Market Perspectives

Ventana Research is sharing insights about IBM, drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index: Business Planning is a distillation of a year of market and product research efforts.

In all of our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal and vendor selection process for business planning. We evaluated IBM and 13 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability) and two related to the vendor (Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment and Vendor Validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our expertise and research.

IBM Planning Analytics, available as a cloud application, is designed to support a high-participation, collaborative approach to managing all the forward-looking activities in which companies routinely engage, bringing together operational and financial budgeting and planning. IBM was categorized as an Exemplary Vendor, ranking first overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked second in Product Experience, where it was designated as a Value Index Leader in Capability and Usability. It ranked second in Customer Experience, and was a Value Index Leader in TCO/ROI. IBM’s overall performance was impacted by its lower ranking in Adaptability, which represents 15% of the weighting in the overall Value Index. Our assessment finds that IBM could perform better in Adaptability, where it ranked sixth, by improving the depth of its user-specific integration with mobile devices and application integration for sharing information. This assessment was based on IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, available in September of 2021.

As a result of the rapidly changing business landscape since 2020, and the need to quickly – and intelligently – change business plans and budgets to be agile and build resiliency, many organizations have decided to adopt dedicated software to support a planning approach that offers speed and flexibility. Transforming how organizations plan and budget has become a top-of-mind issue for chief financial officers and CEOs. Our Value Index can help organizations make better informed decisions on software that is best suited to business needs.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of business planning software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here, and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.