If you’re searching for an FP&A software solution, you have no shortage of options. There are so many vendors vying for your business that it’s hard to pinpoint the distinctive features of each one. If you’re looking to increase efficiency and the strategic value of your business plans, an FP&A tool can take you beyond spreadsheet modeling and its limitations.
We’re here to help you make sense of it all and narrow down your options. Let’s dig into the most common features that they all share, and your top FP&A software choices whether you have SMB, midmarket, or enterprise-level requirements.
The Essential Functions of FP&A Software
All FP&A solutions exist to help finance teams spend less time on tedious tasks and focus more on analysis and other strategic activities. Generally, they do this in four ways:
1. Integrate with Key Systems: Linking seamlessly with ERP, HRIS, and CRM systems, these tools centralize critical financial data, saving countless hours in data gathering and reconciliation.
2. Facilitate Streamlined Planning: Bypass the manual, disconnected nature of spreadsheet-based planning. Create integrated forecasts and annual plans based on the latest data and business intelligence.
3. Automate Reporting: Monthly and quarterly reporting become a breeze with automation features, enhancing efficiency and accuracy.
4. Drive In-Depth Analysis: From budget versus actual reports to advanced KPI dashboards, these tools uncover the narratives hidden within numbers.
Even with this common ground, there are lots of differences to explore. Here’s a look at the top solutions on the market right now to help you find your sweet spot.
Top FP&A Solutions for Diverse Business Needs
Midmarket Favorites
For when you want the agility of modern FP&A software but need additional features like the ability to consolidate multiple general ledgers and plan in multiple dimensions.
These midmarket FP&A tools take a user-first approach and offer lots of self-service features, but low or no implementation fees or lengthy timelines.
1. Stratify Our #1 recommendation to achieve a collaborative and coordinated financial planning process. Stratify is a cloud-based budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and workforce planning solution platform that uses configurable driver-based FP&A modeling to support agile strategic finance teams.
- Onboarding in as little as 3 weeks, which starts with building your current plans in our configurable framework.
- Make adjustments yourself – no more waiting (or paying) for model changes.
- Enjoy a flexible approach to planning. Create your financial plan in a driver-based application for accuracy, transparency and collaboration workflows. Or, use a spreadsheet interface for ad hoc modeling that is connected to your data.
- Collaborate easily with stakeholders and share plans or reports securely with relevant business partners to gathershare their input directly.
- Reduce your time spent on repetitive FP&A tasks and creating custom stakeholder reports. Become the strategic finance business partner that your organization needs.
Best For:
- Expanding businesses that need to consolidate multiple GL systems.
- Teams that need to reduce time spent on manual processes like modeling and reconciling data.
- Teams that no longer want to rely on outside consultants or IT specialists to modify their plans.
- A streamlined headcount reconciliation process for effective workforce planning and collaboration with HR.
- FP&A teams that are using a more expensive and complicated software solution, but aren’t getting the efficiencies or results they need.
Key Integrations: Stratify can seamlessly consolidate data from multiple sources, including multiple GLs, HRIS, and CRM. This helps fast-growing businesses navigate the complexity of their operations, prevent errors, and support agile decisions with real-time data.
- Pigment - Pigment is a cloud-based SaaS business planning software platform that puts the focus on strategic decision-making and agility. Pigment offers scenario modeling, custom dashboards, and reports.
Best For:
- Whole business planning. Built for finance teams, but revenue, sales, HR, and executive teams can all use the platform for better insight into performance + collaborative planning.
- Teams that need an API-first, modular approach to their FP&A solution.
Key Integrations: Pigment integrates data across systems including ERP, accounting, HRIS, ATS, billing and payment, BI solutions, and Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheets.
- Prophix - Prophix is designed for finance teams at mid-market organizations. It improves profitability and minimizes risk by automating budgeting, forecasting, reporting and consolidation-to-close processes for better decision making. Prophix began as an on-premise solution but now offers a cloud option.
Best For:
- Teams that need robust access controls for enhanced data security.
- Capable teams that can develop expertise in the platform. Users who are not regularly accessing your Prophix instance may need support from administrators to navigate.
- Advanced analytics, with the ability to drill down and view data on a transaction level.
- Automating repetitive FP&A tasks.
- Finance teams that want one platform to complete the FP&A, close, consolidation, reporting, and planning processes.
Key Integrations: Prophix boasts its data integration interface that is simple for any admins to access and update without needing to call in IT. Connect all your business systems using their own integration solution or a flexible API.
Honorable Mentions:
Enterprise Solutions
Look for the highest standards of integration with other solutions (like SAP or Oracle) and incredible computing power. You need an enterprise FP&A software instance built for your unique requirements and specifications, and you still value saving as much time as possible to put your analysts to work on higher-value projects.
- Anaplan - One of the most recognized ‘legacy’ systems, Anaplan is a SaaS modeling and planning platform that offers sophisticated modeling capabilities that live up to complex enterprise-level finance needs.
Best For:
- Making accurate and instant calculations within enterprise-level datasets of billions of cells to create new business scenarios with ease.
- Organizations with advanced data security requirements and complex data architectures.
- Organizations with large IT teams to manage the complex product and implementation process.
- Teams that need a highly customized instance configured to their specifications (no pre-configured starter models).
Key Integrations: Anaplan easily integrates with enterprise-level cloud systems, including Google BigQuery, AWS S3, and Microsoft Azure Blob. No trouble connecting systems of record, but the integration within Excel is limited compared to other Excel-first solutions.
- OneStream - OneStream is an integrated business planning solution that can be used on-premise or in the cloud. OneStream excels in collaboration and Microsoft integrations, suitable for businesses wanting a balance of features and customizations.
Best For:
- Businesses looking for an all-in-one solution to collaborate across business units but maintain strict access controls.
- Businesses that want an Excel add-in option and other strong Microsoft integrations but don’t need to plan and model exclusively in Excel.
- SMBs that want to upgrade their FP&A solution for more features, but don’t need enterprise-level bespoke configurations.
Key Integrations: OneStream provides direct integration with over 250 ERP, HCM, CRM, and other systems including Oracle, SAP, Microsoft AX/Dynamics, and more.
- Planful - Planful is a top alternative to midmarket options like DataRails and Prophix. It’s a comprehensive financial performance management platform that empowers finance teams to make highly impactful business decisions and act as a single source of truth for its financial and operational data.
Best For:
- Teams that need a flexible and comprehensive financial planning and performance management tool across multiple business units, including accounting, sales, HR, IT, and operations.
- FP&A teams that want to work more collaboratively and align the planning process across their business.
- Teams that can be patient with complex models and willing to set up templates in Planful.
Key Integrations: Planful boasts an integration strategy to keep all your business data regularly updated, with no limit on how many sources you can connect. They use a library of open RESTful APIs and SFTP (secure file transfer protocol) tools so you can access all your business data in your Planful instance.
Honorable Mentions:
Small Business and Startups
As a small business, you may not need a bespoke instance, global planning, or support for hundreds of users from your FP&A tool. But you still want to plan and report at the speed of business and provide strategic recommendations to stakeholders.
- Mosaic - A user-friendly cloud-based solution, great for SaaS businesses and teams favoring visual data representation.
Best For:
- Teams that want multiple visualization options to share data, including charts, dashboards, and graphs, plus the ability to combine different department reports.
- SaaS businesses that benefit from Mosaic’s SaaS-focused features.
Key Integrations: Mosaic allows teams to connect their other cloud-based systems, and synchronize multiple ERP systems to streamline data management across the business.
- DataRails - Stands out for its Excel-native approach and AI-assisted analysis, making it ideal for teams comfortable with Excel and seeking advanced reporting automation.
Best For:
- Teams that place a high value on their analysts’ modeling skills and are most comfortable with Excel.
- Experimenting with AI through their FP&A Genius feature (currently in beta), which offers conversational AI analysis of your data to uncover trends.
- Robust reporting automation helps to streamline this critical process for finance teams, including automatic monthly report exports.
- Smaller businesses that want to embrace strategic finance functions in their early stage.
Key Integrations: DataRails Flex offers an Excel add-in to connect your workbooks to the wider business data and access FP&A tools within your spreadsheets. 70+ other integrations, although it does not offer automatic Excel or Quickbooks integrations.
Honorable Mentions:
Choosing Your Perfect FP&A Partner
There are lots of strong options, but not all of them will be right for your business and FP&A goals. Narrow down the choices by your business size and priorities, and clear contenders will rise to the top. Consider deployment time, data integration capabilities, simplicity in forecasting and budgeting, user-friendliness, and stakeholder collaboration support.
At Stratify, we empower midmarket and fast-growing finance teams to engage stakeholders across the organization in the planning process. With Stratify, you can have data and collaboration processes in one place, making it easy to report, analyze, and plan. Plus, you’ll be able to move away from the burdens of traditional spreadsheet modeling and endless versioning (errors and all!).
Book a demo and get ready to see the difference of planning, reporting, and forecasting in Stratify.
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