22 February 2026 · By Frank Taylor, Bolt Consulting

Anaplan Hiring Cost Analysis

The True Cost of Hiring an In-House Anaplan Administrator (UK, 2026)

It's not just the salary. Here's the full picture.

You need someone to manage your Anaplan environment. The instinct is to hire. That makes sense. It's how you've always filled capability gaps. But before you brief HR, let's look at what an in-house Anaplan admin actually costs when you add it all up.

These numbers are based on UK market data as of early 2026, cross-referenced across major job boards, recruitment agencies specialising in EPM, and our own experience placing and working alongside Anaplan professionals over the past decade.

Current UK Salary Ranges

Anaplan roles in the UK currently fall into three bands:

Anaplan Model Builder: £56,000 - £80,000 base salary. This is someone who can maintain and modify existing models, run data operations, and support users. The range depends on London vs regional, certifications held, and years of Anaplan-specific experience.

Senior Model Builder / Solutions Architect: £75,000 - £95,000. More architectural capability. They can design new models, optimise performance, and make structural decisions. Fewer of these people exist.

Anaplan CoE Lead: £99,000 - £108,000+. Managing a centre of excellence, overseeing multiple models, and owning the platform strategy. These roles are rare and competitive.

For a typical mid-market company that needs ongoing model administration, you're looking at the Model Builder band: £65,000 - £80,000 is the realistic range for someone competent.

The Hidden Costs

Salary is only part of the picture. Here's what employers actually pay:

Employer's National Insurance (13.8%): £8,970 - £11,040/year. This is a fixed cost on top of salary that's easy to forget when comparing options.

Pension contributions (5% minimum): £3,250 - £4,000/year. Auto-enrolment means you're contributing whether you planned for it or not.

Benefits package: £2,000 - £4,000/year. Private medical, life insurance, cycle to work, employee assistance. The standard package most mid-market companies offer.

Equipment and software: £1,000 - £1,500 year one. Laptop, monitors, peripherals, any additional software licences.

Training and development: £1,000 - £2,000/year. Anaplan certification renewals, conferences, ongoing learning. Skip this and they'll leave faster.

Recruitment fee: £13,000 - £20,000 (year one only). Recruitment agencies typically charge 20-25% of first-year salary for specialist EPM roles. Internal recruiting saves this but costs time.

Management overhead: Hard to quantify, but real. Someone needs to set objectives, run 1:1s, handle HR issues, approve leave, and manage performance. Your FP&A manager probably doesn't have capacity for this.

Total Cost of Employment

Adding it up for a mid-range Model Builder at £72,000 base salary:

Cost Component	Year 1	Year 2+
Base salary	£72,000	£72,000
Employer NI (13.8%)	£9,936	£9,936
Pension (5%)	£3,600	£3,600
Benefits package	£3,000	£3,000
Equipment	£1,500	£300
Training & development	£1,500	£1,500
Recruitment fee (22%)	£15,840	-
Total	£107,376	£90,336

That's £107k in year one and £90k per year thereafter. For the higher end of the range (£80k base), you're looking at £120k+ in year one.

The Utilisation Problem

Here's where the economics really start to look questionable. Most mid-market Anaplan environments (the ones with 1-3 models used primarily for FP&A and budgeting) need about 3-5 days of dedicated admin work per month.

That's roughly 36-60 days per year out of approximately 230 working days. Utilisation: 16-26%.

What does the Model Builder do the rest of the time? Usually one of three things:

FP&A work they weren't hired for. They end up doing analysis, building forecasts, preparing board packs. This might be useful, but you're paying Anaplan rates for FP&A analyst work. And they're often frustrated because it's not what they signed up for.
Platform development. Ideally they'd spend spare time improving the model, building new use cases, adopting new Anaplan features. In practice, without architectural guidance or a roadmap, this often leads to scope creep and technical debt.
Being underutilised. Which leads to boredom. Which leads to them looking for a new role. Which takes you back to the recruitment cycle.

You're spending £90k/year on a role that has £36-48k worth of actual Anaplan work. The rest is either misallocated or wasted.

When In-House Hiring Does Make Sense

To be fair, there are situations where a full-time hire is the right answer:

You have 5+ models with daily administration needs. If your Anaplan estate is complex enough to keep someone genuinely busy, the economics work.
You're building a Centre of Excellence. If Anaplan is central to your operating model and you plan to expand into workforce planning, supply chain, sales ops, you need in-house capability.
Your model builder also serves as a business partner. If the role genuinely blends Anaplan admin with strategic FP&A work and you can find someone who does both well, that's a good hire.
Regulatory requirements demand it. Some financial services firms have policies requiring in-house control over financial planning systems.

The Alternative: Outsourced Anaplan Administration

A managed Anaplan service typically costs £3,000-6,000/month (£36,000-72,000/year). For that, you get:

Certified Anaplan resources (not one person, a team)
No recruitment fees, no employer NI, no pension, no benefits
Surge capacity during budget season included
No notice period risk. The service continues regardless of individual turnover
Documented model knowledge that doesn't walk out the door
Architectural oversight from experienced practitioners

The saving compared to in-house is £30,000-60,000 per year. In year one, with recruitment fees, the saving can be £50,000-70,000.

The Hybrid Model

Often the best answer for mid-market companies is a combination: an in-house FP&A analyst who understands the business context and stakeholder relationships, paired with outsourced Anaplan technical administration.

The FP&A analyst handles:

Forecast preparation and variance analysis
Stakeholder communication and business partnering
Basic Anaplan report building and dashboard usage
Requirement gathering for model changes

The managed service handles:

Model structure changes and technical maintenance
Data integrations and ETL operations
Complex builds and new use case development
Platform health monitoring and optimisation

This gives you local business knowledge and external technical expertise. And the FP&A analyst costs £45-55k, a role that's much easier to recruit.

What to Do Next

Calculate your actual Anaplan workload. Track days per month of genuine model administration. If it's under 5 days, outsourcing is almost certainly more cost-effective.
Run the total cost calculation. Don't just compare salary to retainer. Include all the employment costs above. The gap is wider than you think.
Consider your turnover risk. Anaplan people move frequently. Factor in the cost and disruption of re-recruiting every 2-3 years.
Talk to us (or someone like us). Get a scoping proposal so you have real numbers to compare against the hiring route.