choose only one.

Advantages of Anaplan CloudWorks

Available at no cost
Easy and fast to implement
Native integration with Anaplan
Allows the use of existing Anaplan resources, role & access management
Faster time-to-value
Business-owned integrations made easy

Possibilities with CloudWorks

Keep & maintain your integrations within Anaplan
Easy and efficient bi-directional exchange
User-friendly reporting on all integrations
Can be connected easily to any other integrations
Uses the Anaplan native scheduling services

SAP FastTrack

Your tool of choice for integrating SAP ECC & S/4HANA with Anaplan. FastTrack is distributed as an SAP add-on and runs directly on your SAP system, enabling SAP-owned integrations with Anaplan.

FastTrack can be setup in a minimally invasive manner, ensuring that your system and processes are not disturbed, while allowing your SAP team to use the familiar environment and SAP GUIs to set up and configure connections and integrations, as well as using a custom mapping within SAP to map native data to the structure reflected in Anaplan.

SAP FastTrack

FastTrack also provides seamless incorporation of your Anaplan integration into existing data update cycles in SAP; this enables you to handle events such as IDOC triggers and others in the system itself. It is also highly extensible and allows you to combine and extend it with any custom SAP development.

FastTrack uses SM59 connections for authentication with and communication to Anaplan, reducing the need for exceptions in security policies and enabling uniform access management.

Advantages of FastTrack

Runs on SAP & leverages the SAP function suite
Seamless and non-invasive integration with your SAP instance
SAP-native & own integration with Anaplan
Allows the use of existing Anaplan & SAP resources
Access and data exchange can be owned and managed by SAP
No need for added expertise; everything can be handled by the SAP team

Design aspects of FastTrack

Pulls Anaplan resources and structures into SAP and maps them in SAP-structures
Can be configured to duplicate your data and not affect any of your data without explicit instruction
All integrations are SAP-owned and can be configured and scheduled within SAP
Uses SM59 connectivity

ETL & ELT Tools

Enterprise-scale, modular, customizable, and scalable integration pipelines for your company. Informatica and other ETL tools like it work with so called connectors, allowing easy connection to and integration with a vast array of source systems and the modelling of complex transformation pipelines, while ensuring performance, scalability and data quality.

From SaaS Applications, on-premise SQL Databases and applications and ERPs, to REST & Soap APIs; everything can be connected and integrated with one solution.

ETL & ELT Tools

Leverage decades of experience and expertise built into one solution and benefit from a vast selection of pre-built, reusable, and scalable functions without having to pay for anything you do not actually need. Enjoy additional benefits such as 24/7 support, 100% uptime and availability, and continuous updates and improvements, as well as other offerings that will allow you to trust your integrations beyond any doubt.

Use on-premise runtime environments for sensitive data that may not be sent to a cloud system and stay in full control of where your data is stored.

Effortlessly combine schedules, cycles, and event-triggered integrations, and easily orchestrate their coordination at scale. Have your performance demands risen rapidly and become hard to manage? Use features such as distributed computing and storage (HDFS) alongside mass data ingestion to achieve data integration at scale efficiently, while allowing for uncompromising governance and validation.

Advantages of Informatica (and other ETL & ELT tools))

Extremely powerful, fast & extensible platform
Connectors to 200+ systems
Extensive transformation capabilities
Provides data & quality management services
Dynamic horizontal scaling
Custom API management
De-facto guarantee that your needs can be fulfilled

Additional information

Can be licensed as ‘Anaplan HyperConnect’ as part of your Anaplan license agreement
Offers 24/7 support
Cloud-based, but supports the “run anywhere” approach
Combine everything in one platform; from codeless transfers to your custom-coded Apache Spark pipelines
Supports mass data ingestion and distributed data storage (HDFS) and computing

Anaplan Integration API

You don’t see anything you like? Build what you need!

Anaplan Integration API

Advantages of the Anaplan Integration API

Provides complete flexibility
Can be tailored to your specific needs
Efficient, powerful, and scalable

The sky’s the limit

Build custom pipelines, combine and integrate with your business logic and tools
Integrate Anaplan with any system and accommodate integrations of any desired complexity
Build out custom transformations and mappings specific to your needs
Combine everything in one platform; from codeless transfers to your custom coded Apache Spark pipelines
Control your integrations from anywhere and build one-click solutions

Business Intelligence Integration

Anaplan also supports integration with the business intelligence tools Tableau and Microsoft PowerBI and provides a connector for both tools. This enables companies to benefit still more from their investment in Anaplan thanks to seamless integration into their existing business intelligence and analytics processes.

For this too, valantic will be pleased to offer assistance from advising on how to best combine Anaplan with your BI tool of choice to implementing the completed process.

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valantic - your integration partner

How we can help you

Beyond helping you to conceptualize, design, and implement data integration solutions in the Anaplan ecosystem, valantic offers you more: we can further improve your data integration options, speed up implementation, and decrease lead time.

This happens in various ways, ranging from improved user experience to the conversion and management of your authentication certificates to enabling full business ownership, even for your integrations.

Benefit from valantic’s vast experience and involvement in projects of all types and sizes over the years. Don’t just take our word for it: listen to our satisfied customers.

valantic implementation partner - Anaplan-integration

Demo and PoC

valantic will be pleased to provide a live demonstration of any of the integration options in our portfolio free of charge. Simply contact us and let us know what interests you. We will get back to you with a proposal.

If you would like to see a demonstration tailored to your needs and situation, we will be pleased to provide a Proof of Concept (PoC) for your integration needs, based either on your selection or on our recommendations. Depending on the scope and complexity of this PoC, it may be subject to a fixed charge agreed upon in advance.

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Webinars

Excellence in know-how-transfer – also in webinars. Below you´ll find a selection of our webinars on the topics to Connected Planning with Anaplan.

Session: What's new in Anaplan

Webinar series: Exclusive insights, tips and tricks from our Anaplan expert.

Watch now

References and Blog posts

Case Study

SBB’s Passenger Division networks with Anaplan partial planning, reduces complexity, and is now able to simulate

The Swiss Federal Railways rely on networked planning in real time and the simulation capability of the cloud-based Anaplan solution. Together with valantic, SBB modeled the previous financial planning in Anaplan in a coaching process.

Blog

December 13, 2021

The Anaplan Way: Part 1

In this blog post, we will show you the project management standards to ensure the success of Anaplan projects.

Blog

November 22, 2021

“Tsüri isch uh schööön!” (“Zurich is beautiful” in Swiss slang)

Find out in this short interview with Fabian Gersch, Consultant at valantic Business Analytics Swiss, why our employees remain loyal to valantic!

Your Contact

Marc Philipp

Your contact for a planning workshop or a non-binding consultation appointment.