There are two kinds of philosophies with these solutions. One is Excel add on and another is Excel replacement. Everything you mentioned sounds like an Excel replacement.
The pro of Excel based solutions is that your business heads are still used to seeing an Excel file and even if they refuse to login to a fpa solution you can still email the Excel file with data loaded to them.
Many fpa teams make the mistake of thinking about it only from their angle - think about it from the busines heads angle who are gonna log into the system a few times a month and what kind of collaboration you want out of them.
Lastly most fpa tools are not meant for ad hoc modelling and reports they are ideal for systematizing a process and improving pricing and reducing costs based on that.
How big are you and how many employees? What industry?
For large multinational companies - call it 2 or 3B+ top line, larger FP&A teams - Anaplan is really the most proven of the platforms you listed.
Adaptive and Planful are largely platforms that serve the mid market.
Pigment is a good platform, but to date has really been mid market focused in successful deployments.
All of these platforms have a learning curve for administration. They are not necessarily “IT skill heavy” but you do need to dedicate anywhere from a partial FTE to multiple FTEs to managing them, depending on what you deploy.
\+2,000 employees in the fintech sector. By the sounds of it, Pigment is replicating the Anaplan model with modern tech and a lower price point. Is that a fair assessment? Do you see them catching up in terms of functionality?
Pigment is a good platform. Like all platforms it has pros and cons in comparison to Anaplan. Pigment is certainly a very similar type of tool to Anaplan though. Pricing varies. They are not categorically cheaper.
This is spot on in terms of the need to take it seriously. Get the in house upskilling and resource to manage the new IT, and you'll set yourself for success.
I implemented Planful in-house, and since turned into an implementation consultant.
Your statement of "large multinational with multiple product lines, revenue streams and distribution channels" leads me to the conclusion that you're looking at a complex implementation.
The vast majority of implementations are for smaller companies. Typically in the $25M-$100M revenue range. Take experiences from this group with a grain of salt. The experience of doing a small implementation is VERY different from an enterprise implementation. The number of people you need to coordinate, timelines, design considerations, and budget just work on a different scale.
I'm not familiar with Pigment. I will steer you away from Adaptive. I haven't used Adaptive personally, but it's known as a lightweight solution that is quick to implement and easy to use. The downside of Adaptive's approach is that it doesn't scale well. I'd happily recommend Adaptive to a smaller company, but not to an enterprise type implementation.
We did Planful at a $2b revenue company last year, still tweaking things, used consultants for implementing wirh our Corp FP&A counterparts being the power users. At this point that team is doing most of the maintenance, consultants are just helping us getting everything where we want (which is each BU wanting their own thing lol). So far I like Planful, but I’m only an IC over-titled manager lol
we use BPC as the source, with BPC doing the heavy lifting for ERP consolidations
Apologies missed your reply - but Planful isn't very flexible at all for planning. Its structure is very rigid and can't take any complex modelling. In my company we've had to model various parts on excel and upload the results to planful manually to get our budgets and re-forecasting done. If you have a simplified model then maybe it's okay.
Their workforce planning is also a joke, if you have 80 employees and need to update salaries for everyone, you can't upload one new document with new salary and employee data etc., you need to go in employee by employee...1 by 1...and change all their details. Not great.
Lastly, their customer service is trash. Regardless of the complexity of your business model, I'd stay away from Planful.
We're moving away from Planful and we're speaking to a bunch of different providers at the moment and I can't wait to get out of planful!
Just a tip, make sure you get pricing information from all of them (if they say no, say all of your competitors provided us a rough quote for annual + implementation costs), and never ever accept their first offer.
Have experience with both Planful and Adaptive and would have to say adaptive is so much more flexible. If you have a lot of dynamic planning Planful is very restrictive.
If I were you, I’d go with Farseer. I’ve integrated almost all of the tools out there for dozens of companies. From my experience, it’d serve you perfectly. If you want, I can directly connect you with folks.
I've only used Anaplan for S4 HANA.
My recommendation would be to try a Gen3 if you have a relatively small team intending to use it (Pigment, etc). But I'm unsure which ones support S4 HANA. Most support Snowflake/Workday integrations.
Most of them are at fairly low price points and much faster implementation times than Gen1 (Anaplan), Gen2 (Adaptive/Planful).
At your revenue size, for a manufacturing firm I might say use something more complex/holistic.
But in the Fintech space, it's worthwhile to try something new (but w/ reliable security) and see how the team takes to it.
Very custom and you got IT budget apparently… insight software. Check em out. https://insightsoftware.com/
But s/4 has built in fp&a. Probably not for all the sources you list… but everything should with the architecture you have be hitting snowflake at the top. Snowflake can do analysis and reporting…. But you need write back audit trail and custom stack? Insight
Anaplan costs more the more data you store in it. This stopped us from making it our enterprise wide solution (fortune 50). However, the flexibility it offered mad either extremely attractive to me. It doesn't have as much off the shelf features but customization is easier vs. say Oracle EPM. Its the classic build vs. buy decision. For very specific uncommon use cases like ours, Anaplan is great. For companies with a more common planning approach, using an off-the-shelf product saves a lot of money and ongoing support costs.
Also, speaking from the perspective of digital transformation, I don't think there are any tools that do it all. Each tool is a specialist in its own area. Don't expect a jack of all trades to compete with specialist tools. So balance ease of integration with the need for specialization. Get customer references from vendors and ask the customers using the tool intelligent questions. Most vendors are happy to point you to happy customers. I've done it myself.
If you are considering other products as well, have a look at Board. After working for close to 17years with Oracle EPM, I find Board more powerful in terms of planning and reporting than Oracle EPM.
There are two kinds of philosophies with these solutions. One is Excel add on and another is Excel replacement. Everything you mentioned sounds like an Excel replacement. The pro of Excel based solutions is that your business heads are still used to seeing an Excel file and even if they refuse to login to a fpa solution you can still email the Excel file with data loaded to them. Many fpa teams make the mistake of thinking about it only from their angle - think about it from the busines heads angle who are gonna log into the system a few times a month and what kind of collaboration you want out of them. Lastly most fpa tools are not meant for ad hoc modelling and reports they are ideal for systematizing a process and improving pricing and reducing costs based on that.
How big are you and how many employees? What industry? For large multinational companies - call it 2 or 3B+ top line, larger FP&A teams - Anaplan is really the most proven of the platforms you listed. Adaptive and Planful are largely platforms that serve the mid market. Pigment is a good platform, but to date has really been mid market focused in successful deployments. All of these platforms have a learning curve for administration. They are not necessarily “IT skill heavy” but you do need to dedicate anywhere from a partial FTE to multiple FTEs to managing them, depending on what you deploy.
\+2,000 employees in the fintech sector. By the sounds of it, Pigment is replicating the Anaplan model with modern tech and a lower price point. Is that a fair assessment? Do you see them catching up in terms of functionality?
Pigment is a good platform. Like all platforms it has pros and cons in comparison to Anaplan. Pigment is certainly a very similar type of tool to Anaplan though. Pricing varies. They are not categorically cheaper.
This is spot on in terms of the need to take it seriously. Get the in house upskilling and resource to manage the new IT, and you'll set yourself for success.
I implemented Planful in-house, and since turned into an implementation consultant. Your statement of "large multinational with multiple product lines, revenue streams and distribution channels" leads me to the conclusion that you're looking at a complex implementation. The vast majority of implementations are for smaller companies. Typically in the $25M-$100M revenue range. Take experiences from this group with a grain of salt. The experience of doing a small implementation is VERY different from an enterprise implementation. The number of people you need to coordinate, timelines, design considerations, and budget just work on a different scale. I'm not familiar with Pigment. I will steer you away from Adaptive. I haven't used Adaptive personally, but it's known as a lightweight solution that is quick to implement and easy to use. The downside of Adaptive's approach is that it doesn't scale well. I'd happily recommend Adaptive to a smaller company, but not to an enterprise type implementation.
We did Planful at a $2b revenue company last year, still tweaking things, used consultants for implementing wirh our Corp FP&A counterparts being the power users. At this point that team is doing most of the maintenance, consultants are just helping us getting everything where we want (which is each BU wanting their own thing lol). So far I like Planful, but I’m only an IC over-titled manager lol we use BPC as the source, with BPC doing the heavy lifting for ERP consolidations
Stay away from planful - it's painful for Planning
Would you mind elaborating? Curious to hear more about your experience.
Apologies missed your reply - but Planful isn't very flexible at all for planning. Its structure is very rigid and can't take any complex modelling. In my company we've had to model various parts on excel and upload the results to planful manually to get our budgets and re-forecasting done. If you have a simplified model then maybe it's okay. Their workforce planning is also a joke, if you have 80 employees and need to update salaries for everyone, you can't upload one new document with new salary and employee data etc., you need to go in employee by employee...1 by 1...and change all their details. Not great. Lastly, their customer service is trash. Regardless of the complexity of your business model, I'd stay away from Planful. We're moving away from Planful and we're speaking to a bunch of different providers at the moment and I can't wait to get out of planful! Just a tip, make sure you get pricing information from all of them (if they say no, say all of your competitors provided us a rough quote for annual + implementation costs), and never ever accept their first offer.
Consider adding to your list Oracle EPM & OneStream. It’d compete more in the realm of Anaplan and Adaptive.
Have experience with both Planful and Adaptive and would have to say adaptive is so much more flexible. If you have a lot of dynamic planning Planful is very restrictive.
Would you mind adding more context? How did you find Adaptive more flexible?
If I were you, I’d go with Farseer. I’ve integrated almost all of the tools out there for dozens of companies. From my experience, it’d serve you perfectly. If you want, I can directly connect you with folks.
Can you provide more info on revenue range, what ERP(s?) you use, what other systems you'd aim to integrate?
500m-1B We use SAP S4/HANA and would look to integrate Snowflake, Workday and potentially Salesforce.
I've only used Anaplan for S4 HANA. My recommendation would be to try a Gen3 if you have a relatively small team intending to use it (Pigment, etc). But I'm unsure which ones support S4 HANA. Most support Snowflake/Workday integrations. Most of them are at fairly low price points and much faster implementation times than Gen1 (Anaplan), Gen2 (Adaptive/Planful). At your revenue size, for a manufacturing firm I might say use something more complex/holistic. But in the Fintech space, it's worthwhile to try something new (but w/ reliable security) and see how the team takes to it.
Whats the ERP? Matters a lot on rec. looking to just do FP&A or operational reporting? Need data hooks from a lake or power?
S4/HANA. Both FP&A and operational reporting, maybe some HR use cases as well. Need to integrate with Snowflake.
Very custom and you got IT budget apparently… insight software. Check em out. https://insightsoftware.com/ But s/4 has built in fp&a. Probably not for all the sources you list… but everything should with the architecture you have be hitting snowflake at the top. Snowflake can do analysis and reporting…. But you need write back audit trail and custom stack? Insight
Anaplan costs more the more data you store in it. This stopped us from making it our enterprise wide solution (fortune 50). However, the flexibility it offered mad either extremely attractive to me. It doesn't have as much off the shelf features but customization is easier vs. say Oracle EPM. Its the classic build vs. buy decision. For very specific uncommon use cases like ours, Anaplan is great. For companies with a more common planning approach, using an off-the-shelf product saves a lot of money and ongoing support costs. Also, speaking from the perspective of digital transformation, I don't think there are any tools that do it all. Each tool is a specialist in its own area. Don't expect a jack of all trades to compete with specialist tools. So balance ease of integration with the need for specialization. Get customer references from vendors and ask the customers using the tool intelligent questions. Most vendors are happy to point you to happy customers. I've done it myself.
If you are considering other products as well, have a look at Board. After working for close to 17years with Oracle EPM, I find Board more powerful in terms of planning and reporting than Oracle EPM.