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How the Anaplan Acquisition of Fluence Will Change the CPM Market (For the Better)

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

Anaplan has announced their intent to acquire Fluence Technologies with the deal expected to close by the end of the month, if not sooner. This may look like yet another routine acquisition of a smaller vendor by a larger vendor in the enterprise software space. These types of deals occur on a regular basis and most people barely pay attention anymore. This one is different though, and its impact will ripple through the red-hot performance management market. For one thing, it validates the importance of true financial consolidation capabilities as a key component of performance management solutions and may cause some planning-only vendors to sit up and take notice. Let’s drill into the details.

Anaplan, Fluence, and Their Customers Will Benefit From This Deal

Both vendors and their customers benefit significantly from this combination. The two vendors’ offerings complement each other nicely, filling in key gaps, with minimal overlap. Anaplan pioneered ‘connected planning’ starting with a focus on providing a flexible platform for aligning strategic and operational planning, followed by the addition of robust financial planning capabilities. Today, Anaplan on its own is a planning leader, but in large enterprise deals financial consolidation has only grown in importance, and that is a key component they lack. Fluence, on the other hand, is focused on financial consolidation, redefining how a financial consolidation solution can handle complexity while also simplifying its administration and use by leveraging out-of-the-box functionality. Fluence’s challenge has been their lack of planning capabilities, requiring them to partner with other vendors for the significant number of companies looking to purchase both consolidation and planning. This two-vendor CPM solution approach didn’t always go over well. Anaplan, after the Fluence acquisition, will be able to provide its customers and prospects with the complete performance management planning, consolidation and disclosure management solution that most companies are looking for. This will enable the Finance team to utilize the Anaplan platform to plan their business in real-time while also being able to leverage a familiar UX to control and execute consolidation and disclosure management, streamlining the entire process and accelerating time to decision-making.

Anaplan Joins the Ranks of the Comprehensive CPM Solution Leaders for Large Organizations

The combination of these two leading CPM vendors will create a new dynamic in the top-tier of large enterprise focused performance management vendors. When this acquisition is complete Anaplan will join OneStream Software, Oracle, and Wolters Kluwer CCH Tagetik as one of the few leading vendors in the world offering a complete CPM suite of financial planning, operational planning, financial consolidation and close, reporting and analytics for large organizations. You might wonder why certain other familiar vendor names are missing from this list. The simple answer is that their current financial consolidation strategies disqualify them. As the Anaplan acquisition of Fluence highlights – financial consolidation, and the ‘one version of the truth’ that it enables, is critical to companies trying to measure their actual performance against plan.

Best-of-Breed Becomes a Real Choice

There has been renewed interest in best-of-breed solutions, particularly when it comes to planning and consolidation. Buyers see the value in purpose-built performance management solutions architected and optimized for particular use cases, they just don’t want to get them from two different vendors and have to worry about integration and support. Fluence is a best-of-breed consolidation solution, and as part of Anaplan it will remain as such. The current Anaplan Connected Planning platform and the Fluence product will work together as two best-of-breed solutions, integrated at the data level, sold and supported by a single vendor. If this sounds familiar it’s because it’s very similar to the approach Prophix has taken with its Prophix One platform which incorporates its Sigma Conso consolidation product acquisition.

Midmarket Consolidation Solutions

The acquisition of Fluence by Anaplan for consolidation capabilities validates the activity that has been going on for a while now in the midmarket where planning vendors have been expanding their own consolidation capabilities. Planful, during its Host Analytics days, was one of the first vendors in the midmarket to see the importance of consolidation and delivered those capabilities alongside planning and budgeting. More recently they have been enhancing their offerings in this area through strategic partnerships. Prophix, as previously mentioned, now delivers a complete CPM suite for the midmarket through their Prophix One offering. Vena, although a Fluence partner, has built out their own consolidation capabilities to the point where they would only need to bring in Fluence for very specific consolidation use cases. While it is unclear right now what will become of Fluence’s existing vendor partnerships, Vena continues to enhance its consolidation capabilities to address the most complex requirements, while also leveraging Vena Copilot to provide insights into the consolidated data, all included in Vena’s Complete Planning platform. Even Workday Adaptive Planning has recognized the importance of true financial consolidation alongside planning, as evidenced by their recent announcement of Workday Adaptive Planning and Consolidation which leverages the consolidation capabilities of Workday Financial Management through a unified data model.

The Future

Beyond the current crop of vendors, most new CPM vendors are still in their early stages and are focused primarily on financial planning and modeling for smaller organizations. There is one major exception however. JustPerform, who we named our Best New Vendor in 2022, provides a very capable financial consolidation and planning solution targeted at the upper midmarket/large company market segment. Despite their relatively small size they have been effectively competing with some of the larger vendors in this space.

While there will always be a place for budgeting and planning focused vendors, for large companies and growing midmarket organizations consolidation has shown itself to be an essential component. With the Anaplan acquisition of Fluence these companies now have one more compelling option to consider when looking for a modern and comprehensive CPM solution.

Learn More

This is an important topic that directly impacts you if you are planning to purchase a new performance management solution. To ensure you incorporate the latest developments into your project plans talk to us, or add us to your team.

Vena Announces Vena Copilot for FP&A

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

We are at an interesting juncture in terms of the adoption of AI in performance management systems. While vendors have been steadily rolling out AI capabilities for a number of years now (anomaly detection, predictive forecasting with machine learning, natural language processing, etc.) customers and prospects have basically reacted with a shrug, or worse. In our 2023 BPM Pulse survey 74% of respondents were skeptical of the value that AI could bring to CPM, and therefore hesitant to take advantage of it. It’s a year later and I hope the 2024 BPM Pulse will show significant movement towards greater acceptance.

All the noise around generative AI has certainly increased interest in AI, but that hasn’t yet translated to it becoming a buyer priority for CPM solutions. Users have basically said: ‘I don’t need AI to do my job for me, I just want it to make my job easier’. For vendors, the key will be to add AI in a seamless, non-threatening manner that clearly adds value, ideally in terms of productivity. For example, this could mean automating routine tasks, quickly locating requested data, reconciling data, customizing workflows and related tasks/menu choices based on roles and responsibilities. Much of this actually falls under the banner of ease of use, which is a priority for everyone and should aid in adoption. As a matter of fact, Microsoft’s recently announced Copilot for Finance takes this approach, focusing on streamlining the analysis and presentation of financial data. The true value of AI for Finance comes not so much from large-scale generic AI capabilities, but how well trained the model is specifically on financial data, and the company data model in particular. In other words, the more localized the focus the better, which brings us to Vena Copilot for FP&A.

Vena Copilot for FP&A

In business applications the most desirable AI capabilities are those designed to address selected use cases related to specific business roles and requirements and tied to the company’s data model. That is exactly the type of solution Vena set out to deliver with Vena Copilot for FP&A, a purpose-built solution to enhance FP&A productivity. Utilizing Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service large language models, Vena Copilot for FP&A is essentially an advanced conversational assistant for self-service insights. It enables users to gather data, generate reports, and analyze trends in a fraction of the time it would have taken them to accomplish those same tasks on their own.  The setup walks business users through the process of creating and training their unique AI model. They can choose from revenue or cost focused templates, or build their model from a clean slate. Next, they point it to their data model and map the appropriate elements of their Finance cube for model training. When they are satisfied with their model they can publish it, which makes it available for use across the organization. Once in use they can review user interactions and the scoring of the accuracy of the model and further train and fine-tune if necessary. That’s it. A custom model, tied to their unique needs, using their data. Vena Copilot for FP&A harnesses the power of generative AI specifically for FP&A users on the Vena Complete Planning platform. Currently in beta, the product is scheduled for general availability this May.

Vena’s Progress

Vena Copilot for FP&A complements other recently released or enhanced AI capabilities including Vena Insights, which provides AI-powered data visualizations with key influencers, decomposition trees, and anomaly detection. Vena advanced predictive forecasting unites Excel, the Vena CubeFLEX™ analytical data model, and Azure Machine Learning to deliver deep learning capabilities to improve forecast accuracy. There are several other product enhancements recently or soon-to-be released including new collaboration capabilities, additional Microsoft 365 integrations, and support for Vena data exports to feed processes in other systems. While R&D has been busy, Sales hasn’t been sitting still either. By our estimate Vena has added over 400 new customers in the past year, which is particularly impressive considering how competitive this space has become. We believe Vena is on the right track, fully leveraging the Microsoft technology stack to deliver innovative CPM solutions to midmarket Finance teams, and Vena’s sales momentum indicates we’re clearly not alone in our thinking.

Learn More

Vena PerformancePlace

The performance management market is rapidly evolving. If you plan to purchase a new solution make sure you don’t base your decision on outdated (or biased) information. Talk to us first, or better yet: add us to your team.

 

Prophix Launches Prophix One™

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

When organizations are in the market for a new financial performance management solution there are many competing priorities. The FP&A team is looking for a capable but easy to use budgeting and planning solution along with management reporting and analytics. Operational leaders are looking for an integrated business planning solution that is highly flexible, can integrate with numerous source systems, as well as store and analyze large volumes of detailed granular data with adequate performance. The accounting group wants a consolidation and close solution that is fast, accurate, supports global regulatory requirements, integrates seamlessly with their ERP or general ledger, can handle complexity with out-of-the-box functionality, and of course deliver trustworthy financial reporting.

Ideally, the CFO (along with IT) would like to purchase a single unified all-in-one performance management solution to address all of these requirements. Does such a system exist? Yes and no. There are many unified solutions available today. However, most of them are very strong in one primary area and somewhat weaker in the others. Some are unified in name only and are really a collection of disconnected modules. The best of the unified solutions can be costly and are targeted at the largest companies. Due to the unified nature and bundled pricing you can also end up paying for functionality that you don’t require today.

All of this has generated renewed interest in considering best-of-breed solutions focused on each major area. The challenges with this approach include contracting with multiple vendors, IT having to build integration between the various data models, and users that need to access more than one of the solutions having to sign in and out of each solution as well as adjust to their different interfaces. This leads us to Prophix One.

Prophix One™

The goal of Prophix One is to provide the benefits of a best-of-breed approach (products architected and optimized for specific use cases and audiences), but minus the challenges, by delivering solutions through a unified platform framework from a single vendor.  Have they achieved their goal? Let’s take a look.

In its initial release Prophix One, a Financial Performance Platform, offers solutions for financial planning, budgeting, financial consolidation with intercompany management, disclosure management (utilizing IRIS CARBON), and reporting and analytics. It’s a good start that addresses the most pressing needs of many organizations today. The next items on the roadmap to be delivered as part of Prophix One this year include account reconciliation, close management, and integrated business planning. On day one the Prophix One platform itself includes the following capabilities: a centralized starting point and single sign on for all solutions, centralized user management and authentication, seamless data integration and sharing across the platform, and a consistent user experience. The concept is certainly compelling, we’ll have to wait to see how well it all works in practice once it’s being actively used by Prophix customers.

   

The Future

The Prophix One approach will allow Prophix to easily add new solutions over time. In addition to the planned product releases for later this year, they will also be adding a solutions marketplace to greatly expand the offerings available as part of Prophix One. While Prophix One should be attractive to many companies, it would appear to be a particularly good fit for rapidly growing midmarket organizations. They can purchase and use just what they need today, and as their needs evolve, they can add new purpose-built solutions without having to worry about integration, setting up user security, or learning a new interface.

Learn More

Prophix PerformancePlace

The performance management market is rapidly evolving. If you plan to purchase a new solution make sure you don’t base your decision on outdated (or biased) information. Talk to us first, or better yet: add us to your team.

Pigment Expands into Sales Performance Management

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

Pigment continues to grow in terms of geographies, customers, and users within a customer organization. Some of this growth is driven by the fact that they are always challenging themselves with the question: ‘how can we enable more users to easily adopt Pigment’?  This thinking has resulted in integrations such as the Pigment Connector for Excel (Pigment’s initial spreadsheet integration focus was with Google Sheets), and native integrations with data warehouses such as Snowflake to enable deeper data analysis. It has also spawned a focus on addressing the needs of teams beyond Finance with specific functionality. This led to the addition of Pigment Org Chart to flesh out their Workforce Planning capabilities, and better meet the needs of HR when it comes to headcount planning. Now they have turned their attention to meeting the needs of the sales team.

Pigment SPM

Pigment’s Sales Performance Management focus is on GTM planning (capacity planning, territory and quota management). Pigment’s solution for this use case resides within the existing Pigment platform and leverages existing functionality and CRM integrations, with some enhancements made for this purpose (such as additional detail being added to Org Chart). Clients also have access to a template library to get them started. You might be thinking: is this really a solution at all? A key question therefore is will anybody purchase Pigment expressly for this purpose? The answer is yes. Several net new customers have already purchased the product specifically for Sales Performance Management. In addition, these new customers have also started using some of the financial planning capabilities as well. One of the customers is a large multi-national consumer packaged goods company that needed an SPM solution for hundreds of sales executives. This purchase was a replacement of an existing solution they were using from a competing CPM vendor. That’s certainly an early validation of Pigment’s SPM capabilities. To utilize Pigment for SPM there is a platform fee related to this use case, and of course user licenses are required for any new users.

   

Pigment’s Progress

By our count Pigment has added nearly 150 customers in the past year or so, putting them at 250+. They have also in that same timeframe established a sizeable footprint in North America in terms of both employees and customers (ARR in N.A. grew by 4X in the past year). Backed by significant funding (now including a $145 million series D) Pigment continues to execute on its vision to address all key areas of planning and analysis. We have been surprised by how quickly they have been able to move into the larger company market and effectively compete with some of the well-established vendors targeting that market sector. With Pigment AI currently in beta, Workforce Planning, Sales Performance Management, and scenario planning currently in place, consolidation and close addressed by a partnership with Fluence Technologies, it will be interesting to see which areas of performance management Pigment tackles next.

Learn More

Pigment PerformancePlace

The performance management market is rapidly evolving. If you plan to purchase a new solution make sure you don’t base your decision on outdated (or biased) information. Talk to us first, or better yet: add us to your team.

 

The New Leaders: Budgeting, Planning, Consolidation and Reporting Solutions 2023

/in /by BPM Partners

BPM Partners VLM 2023 w/notes

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

For the 20th Anniversary Edition of our Vendor Landscape Matrix (VLM) report we decided to add something that other analyst reports have had for years: categories for leaders, competitors, challengers, etc. Of course our VLM offers many things others still do not: a single report that covers budgeting, financial planning, operational planning, consolidation and close, as well as financial reporting and analytics, objective placement on the report grid based on measurable metrics: number of customers/deal size (for market momentum), and overall BPM Pulse customer  satisfaction ratings (for customer success), comparative pricing charts, along with the usual comparative customer satisfaction charts.

In the 2023 report Leaders are defined  as having an Excellent or Outstanding overall customer satisfaction rating combined with an Established or Dominant position in the market. Vendors that are both Outstanding and Dominant are categorized as Premier Leaders. Now it’s time to acknowledge the Leaders for 2023. You can learn more about them including their actual overall numeric rating, industry success, current offering information, latest news, analyst reviews, articles, blogs,  and current job openings by clicking on their name which will take you to their PerformancePlace page on this site.

 

Outstanding Customer Satisfaction

and Dominant Market Position

 

Target Market: Upper Midmarket to Enterprise

Wolters Kluwer CCH Tagetik

 

Excellent or Outstanding Customer Satisfaction

and Established Market Position OR

Excellent Customer Satisfaction and Dominant Market Position

Target Market: Upper Midmarket to Enterprise

Board International

OneStream Software

Target Market: Midmarket to Large

Fluence Technologies

Planful

Prophix

Talentia Software Group

Vena

Bonus: Top Rated Vendors in 2023 by Functionality:

PerformancePlace Filter: Top Rated for Budgeting and Financial Planning

PerformancePlace Filter: Top Rated for Comprehensive Consolidation

PerformancePlace Filter: Top Rated for Reporting

You can add additional filters to sort these Top Rated vendors by target market, price range, and more.

For each vendor’s complete chart of 16 detailed BPM Pulse ratings, plus Recommendation Rate and much more, read the 2023 Vendor Landscape Matrix report.

If you are part of an end-user organization you can request a report sample (Vendor Snapshots) featuring two vendors of your choosing.

First Look: Pigment

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

Pigment is a relatively new budgeting and planning vendor that has been attracting a good deal of attention lately. The two main reasons for all the attention are the impressive amount of money they have raised, and the equally impressive number of customers they have acquired after only a short time actively marketing their solution.

Does that make them a vendor that you should be considering? We recently met with them to find out

Investment: US$165 million to date from investors such as Greenoaks, Meritech, FirstMark, IVP, and Blossom

Customers: 100+ after only a little over a year of actively marketing their product with Carta and Deliveroo as two examples

Country of Origin: France, with offices currently in Paris, London, NYC

Target Market: Midmarket and larger organizations, across all industries in Europe and North America

Details:  Pigment is a rapidly growing vendor with a global footprint. Although they are based in France, over half of their customers are from outside the country, with the U.S. being the single largest market segment. The Pigment integrated business planning platform is modeling-centric and can support most financial and operational planning requirements. To accelerate operational planning implementations templates are currently available for workforce planning and sales performance management. The product’s well laid-out interface, ease-of-use, training academy, and community forum should aid in adoption. Native integrations are available for many popular source systems. Completing the picture is live collaboration and a relatively quick implementation timeframe. Also of note, we found the company very responsive and easy to work with.

 Financial Dashboard  Scenario Planning Example

Key Strengths: An impressive team that includes experienced performance management industry veterans and a product vision to further enhance integration and collaboration to become a leading end-to-end EPM provider. Although we don’t yet have BPM Pulse ratings for Pigment, other data points would indicate a happy customer base. Their greatest strength is an inviting, easy to use budgeting and planning product designed for Finance self-sufficiency, that addresses the key areas companies are most focused on today, such as scenario planning.

Key Elements Missing Today: Consolidation and close, live integration with Excel and Power BI (all on the roadmap). They are also lacking access to native AI capabilities (although they do make this available through partners), but for most companies that is not yet a top priority.

Bottom Line: If you are a midmarket organization looking for an intuitive, easy to use, budgeting and planning solution with a focus on modeling and scenario planning specifically, and you are open to the risks (and rewards) of working with a newer vendor, then Pigment is worth including on your evaluation shortlist.

Learn More: Pigment PerformancePlace

The Top Rated Budgeting, Planning, Consolidation and Reporting Solutions for 2022

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

Now in its nineteenth year, BPM Partners’ BPM Pulse is the longest running survey of trends and customer satisfaction relating to budgeting, financial and operational planning, modeling, forecasting, consolidation, reporting and analytics, and performance dashboards (collectively referred to as performance management, EPM, CPM, BPM, xP&A or FP&A solutions). Over the years thousands of companies have relied on these ratings as part of their vendor selection evaluation criteria, ultimately impacting purchase decisions for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of performance management solutions.

Now it’s time to acknowledge the top tier of vendors that earned the highest overall satisfaction ratings from their customers in 2022. You can learn more about them including their actual numeric rating, industry success, current offering information, latest news, analyst reviews, articles, blogs,  and current job openings by clicking on their name which will take you to their PerformancePlace page on this site.

 

These vendors received an Overall rating from their customers of 4.75 or above, out of 5.

The list is organized by target market and is in alphabetical order.

 

Target Market: Enterprise

Board International

JustPerform

Wolters Kluwer CCH Tagetik

Target Market: Midmarket/Large

deFacto Global

Fluence Technologies

XLerant

 

These vendors received an Overall rating from their customers in the range of 4.50 to 4.74, out of 5.

The list is organized by target market and is in alphabetical order.

 

Target Market: Enterprise

Acterys

Anaplan

OneStream Software

Syntellis Performance Solutions

Target Market: Midmarket/Large

IBM

Place

Prophix

Vena

Bonus: Top Rated Vendors (4.50 – 5.00) by Functionality:

PerformancePlace Filter: Top Rated for Budgeting and Financial Planning

PerformancePlace Filter: Top Rated for Operational Planning

PerformancePlace Filter: Top Rated for Consolidation

PerformancePlace Filter: Top Rated for Reporting

You can add additional filters to sort these Top Rated vendors by target market, price range, and more.

For each vendor’s complete chart of 15 detailed BPM Pulse ratings, plus Recommendation Rate, read the 2022 Vendor Landscape Matrix report, or request free Vendor Snapshots.

Anaplan to be Acquired for $10.7 Billion by Thoma Bravo

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

Thoma Bravo has announced its planned acquisition of Anaplan for $10.7 billion. Anaplan’s revenues for its most recent fiscal year were $592.2 million with a GAAP operating loss of $200.7 million. Those numbers show how impressive this valuation is. I believe this is the largest acquisition ever in the performance management space (see other recent investments in the space here). The investment of course factors in the huge potential for Anaplan as it continues its successful growth path in the hot performance management space.

Details

With this deal Anaplan will once again become a private company. Why would they choose to do this? The money of course, but there are other reasons. The stock market is brutal, regulatory reporting is painful and time consuming (which is one reason you should buy a performance management consolidation and reporting solution), and the pressure of having to achieve quarterly targets forces compromises to be made. So, not too surprising.

Anaplan is a leader, particularly in the rapidly growing operational planning (or extended planning and analysis) segment. It does have some strong competitors though. While SAP and Oracle are often cited as their chief competitors, you’re just as likely to see OneStream Software or Wolters Kluwer’s CCH Tagetik going head to head with Anaplan in deals, and getting their fair share of wins. While OneStream and CCH Tagetik were initially focused primarily on financial planning, consolidation, and reporting, over time they have added impressive capabilities focused on operational planning. Their combined financial and operational strengths give them an edge over Anaplan in financial planning-led deals that also include operational components.

Thoma Bravo is not new to this space. They are an investor in another performance management vendor, Syntellis Performance Solutions. Syntellis, with their Axiom product, combines financial and operational planning with comparative benchmark analytics. They focus almost exclusively on three verticals: banking and credit unions, higher education, and healthcare, with specialized content for each. While there is certainly overlap with Anaplan’s capabilities, we don’t often see them competing in the same deals. Thoma Bravo also owns Qlik, which several performance management vendors have partnered with for analytics.

Our Assessment

A rapidly growing vendor, a knowledgeable investor, a hot market. Seems like a recipe for success to us.

Further Reading: Hg Acquires Majority Stake in Prophix, Host Analytics to be Acquired by Vector Capital, Longview Acquired by insightsoftware, Adaptive Insights to be Acquired by Workday, Wolters Kluwer Acquires Tagetik

Prophix Acquires Sigma Conso

/in /by BPM Partners

Craig Schiff , President and CEO, BPM Partners

Overview

Prophix, a leading North American  budgeting and planning CPM vendor focused on the midmarket, has announced its acquisition of Sigma Conso, a European CPM vendor focused on consolidation and close. While most CPM (performance management) projects are driven by the need for budgeting and planning, demand has been steadily rising for robust financial consolidation and close capabilities. In the midmarket in particular the options for a complete CPM solution that includes budgeting, planning, reporting and true consolidation have been somewhat limited. Consolidation is one of those things that every vendor claims to do, but most only offer a very basic version of the necessary functionality.

Details

The acquisition will bring Prophix several hundred new customers, offices throughout Europe and Asia, and a consolidation suite that includes consolidation and reporting, intercompany reconciliation software,  an IFRS16 (lease accounting) module, and a disclosure management platform powered by Iris Carbon. Equally important is the addition of Sigma Conso’s expert staff to the Prophix team. There will be no job losses related to this acquisition. Although not publicly disclosed, it has been speculated that Prophix paid US$100 million plus for Sigma Conso.

Our Assessment

We believe this is a big win for all concerned, with limited downside.

Prophix and its customers:

  • Prophix becomes a global enterprise with a comprehensive and competitive CPM suite for the midmarket/upper midmarket, and the ability to pursue deals that may not have been a possibility in the past
  • Prophix will have the opportunity to upsell their budgeting and planning solution to Sigma Conso customers
  • Prophix customers gain access to a consolidation solution that can handle more complexity and larger use cases than their current Prophix consolidation solution

Sigma Conso and its customers:

  • Sigma Conso and its staff become part of a larger organization and will see their flagship product expand into the North American market
  • Sigma Conso customers will now be part of a larger global user community and also  see additional investment and support for their consolidation products
  • Sigma Conso customers will have the option to take advantage of Prophix’s budgeting and planning solution

Midmarket/Upper Midmarket Buyers of Performance Management solutions:

  • Prophix will become another viable option for those looking for robust consolidation coupled with company-wide planning

The (limited) downside:

  • It will take a while to integrate the products and we don’t expect to see data integration until some time in Q1 2022
  • Sigma Conso currently sells a budgeting and planning solution (“powered by” Unit4 FP&A) and there will need to be a well thought out plan to manage customers of this product and their expectations, and of course eventually entice them to move to the equivalent Prophix solution
  • Prophix has never done an acquisition before and we all know there will be many challenges both expected and unexpected, hopefully since the companies appear to have similar cultures and are both customer centric this will go more smoothly than some mergers I personally have been part of in the past

The  Updated Vendor Landscape for Midmarket Budgeting, Planning, Reporting and  Robust Consolidation Solutions

Midmarket/Upper Midmarket Focused:

  • Prophix – a new competitor in this segment with the addition of Sigma Conso’s consolidation capabilities
  • Fluence – combines enterprise class functionality with ease of use and is integrated with Vena for budgeting and planning
  • Planful – the former Host Analytics has always had a very capable midmarket consolidation solution coupled with easy to use planning

There are also solutions targeting the larger company market that have seen success in the midmarket: OneStream Software and Wolters Kluwer’s CCH Tagetik are two of the best.

The performance management market continues to grow and evolve. We’ll continue to stay on top of it and keep you informed with everything you need to know for your own project. If you would like to discuss midmarket planning and consolidation solutions, or anything else performance management related, you can reach us here.

Further Reading: Fluence Acquires XLCubed, Hg Acquires Majority Stake in Prophix, 10 Key Requirements for Next Level Financial Consolidation, Leveraging Financial Consolidation to Manage Through Uncertainty

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.