Profitability Analytics Center of Excellence

/in /by BPM Partners

Larry R. White, Advisory Board, Profitability Analytics Center of Excellence

Highly effective internal decision support information is the key to long-term profitability by maintaining or expanding the role of accounting and finance in companies for today’s highly connected, digital, and data-rich environment.  The Profitability Analytics Center of Excellence (PACE) builds on Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) Statements on Management Accounting (SMAs) that are developed by its members, including The Profitability Analytics Framework, Conceptual Framework for Managerial Costing, and Revenue Management Fundamentals.  PACE seeks to design and support end-to-end processes that are tied to strategic planning while building on traditional ROI elements – Revenue, Operations/Cost, and Investment.  The PACE approach to traditional ROI elements is adapted to today’s business environment by incorporating a data-analytics focus, Industry 4.0 trends, and tangible and intangible investments.

PACE is a not-for-profit organization that works to advance management accounting and thought leadership to ensure the profession is prepared for a future that is focused on creating value and insights, standing in contrast to traditional historical reporting.  PACE is committed to helping the accounting profession move beyond historically-oriented financial reporting models and move aggressively toward models that reflect cause and effect for internal decision support and the real economics faced by companies in fast-moving markets.

PACE addresses issues like:

  • Why is finance and accounting’s cost information ignored? What’s wrong?
  • What are the indicators needed by organizations for new and improved cost systems?
  • How can accounting and finance more effectively engage in revenue management processes?
  • Why is traditional depreciation misleading? What a good alternative?
  • How to develop and deploy affective models for internal decision support information?
  • And more…

The PACE website contains information about our program and reference materials to assist your efforts to improve internal decision support.  It also has a forum for discussion and questions. PACE also maintains an active LinkedIn page that supports discussion and routinely announces PACE activities, such as our monthly webinar. PACE webinars are recorded on the Profitability Analytics YouTube Channel.

Written by PACE Directors:  Larry R. White, CMA, CFM, CSCA, CPA; Douglas Hicks, CPA; Gary Cokins; and Monte Swain, PhD, CPA, CMA, CGMA.

For assistance with your own profitability and operational analytics efforts learn more about BPM Partners’ offerings in this area.

Hg Acquires Majority Stake in Prophix

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

The trend of significant investments in the performance management space continues into 2021. It was announced last week that Hg, a global investment firm with a focus on software and service businesses, has taken a majority ownership stake in Prophix, a successful midmarket focused performance management vendor.  The first question people usually ask when they hear about these acquisitions is: how much did they pay? It has not been publicly disclosed and I’m not one to spread rumors, so you’ll have to do your own research to find the answer to that question. From what we‘ve heard though, the investment does indicate a fairly significant valuation of the company. The second round of questions that people often ask includes: how will this impact the vendor and their customers, prospects, and competitors? Those questions are much easier for us to answer.

Prophix

Prophix has been around for over 30 years and has over 1,600 customers. More importantly, they have a solid product with a broad range of capabilities that supports both financial and operational planning and reporting. We have met with the team many times over the years and they are very focused and know exactly where they are going. They are also highly thought of by their customers. In fact, our own BPM Pulse Survey confirms the high levels of satisfaction they have achieved (see their current BPM Pulse rating here). The main knock we have heard about them is that they are overly cautious and risk-averse. That’s interesting because that can also describe their target customer in Finance. This may explain why several of their prospects have told us they felt a greater cultural kinship with Prophix than with the other vendors they were considering. This slow and steady approach does sometimes have a cost though. They were late to the party with a cloud-based solution and may have missed out on some opportunities, but in the end they did ultimately deliver a well-received solution.

The Competitive Landscape

The midmarket performance management space is the place to be. In the past year we personally were involved in many deals in the space, even in the middle of a pandemic. In fact, the economic environment may have caused some companies to toss their spreadsheets or legacy systems sooner than planned. From a midmarket vendor perspective, the landscape has evolved over the years. Up until fairly recently Adaptive Planning (Adaptive Insights) dominated this market segment. Since their acquisition by Workday that has changed. While they are still included in many midmarket deals, our experience is that they don’t end up as a finalist as often as they used to. Some of this is due to the fact that they are often the most expensive midmarket vendor in the deal. In addition, they appear to be self-selecting for deals that will also include other Workday solutions. This of course makes perfect sense, but results in them focusing on a subset of opportunities. Other vendors have swooped in to fill the gap and there is now  a good array of top-rated solutions to choose from. This space is also about to get even more competitive. Some new venture-backed vendors (see Jirav and PlaceCPM as just two examples) have entered this market in the past year or two and are focused on the lower end of the midmarket. They don’t intend to stay there forever, and as they flesh out their product sets they plan to move up into the core midmarket performance management space.

Impacts of the Deal

We met with Hg several times last year and provided our research to them as part of their due diligence process. We believe they have a good understanding of the space, the opportunities as well as the challenges, and are in it for the long haul. Based on the structure of the deal as we understand it, Prophix employees had an opportunity to participate as well. So, from a Prophix perspective it looks like they found a knowledgeable investor that will help them grow the product set, the team, and their global footprint. With their product and team they were already in a good position to do battle, but sometimes you just need more resources. This is especially true when you consider that competitors Planful (formerly Host Analytics) and Vena Solutions had recent infusions of capital as well, and just this week Jedox also joined in.

From a customer and prospect perspective there seems to be little risk, only potential upside. With more funds Prophix can accelerate the rollout of new product features, expand customer support offerings, open offices in more locations, add more voices to the user community, and perhaps even acquire a complementary product.

For competitors there may be a valid concern that this will make Prophix an even stronger foe, but on the other hand this new investment is further confirmation that there is significant growth still to come in this market segment. From what we have seen in just the past year we are confident there will be continued growth and more than enough opportunities for all the key midmarket players to prosper.

 

The Best Midmarket Budgeting and Planning Solutions for 2020

/in /by BPM Partners
Top Rated Midmarket Vendors

 

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

The midmarket has historically been underserved when it comes to having a wide range of top-rated and robust options for budgeting, planning, and reporting (also known as performance management: BPM, CPM, or EPM). Midmarket Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) managers have struggled to find an Excel replacement that is easy to use, cost-effective, yet comprehensive in terms of its functionality. That is no longer the case. Today there are many good solutions available that target this market segment. Existing midmarket vendors have enhanced their offerings with new capabilities, while at the same time making them easier to use.  Other vendors who had previously only focused on larger companies have now made their full-featured solutions available to this market as well. Lastly, new vendors (either brand new or new to the North American market) have also been added to the mix. If you are a midmarket organization (US$ 50 million to US$ 1 billion) and are looking for a budgeting, forecasting, planning, reporting, or financial consolidation system you now have a large number of viable options to choose from.

The following list is based on three key criteria:

  • Vendors offering products that are designed and priced for midmarket companies
  • Vendors receiving top “overall satisfaction” marks from their customers (4.5 or higher out of 5 in our 2020 BPM Pulse Research Study)
  • Validation in BPM Partners’ field work with hundreds of FP&A departments selecting and successfully deploying budgeting, planning, and reporting solutions from these vendors

Top-Rated Midmarket Budgeting, Planning, and Reporting Solutions for 2020:

Note: Clicking on each vendor’s name will take you to their PerformancePlace page which will display their overall BPM Pulse rating, latest developments, resources, analyst reviews, and even job openings.

In alphabetical order:

deFacto Global – a Microsoft-based FP&A solution that handles complexity, leverages AI, and integrates business intelligence for additional capabilities

Jedox – complete FP&A focused offering with an Excel UI, coupled with business intelligence and an extensible platform and library of supplemental applications

Planful – robust planning solution with powerful modeling and consolidation capabilities and a dynamic interface tailored to user role

Prophix – comprehensive financial and operational planning solution that selectively leverages AI, with low TCO

Vena Solutions – pairs Excel with a full FP&A solution that turns the spreadsheet into a secure, centrally -controlled, and extensible platform linked to a visual workflow engine

XLerant – easy to use budgeting and planning solution with a unique wizard-driven interface and low TCO

Bonus Top-Rated Vendors:

Although these vendors don’t focus primarily on the midmarket, they have been successful in this segment by offering additional capabilities.

CCH Tagetik – for more complex needs this budgeting, planning, and consolidation solution is highly-scalable and supports global regulatory requirements

Syntellis Performance Solutions – this vendor focuses exclusively on budgeting, planning, and reporting for healthcare, higher education, and financial institutions and provides value added content and data

If you would like to learn more about any of these vendors, or find out why some well-known names are missing, speak with one of our experts. For detailed BPM Pulse vendor ratings (overall plus 15 attributes)  read the 2020 Vendor Landscape Matrix report, or request free Vendor Snapshots.

Two New and Noteworthy Performance Management Vendors

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

First, let me answer the obvious question – why do we need more performance management vendors? While it is true that we have a large selection of top-notch vendors to choose from today, more choice is always a good thing. In addition, due to the challenging economic conditions caused by the pandemic more companies than ever are focusing on performance management projects (confirmed by our 2020 BPM Pulse Research Study) and looking for solutions that meet their unique requirements. That is actually where the real need for new vendors comes in. All of the vendors out there claim to do be able to do just about anything that falls under the banner of performance management and more. Do they do it all with the same level of excellence? As a services firm focused on vendor selection in this space we know that each vendor has a handful of key strengths and does a serviceable job with everything else. Whether they want to admit it or not each vendor really has a core niche consisting of a combination of several attributes from this list: robust consolidation, company-wide planning, ease of use, scalability, Excel-based interface, profitability optimization, dynamic reporting and analytics, low total cost of ownership, integrated business planning, operational planning, workforce planning, industry-specific solutions, midmarket solutions, etc. That is why there is a need for new vendors, and therefore an opportunity for them to be successful – to target a niche that is not currently well-served.

This leads us to our two new vendors: Fluence Technologies and Syntellis Performance Solutions. Although neither company existed a year ago, the teams, and in one case the core product, have been key players in performance management for many years.

Fluence Technologies

The members of the Fluence start-up team have previously held senior positions at Longview, OutlookSoft, IBM, SAP, Vena Solutions, and Clarity Systems. This experience shows in the first product that they have delivered to the market: Fluence Consolidation. They have combined a couple of elements from the list above to deliver a unique solution: an enterprise-class consolidation offering that is easy to use, leverages Excel as the interface, and is designed and priced for the midsized to large company segment of the market. While other vendors address several items on the Fluence list, no one else does it all. To get to market quickly, and also understanding that many companies want a unified performance management solution that includes budgeting and planning alongside consolidation, Fluence partnered with Vena Solutions (not too surprising considering Fluence’s executive chairman is the co-founder of Vena). They built the Fluence solution on the Vena Solutions platform so that it seamlessly integrates with the Vena FP&A cloud planning and forecasting capabilities.  Rather than taking years to develop (or acquire) all of the pieces, they are able to offer a comprehensive solution today that covers the core elements of performance management and features their robust, but easy to use, consolidation functionality that leverages a familiar Excel UI.

Syntellis Performance Solutions

Similar to Fluence, the members of the Syntellis leadership team also have years of performance management experience and success. More specifically, they have worked together as a team before at Kaufman Hall Software. In June Kaufman Hall Software, part of Kaufman Hall, a management consulting firm, became a standalone company: Syntellis Performance Solutions. Along with the KH Software team the new company also includes the Axiom Software product suite. Even though they are a ‘new’ company, with almost 3,000 organizations already using Axiom Software they are a proven success. As a standalone entity they can now focus on what made them so successful – powerful software paired with benchmark data.  While almost 75% of companies are interested in benchmarking their performance against that of their peers (2020 BPM Pulse), very few vendors provide the tools or data to facilitate that process. Their other unique attribute is their focus on specific verticals. Syntellis focuses exclusively on healthcare, higher education, and financial institutions.  This is not just a marketing focus – they have expertise, unique product content, and benchmark data to meet the unique needs of each of those verticals. Most other vendors today are only beginning to see the value of focusing on specific industries, but the Syntellis team has been doing it successfully for years. We are hearing more organizations today say they will only consider vendors with deep expertise in their industry, which bodes well for Syntellis, especially since the financial institutions vertical is probably where this requirement is most common.

As you can see, both Fluence and Syntellis add meaningful new choices to the already wide range of performance management solutions available today. Here at BPM Partners where our core business is helping companies find the best fit solution for their unique needs, we welcome the new options.

Longview Acquired by insightsoftware

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

It was just announced that insightsoftware, a leading financial reporting vendor, acquired Longview, a leading planning, consolidation, analytics, and tax vendor. Both companies have a global presence and successfully address the needs of thousands of customers. What’s behind this deal and is it  good for customers of the two companies and the industry at large? Let’s dig a little deeper.

insightsoftware, backed by TA Associates, Genstar Capital, and ST6 Partners has grown largely by acquisition. Prior to this latest acquisition they already had a sizeable portfolio of products with overlapping functionality that address various aspects of performance management. The way they turn this potential weakness into a strength is through their unique go-to-market strategy. insightsoftware takes a multi-pronged approach to the market. Firstly, as some vendors who target multiple market segments do, they have a different strategy for selling to the midmarket than they do for reaching enterprise prospects. Where they are relatively unique though, is that they actually sell different products to these market segments to address the same requirements. They even take it a step further and have products that are optimized for specific ERPs. Here is what it looks like:

You might be saying to yourself what could they possibly be missing? Well, if they really want to be a major player in the performance management market they could use an enterprise-class cloud-based planning and budgeting solution, financial consolidation, and tax provisioning and reporting which is a growing area. Longview just happens to fill these gaps with Longview Plan (formerly Tidemark), Longview Close, Longview Tax, and Longview Analytics (formerly arcplan). Now the analytics piece may be one overlap too many and we’ll have to see how that plays out. Otherwise though the acquisition fills key gaps in their portfolio.

What’s in this for Longview? Unfortunately, while they had a strong product set Longview lost some momentum in the core performance management market in the past few years, although the Tax offering has continued to be successful. Longview was distracted by significant integration work as a result of the arcplan and Tidemark acquisitions as well as having to deal with senior management turnover. This acquisition can hopefully breathe new life into the Longview offerings which will benefit their customers as well as the performance market in general.

With insightsoftware’s strategy of selling different products to different market segments they may not need to do significant integration work with Longview and their existing portfolio, at least in the short-term. Common look and feel may be an area of focus though for products that may be purchased together.

As an analyst in the performance management space I have followed Longview for years and have been impressed with their products, specifically the ability to handle complexity as well as to process large data volumes with better performance than many competitors. I have only recently met with insightsoftware, but was pleasantly surprised by how well their executives understood the challenges of the Office of the CFO and what was required to address their needs. So, I am hopeful and cautiously optimistic that this will turn out well for all concerned. Well, maybe not for the salespeople who will now have an even larger product grid to analyze before they can figure out which product(s) they should be leading with. Although if this positively impacts deal size and revenues I’m sure they won’t mind in the end.

Host Analytics Becomes Planful

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

The Name Change

Last week Host Analytics announced a name change to Planful. Why you ask? After nearly 20 years they felt the name Host Analytics had outlived its usefulness in describing their business.  As for their choice of Planful as a replacement let me allow their CEO to explain: “Planful is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘full of plans’ — organized, systematic, thoughtful. We felt there was no better word to describe our customers’ mindsets, aligning well with the type of impact we can help them achieve in their organizations.”

While I have heard people comment on the name – at a quick glance it can look like Painful or Playful, neither of which you would want to be associated with planning, they miss the bigger picture. This is about a relatively new CEO preparing his company for its next stage of growth. They have a new logo  designed to stand out from the pack (see below), a fine-tuned vision, and most importantly: a new senior team to drive the company forward.

The Vision

Their vision is to enable Planful clients to  quickly and confidently make financial decisions both large and small. It is important to note that their focus on planning and decision-making doesn’t lessen the role of financial consolidation – streamlined closing cycles and reliable reporting are critical to the entire process.

Our Take

We have always believed Host Analytics/Planful has one of the most capable native cloud budgeting and planning solutions. Their consistently high customer satisfaction ratings in our annual BPM Pulse survey confirm this. In recent years with innovations such as ‘MyPlan’  they have greatly enhanced their ease of use, which is a top priority for performance management buyers. On the financial consolidation side they have perhaps the most robust solution in their target market. With the additional financing provided by Vector Capital last year, new energy in the senior management ranks, their solid product set, and this modest new re-branding effort, we think Planful is well positioned to expand its role as one of the key performance management solution providers.

 

Predictions for Performance Management in 2020

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Analytics Will Become a Standard Component of Performance Management Solutions: Planning has become a company-wide initiative, which in turn has created the need for the right tools to help understand and derive value from this ever-increasing pool of data. The solution is powerful, yet business-friendly analytic capabilities. Today, many performance management vendors provide a generic capability to share data with analytics solutions already in use, or offer basic integration with a handful of third parties. We believe what’s next is for each vendor to offer their own robust analytic solution (in-house developed or acquired), or offer seamless integration with a chosen third-party partner.

Vendors Leading the Way: Axiom Software, Board, IBM, Jedox, Longview, Oracle, SAP, Unit4 Prevero

 

More Vendors Will Introduce Vertical Solutions: We have always believed in the value of industry-specific solutions. Out of the box content and vendor expertise leads to a faster time to payback, lower implementation costs, a shorter learning curve, and lower risk. So why doesn’t every vendor offer vertical solutions? Two reasons – hiring industry experts to develop the content and support the sales and implementation processes can be costly, and most vendors are afraid of losing the ability to sell to industries outside of their chosen verticals. However, they may no longer have a choice when it comes to certain industries. Financial Services companies for example focus their vendor search almost entirely on those who specialize in their industry. Most companies, regardless of industry, prefer vendors with demonstrated expertise in their vertical. We believe it’s time for more vendors to start down this path.

Vendors Leading the Way:  Axiom Software (financial services, healthcare, higher education), Questica (government/public services, education, healthcare, not for profit), Unit4 Prevero (professional services, government/public services, higher education, not for profit)

 

Demand for Comprehensive Midmarket Solutions Will Continue to Grow: While companies of all sizes pursue performance management initiatives, every year we see increasing demand in the midmarket. In particular, there is a need for robust and comprehensive solutions. Midmarket organizations may be resource constrained, but their solution requirements are very similar to their larger peers. The fact that many of these companies are in rapid growth mode also adds a level of complexity. However, any solution needs to be cost-effective in addition to being very capable. As some former midmarket vendors have moved upstream (through acquisition, marketing focus, or pricing) there is a need/opportunity for more vendors in this market segment.

Vendors Leading the Way:   Host Analytics, Jedox, Prophix, Vena Solutions

 

The Need for High Performance Engines Will Increase: As companies expand their use of performance management to more departments and more users the amount of data will increase dramatically. In addition, even those organizations that remain Finance focused are doing more detailed analysis of product and service profitability as well as bringing more transaction level data into the system. All of this requires a more powerful and scalable database engine to provide acceptable performance. Performance testing has become a final proof step for many organizations today. We believe those vendors that have not yet upgraded their systems to provide a high-performance, scalable, elastic, memory-driven engine will need to do so to stay competitive.

Vendors Leading the Way:   Adaptive Insights, CCH Tagetik, deFacto Global, Longview, OneStream Software, Questica, Vena Solutions, SAP

 

Several trends previously identified by us will continue to accelerate in 2020:

The Expansion of AI

Vendors Leading the Way:   Board, deFacto Global, Jedox, OneStream Software, Unit4 Prevero

 

Focus on Ease of Use

Vendors Leading the Way:  CCH Tagetik, Jedox, OneStream Software, Vena Solutions, XLerant

 

Need for Robust Consolidation Capabilities

Vendors Leading the Way:   Board, CCH Tagetik, deFacto Global, Host Analytics, Longview, OneStream Software, Oracle

 

To see some of the underlying data these predictions are based on request a copy of the 2019 BPM Pulse Survey results.

For more information on any of the vendors listed visit PerformancePlace.

The Best Analyst Reports for Performance Management 2019

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

It seems every year there are more and more reports covering the business performance management space of budgeting, planning, forecasting, consolidation, reporting, and analytics. None of these reports (even the ones from BPM Partners) tell you everything you need to know to make the right purchase decision. However, they are useful as a starting point, a way to get educated and begin to identify your short list. As you would expect, some reports are more useful than others. It all depends on what you are looking for.  Let’s briefly look at each of the major reports and show you where you can get a free copy.

Available Reports

There are a number of reports available today that focus on various aspects of performance management. Here is a key to the major reports:

BARC Planning Survey – Presentation of survey results with analyst commentary for planning in general and 22 products in particular, from a European-based research firm. Also offers Business Intelligence focused reports.

BPM Partners Vendor Landscape Matrix – Analyst overviews, feature checkboxes, ‘best fit’ analysis, pricing, and customer satisfaction scores for 17 budgeting, planning, reporting, and consolidation vendors.

Dresner Advisory Wisdom of Crowds EPM Market Study – Presents survey results with a focus on enterprise planning and rankings of 13 vendors. Also offers similar reports focused on Business Intelligence.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud FP&A Solutions– Analyst review of strengths and cautions for 15 vendors. Similar report available for 10 Cloud Financial Close vendors.

Nucleus Research CPM Technology Value Matrix – Analyzes usability and functionality of 18 performance management vendors. Also offer ROI case studies.

While the reports listed above are typically updated on an annual basis, there are also several analyst reports that are either specialized one-shots or infrequently updated. They include Aberdeen – ROI of Sales Planning Analytics, Bloor – From Insight to Action, Forrester – Total Economic Impact, and IDC – MarketScape: Worldwide EPM Market.

Free Copies of Analyst Reports

Now that you have an idea of what reports are available, here is how to get your own copies of the ones that are most relevant to you, all at no cost.

BPM Partners offers a free subset of its Vendor Landscape Matrix report comparing two vendors of your choosing, available here: Vendor Snapshots

For all other analyst reports the links provided below will take you to each vendor’s PerformancePlace page on this site. The free report links for the listed analysts are in the ‘Industry View’ section of each page.

Axiom Software (Kaufman Hall) (Gartner), Board (BARC, Bloor, Dresner Advisory, IDC, Nucleus Research), CCH Tagetik (Wolters Kluwer) (BARC, Gartner), Host Analytics (Dresner Advisory, Forrester, Gartner, IDC, Nucleus Research), IBM (Aberdeen, BARC, Gartner), Jedox (BARC, Dresner, Gartner), Longview (BARC), OneStream (BARC, Dresner Advisory, Gartner, Nucleus Research), Oracle (Gartner), Prophix (BARC, Dresner Advisory), SAP (BARC, Gartner), Vena (Nucleus Research)

Note on free copies: As you’re well aware, nothing is ever totally free. In most cases the vendor you request the report from will probably follow up with some marketing outreach. It’s only fair since each of these reports would normally cost hundreds of dollars or more. Therefore, it makes sense to request the report from a vendor that you wouldn’t mind hearing from and potentially learning more about.

Findings from the 2019 BPM Pulse Survey

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

While most people focus on the individual vendor customer satisfaction ratings that are part of our annual BPM Pulse survey, they tend to gloss over the other useful information that makes up the bulk of the survey. Let’s highlight some of those key findings that would otherwise be overlooked.

The Three Main Reasons Products are Selected Over Alternatives

When asked why they purchased the performance management vendor they did, one answer rose to the top, regardless of which vendor they actually selected: Product Flexibility. This of course assumes that the product also met their business requirements. All other things being equal  though flexibility was a key selection criteria. In second and third place respectively were Ease of Use and Scalability/Complexity Handling. If a product is flexible, easy to use, and can handle large, complex problems it should come out on top more often than not. The problem is some easy to use products are not very flexible, nor can they handle big challenges. On the other hand, some very flexible products that can handle anything thrown their way are not as easy to use as they should be.

Dashboards Are Not Meeting Expectations

Survey respondents were asked to rate their own vendor’s functionality in several areas: budgeting, reporting, consolidation, analytics, and dashboards. One clear trend emerged – regardless of the vendor, dashboards received comparatively low ratings across the board. Why is that? The survey data didn’t provide much additional insight, but we know from our field work what the general complaints have been. Customers are looking for more interactive dashboard solutions (as opposed to the static Executive Information Systems of days gone by). They want to be able to drill down as many levels as it takes to understand why a particular metric fell short of the target. They want to be able to insert commentary to explain variances. They want the dashboards to be even more visual and intuitive. Based on the survey results there is clearly work to be done here.

Performance Management Solutions are Sticky

When asked how much longer they were planning to keep their current performance management solution 80% of respondents said they had no plans to change. This is consistent with another question which asked ‘what is the useful life of a performance management solution?’ and a third of respondents said 9 years or more (and another third said 6-8 years).  A couple of takeaways a) these systems must be doing something right to have so few purchasers expecting to change any time soon (or it is so painful to change that  it may just be easier to stick with a sub-optimal solution), and b) you better make sure you get the right solution because whether it is for good reasons or bad, you will be living with it for years to come.

Want to see more results? Get your own copy of the 80-page 2019 BPM Pulse Survey Results whitepaper.

Top Rated Performance Management Vendors 2019

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

We have been running the BPM Pulse survey for 16 years now. What I find most amazing is the consistency of results from year to year. When we ask questions such as ‘which components of performance management are you focused on?’, the number one answer year in year out has been ‘budgeting’. Similarly, questions about the key drivers of the initiative always end up with ‘improve management reporting’ somewhere near the top. There are of course questions that have seen dramatic changes in responses over the years such as ‘would you consider a cloud-based performance management system?’. The ‘no’ answers have virtually disappeared.

Vendor Ratings

While the survey contains many questions about performance management itself, the section where customers rate their vendors garners the most attention. It too has been largely consistent over the years. Highly rated vendors tend to remain highly rated vendors, mid-rated vendors tend to stay mid-rated, and low-rated vendors mostly continue to be low-rated, although some have moved up into the mid-rated category (perhaps after taking corrective action upon seeing their lower ratings). To make things interesting this year we have added some new rating categories. What used to be just a single rating for ‘product functionality’ has been broken into five ratings: ‘budgeting functionality’, ‘consolidation functionality’, ‘reporting functionality’, ‘dashboard functionality’, and ‘analytics functionality’. We are already seeing meaningful results. Even the most highly-rated vendors are not getting high marks across the board. This new level of detail will enable buyers to select vendors based specifically on the satisfaction ratings in the areas most important to their business requirements. In addition, we have been surprised by the fact that in one of these functional areas none of the vendors received high scores.

Top Rated vendors received a customer rating of 4.5 or better out of 5.0 in the category listed.

Top Rated Vendors for 2019 in Key Categories

Overall: XLerant, OneStream, Vena, Jedox, Longview, Host Analytics, Prophix

Budgeting/Planning Functionality: XLerant, Vena, Jedox, Adaptive Insights, Centage, IBM, Prophix, OneStream

Financial Consolidation Functionality: OneStream, Vena, CCH Tagetik, Host Analytics, BOARD, Axiom Software, Jedox, Prophix

Ease of Use: XLerant, OneStream, Vena, Jedox, CCH Tagetik

Finance Self-Sufficiency: Vena, Host Analytics, OneStream, XLerant

To see additional customer ratings for these vendors and others watch the on demand Pulse 2019 webcast, read the 2019 Vendor Landscape Matrix report, or request free Vendor Snapshots.