Executive Summary

Financial Planning

Financial planning software aims to refine and expedite the budgeting process, boosting the productivity of the financial planning and analysis (FP&A) group, while also enabling executives to set objectives and allocate resources in alignment with an enterprise’s strategy. However, budget setting has long been criticized for being time-consuming and offering little business value. Some of this is inevitable, as it involves navigating internal politics and balancing various competing interests.

Enterprises typically engage in both formal and informal planning, often within silos, making it difficult for executives to ensure that resources are used consistently and in line with broader strategic aims. The effectiveness of this process largely depends on the tools employed, which determine its capabilities and limitations. Inertia, vested interests and perceived risks can hinder an enterprise from evolving their budgeting process to make it a more useful and effective business tool. ISG Research asserts that by 2027, just 1 in 4 FP&A organizations will have redefined their mission to make planning easier for business unit leaders. Those that do will be a strategic asset.

ISG Software Research has long advocated for the use of technology to make budgeting and financial planning a more rapid, collaborative, high-participation process. Technology defines the constraints within which businesses operate, dictating the scope and speed of their processes. Using the right technology can enhance productivity by reducing the hours spent on the mechanics of budgeting while enabling FP&A organizations to deliver deeper and more timely insights into an enterprise’s performance. Improving staff productivity is crucial as it enhances visibility and decision-making capabilities. The focus shifts toward understanding future opportunities rather than solely reflecting on past outcomes. Strategic finance organizations can provide actionable, data-driven insights to optimize performance. Ultimately, effective financial planning software bolsters organizational agility and enhances the value of planning and budgeting across all departments.

For decades, budgets were commonly assembled using a stack of paper spreadsheets and adding machines because these tools were readily available and easy to use. When electronic spreadsheets gained wide adoption in the 1980s, they naturally became the preferred method for assembling budgets. Desktop spreadsheets offer a means of automating many budgeting tasks, such as adding columns of numbers, performing analyses and consolidating multiple budgets. However, they have three major drawbacks: they are prone to errors, often become overly complex and inflexible, and addressing these issues take time, which limits organizational agility.

Dedicated budgeting applications address all of the core challenges enterprises face with spreadsheets. Most offer the best of both worlds by allowing users to work in a familiar Excel or grid interface, while also providing a real database for data storage, analysis and reporting. These applications come with essential administrative functions that speed up processes by eliminating lags in hand-offs and reducing supervisory workloads.  

An important evolution of financial planning platforms over the past decade has been the design of their data stores. Technology for managing data flows to and from source systems, including ERP, customer relationship management and supply chain management, has evolved rapidly. Application programming interfaces (APIs) make it possible to automate data extraction, transformation and loading from multiple sources onto the planning platform, ensuring accurate, timely and consistent data is accessible to all participants in the planning process. This automation significantly reduces the time analysts spend on manual data preparation, accelerates analytical processes and forms the foundation for self-service reporting. These on-platform data stores are also essential for supporting AI and generative AI (GenAI), as they provide the necessary resident data to efficiently train AI models on a sustained basis.

As enterprises and institutions rush to adopt AI and GenAI, a good deal of attention has been paid to potential unforeseen and unforecastable adverse outcomes. However, one very likely positive impact of AI investments in business computing is the near-effortless availability of consistently reliable data for any task at hand. This is driven by the need for large, relevant data sets to make AI effective, as well as the technological advancements over the past decade that have made this possible.

There have been similar positive outcomes during past disruptive cycles in business computing. For example, the widespread adoption of ERP systems led to an almost unintended flattening of corporate hierarchies because layers of middle managers were no longer necessary. Similarly, data management technology is on the verge of transforming the role of business analysts across enterprises. In particular, within FP&A groups, the shift will move work away from low-value data preparation tasks and toward what analysts are trained to do: analysis. Putting the “A” back in FP&A is now a practical reality.

In many enterprises, FP&A professionals have less time for analysis because the mechanical process of pulling together and collating data takes up so much time that very little remains for using data to spot trends, find opportunities and isolate issues to create better informed forecasts, plans and decisions. Our Analytics and Data Benchmark Research found that two-thirds of analysts spend a considerable amount of time on data preparation and reviewing data for quality and consistency issues, which is a major drag on the productivity of a key resource.      

In many organizations, FP&A professionals have less time for analysis because the mechanical process of pulling together and collating data takes up so much time that very little remains for using data to spot trends, find opportunities and isolate issues to create better informed forecasts, plans and decisions. Our Analytics and Data Benchmark Research found that two-thirds of analysts spend a considerable amount of time on data preparation and reviewing data for quality and consistency issues, leaving less time to do what they’re paid to do: analyze.  

Fortunately, this is about to change. As noted, financial planning software providers are already incorporating data stores into their applications and platforms, optimized for their specific users and use cases. Unlike general-purpose data stores such as data warehouses, everything a user needs is readily available and easily accessible on the platform, with metadata labels that are immediately recognized and understood. By substantially reducing the time required for data preparation and data quality control, financial and business analysts have more time to focus on analytical work. Automating data collection ensures reports and dashboards can be timelier. Additionally, by broadening the set and scope of readily available data—including external data—the FP&A group can provide more incisive perspectives and insights, enabling executives and managers to make better-informed decisions sooner.

AI and GenAI, along with natural language processing and agentic devices, are making deeper and interactive self-service reporting widely available, and periodic and ad hoc reports are becoming inherently interactive. As a result, through the remainder of the decade, analysts will spend less time on busy work, while executives and managers will have more effective tools that provide insights and guidance on how to navigate the future, rather than simply illustrating past events.   

The expanding capabilities and significantly reduced data issues provided by FP&A tools form the foundation for building a more predictive finance department. Instead of merely orchestrating the company-wide budget, periodic analyses and reforecasts, FP&A should recast itself in an advisory role to support the entire enterprise. To facilitate the financial planning process, encourage high participation and shorten budgeting cycles, FP&A must design and implement streamlined processes that reduce the time required to create and update plans and budgets, while fostering a structured dialog.

Predictive AI has become a standard feature of dedicated budgeting software, making it possible to improve the accuracy of forecasts and enhancing agility in responding to change. ISG Research asserts that by 2027, almost all providers of software designed for finance organizations will have incorporated some AI capabilities to reduce workloads and improve performance. AI continuously monitors model accuracy and relevance, signaling when retraining is necessary as conditions evolve. With machine learning, systems can constantly monitor inputs and results to identify anomalies, inconsistencies, outliers, errors and omissions in data entry without specific programming. A well-trained AI-enabled system can suggest the next best step, options for the next step or a range of values to input that best fit the circumstances.

The ultimate objective of these actions is to use technology to create a financial planning process that supports rapid cycles built around short forecasting and planning sprints. Technology facilitates a rapid, high-participation process, improving both accuracy and accountability. Additionally, technology allows for multi-dimensional modeling to support driver-based planning, which enables managers and executives to connect resources to results and achieve their objectives.

Technology alone will not improve an enterprise’s budgeting process or the accuracy of forecasts and budgets. However, without a dedicated budgeting and financial planning application, enterprises will find it extremely difficult to maximize the business value derived from the considerable time spent on planning, budgeting, analyzing and reporting their financial outlook and condition.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Financial Planning evaluates products based on how well the software facilitates enterprise budgeting and financial planning, including budgeting, pro-forma financial statement forecasts, capital spending, cash flow, corporate finance and capital, strategic and long-range planning, process administration and how it utilizes AI using machine learning. In addition, the guide assesses support for executives, participants, analysts and planners.

This research evaluates the following software providers that offer products that address key elements of financial planning as we define it: Anaplan, Board, IBM, Infor, insightsoftware, Jedox, OneStream, Oracle, Pigment, Planful, Prophix, SAP, Vena Solutions, Wolters Kluwer and Workday.

Buyers Guide Overview

For over two decades, ISG Research has conducted market research in a spectrum of areas across business applications, tools and technologies. We have designed the Buyers Guide to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of the business requirements in any enterprise. Utilization of our research methodology and decades of experience enables our Buyers Guide to be an effective method to assess and select software providers and products. The findings of this research undertaking contribute to our comprehensive approach to rating software providers in a manner that is based on the assessments completed by an enterprise.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Financial Planning is the distillation of over a year of market and product research efforts. It is an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings address enterprises’ requirements for financial planning software. The index is structured to support a request for information (RFI) that could be used in the request for proposal (RFP) process by incorporating all criteria needed to evaluate, select, utilize and maintain relationships with software providers. An effective product and customer experience with a provider can ensure the best long-term relationship and value achieved from a resource and financial investment.

In this Buyers Guide, ISG Research evaluates the software in seven key categories that are weighted to reflect buyers’ needs based on our expertise and research. Five are product-experience related: Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability, and Usability. In addition, we consider two customer-experience categories: Validation, and Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment (TCO/ROI). To assess functionality, one of the components of Capability, we applied the ISG Research Value Index methodology and blueprint, which links the personas and processes for financial planning to an enterprise’s requirements.

The structure of the research reflects our understanding that the effective evaluation of software providers and products involves far more than just examining product features, potential revenue or customers generated from a provider’s marketing and sales efforts. We believe it is important to take a comprehensive, research-based approach, since making the wrong choice of financial planning technology can raise the total cost of ownership, lower the return on investment and hamper an enterprise’s ability to reach its full performance potential. In addition, this approach can reduce the project’s development and deployment time and eliminate the risk of relying on a short list of software providers that does not represent a best fit for your enterprise.

ISG Research believes that an objective review of software providers and products is a critical business strategy for the adoption and implementation of financial planning software and applications. An enterprise’s review should include a thorough analysis of both what is possible and what is relevant. We urge enterprises to do a thorough job of evaluating financial planning systems and tools and offer this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these providers and as an evaluation methodology.

How To Use This Buyers Guide

Evaluating Software Providers: The Process

We recommend using the Buyers Guide to assess and evaluate new or existing software providers for your enterprise. The market research can be used as an evaluation framework to establish a formal request for information from providers on products and customer experience and will shorten the cycle time when creating an RFI. The steps listed below provide a process that can facilitate best possible outcomes.

1. Define the business case and goals.
   Define the mission and business case for investment and the expected outcomes from your organizational and technology efforts. 
2. Specify the business needs.
   Defining the business requirements helps identify what specific capabilities are required with respect to people, processes, information and technology.
3. Assess the required roles and responsibilities.
Identify the individuals required for success at every level of the organization from executives to front line workers and determine the needs of each. 
4. Outline the project’s critical path.
What needs to be done, in what order and who will do it? This outline should make clear the prior dependencies at each step of the project plan. 
5. Ascertain the technology approach.
Determine the business and technology approach that most closely aligns to your organization’s requirements. 
6. Establish technology vendor evaluation criteria.
Utilize the product experience: Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability, and the customer experience in TCO/ROI and Validation. 
7. Evaluate and select the technology properly.
Weight the categories in the technology evaluation criteria to reflect your organization’s priorities to determine the short list of vendors and products.
8. Establish the business initiative team to start the project.
Identify who will lead the project and the members of the team needed to plan and execute it with timelines, priorities and resources. 

The Findings

All of the products we evaluated are feature-rich, but not all the capabilities offered by a software provider are equally valuable to types of workers or support everything needed to manage products on a continuous basis. Moreover, the existence of too many capabilities may be a negative factor for an enterprise if it introduces unnecessary complexity. Nonetheless, you may decide that a larger number of features in the product is a plus, especially if some of them match your enterprise’s established practices or support an initiative that is driving the purchase of new software.

Factors beyond features and functions or software provider assessments may become a deciding factor. For example, an enterprise may face budget constraints such that the TCO evaluation can tip the balance to one provider or another. This is where the Value Index methodology and the appropriate category weighting can be applied to determine the best fit of software providers and products to your specific needs.

Overall Scoring of Software Providers Across Categories

The research finds OneStream atop the list, followed by Oracle and Anaplan. Providers that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. OneStream has done so in six categories, Anaplan and Oracle in five, IBM and SAP in two and Board in one category.

The overall representation of the research below places the rating of the Product Experience and Customer Experience on the x and y axes, respectively, to provide a visual representation and classification of the software providers. Those providers whose Product Experience have a higher weighted performance to the axis in aggregate of the five product categories place farther to the right, while the performance and weighting for the two Customer Experience categories determines placement on the vertical axis. In short, software providers that place closer to the upper-right on this chart performed better than those closer to the lower-left.

The research places software providers into one of four overall categories: Assurance, Exemplary, Merit or Innovative. This representation classifies providers’ overall weighted performance.

Exemplary: The categorization and placement of software providers in Exemplary (upper right) represent those that performed the best in meeting the overall Product and Customer Experience requirements. The providers rated Exemplary are: Anaplan, Board, IBM, OneStream, Oracle and Workday.

Innovative: The categorization and placement of software providers in Innovative (lower right) represent those that performed the best in meeting the overall Product Experience requirements but did not achieve the highest levels of requirements in Customer Experience. The providers rated Innovative are: Infor and SAP.

Assurance: The categorization and placement of software providers in Assurance (upper left) represent those that achieved the highest levels in the overall Customer Experience requirements but did not achieve the highest levels of Product Experience. The providers rated Assurance are: Prophix and Vena Solutions.

Merit: The categorization of software providers in Merit (lower left) represents those that did not exceed the median of performance in Customer or Product Experience or surpass the threshold for the other three categories. The providers rated Merit are: Wolters Kluwer, insightsoftware, Jedox, Pigment and Planful.

We warn that close provider placement proximity should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well suited for use by every enterprise or for a specific process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how enterprises handle financial planning, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences in how they do these functions that can make one software provider’s offering a better fit than another’s for a particular enterprise’s needs.

We advise enterprises to assess and evaluate software providers based on organizational requirements and use this research as a supplement to internal evaluation of a provider and products.

Product Experience

The process of researching products to address an enterprise’s needs should be comprehensive. Our Value Index methodology examines Product Experience and how it aligns with an enterprise’s life cycle of onboarding, configuration, operations, usage and maintenance. Too often, software providers are not evaluated for the entirety of the product; instead, they are evaluated on market execution and vision of the future, which are flawed since they do not represent an enterprise’s requirements but how the provider operates. As more software providers orient to a complete product experience, evaluations will be more robust.

The research results in Product Experience are ranked at 80%, or four-fifths, of the overall rating using the specific underlying weighted category performance. Importance was placed on the categories as follows: Usability (15%), Capability (25%), Reliability (15%), Adaptability (10%) and Manageability (15%). This weighting impacted the resulting overall ratings in this research. OneStream, Oracle and Anaplan were designated Product Experience Leaders. While not Leaders, IBM and SAP were also found to meet a broad range of enterprise product experience requirements.

Customer Experience

The importance of a customer relationship with a software provider is essential to the actual success of the products and technology. The advancement of the Customer Experience and the entire life cycle an enterprise has with its software provider is critical for ensuring satisfaction in working with that provider. Technology providers that have chief customer officers are more likely to have greater investments in the customer relationship and focus more on their success. These leaders also need to take responsibility for ensuring this commitment is made abundantly clear on the website and in the buying process and customer journey.

The research results in Customer Experience are ranked at 20%, or one-fifth, using the specific underlying weighted category performance as it relates to the framework of commitment and value to the software provider-customer relationship. The two evaluation categories are Validation (10%) and TCO/ROI (10%), which are weighted to represent their importance to the overall research.

The software providers that evaluated the highest overall in the aggregated and weighted Customer Experience categories are Anaplan, OneStream and Board. These category leaders best communicate commitment and dedication to customer needs. While not Leaders, IBM and Oracle were also found to meet a broad range of enterprise customer experience requirements.

Software providers that did not perform well in this category were unable to provide sufficient customer case studies to demonstrate success or articulate their commitment to customer experience and an enterprise’s journey. The selection of a software provider means a continuous investment by the enterprise, so a holistic evaluation must include examination of how they support their customer experience.

Appendix: Software Provider Inclusion

For inclusion in the ISG Buyers Guide™ for Financial Planning in 2024, a software provider must be in good standing financially and ethically, have at least $50 million in annual or projected revenue verified using independent sources, sell products and provide support on at least two continents and have at least 50 customers. The principal source of the relevant business unit’s revenue must be software-related, and there must have been at least one major software release in the past 12 months.

The software must have the ability to support budgeting and financial planning, including balance sheet, budgeting, capital spending, cash flow, corporate finance and capital and strategy and long-range planning.

The research is designed to be independent of the specifics of software provider packaging and pricing. To represent the real-world environment in which businesses operate, we include providers that offer suites or packages of products that may include relevant individual modules or applications. If a software provider is actively marketing, selling and developing a product for the general market and it is reflected on the provider’s website that the product is within the scope of the research, that provider is automatically evaluated for inclusion.

All software providers that offer relevant financial planning products and meet the inclusion requirements were invited to participate in the evaluation process at no cost to them.

Software providers that meet our inclusion criteria but did not completely participate in our Buyers Guide were assessed solely on publicly available information. As this could have a significant impact on classification and ratings, we recommend additional scrutiny when evaluating those providers.

Products Evaluated

Providers of Promise

We did not include software providers that, as a result of our research and analysis, did not satisfy the criteria for inclusion in this Buyers Guide. These are listed below as “Providers of Promise.”