Five for five: Once again Gartner® recognizes Anaplan’s advantage in xP&A

Comparing vendors with extended planning and analysis (xP&A) solutions can be tough. The emerging space is filled with products that tackle xP&A to different degrees of completeness; some are only partial solutions and others are good at one aspect of xP&A but not so great at others.

Gaining clarity into the evolving market of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) can be tricky. Luckily, Gartner picked up on this confusion in the market last year and published its first Market Guide for Cloud Extended Planning and Analysis Solutions, highlighting 15 vendors, and indicating that xP&A is where the financial planning market is headed.

But that was a year ago. Now, Gartner issued the 2022 edition of this Market Guide, dropping that list down to seven, trimming away half of the FP&A vendors. Of the seven that were recognized, five of them have packaged solutions for three or fewer of the key planning functions Gartner identified, where, once again, Anaplan is recognized for having all five xP&A capabilities beyond Finance.

The statistics given in the guide show that businesses’ understanding of the value of xP&A is evolving rapidly. For example, according to the report, “Through 2024, 30% of FP&A implementations will be extended to support operational processes, with 50% requiring a substantial xP&A roadmap.” Nearly all of Gartner survey respondents – 96%– agreed that operational planning needs to be integrated and aligned with FP&A and “importance is materializing at the C-suite level.”

In other words, the need for a complete solution that can work across the entire organization is here today.

The Gartner survey also found that 55 percent of finance and IT leaders responsible for planning efforts agreed the finance function plays an outsized role in driving collaborative cross-enterprise planning efforts. Despite that, Gartner implies that xP&A is evolving from being “finance-centric” to more platform-centric, describing it as “a maturing approach to enterprise planning.” A shared data model, high data capacity and performance modeling capability, centralized application services and collaborative planning are viewed as keys to breaking xP&A out of finance and into prominence across the entire organization. Not coincidentally, these attributes are key parts of Anaplan’s solution.

Gartner cautions that application leaders should “be mindful that operational planning solutions offered by FP&A vendors, while maturing, may not be as robust as stand-alone BOB planning application counterparts. The depth and breadth of functionality offered by solutions often vary and must be properly evaluated in addition to vendor experience.”

For Anaplan, planning has been foundational to our value proposition. And as a result, our cloud-native Connected Planning platform, which is a singular product built via a unified code base, is the only vendor that has been named a Magic Quadrant™ Leader in Finance – for Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions, in Sales – for Sales Performance Management, and now in 2022 with Supply Chain – for our Supply Chain Planning Solutions.

It’s exciting to be recognized once again in this fast evolving and increasingly important space. Want to learn more? See the full Gartner Market Guide here.

Gartner, Market Guide for Cloud Extended Planning and Analysis Solutions, 19 July 2022, Robert Anderson et. Al.

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