This research note is restricted to the personal use of [email protected]This research note is restricted to the personal use of [email protected]G00268951 Critical Capabilities for Corporate Performance Management Suites Published: 27 July 2015 Analyst(s): Christopher Iervolino, John E. Van Decker Corporate performance management application leaders evaluating CPM suite vendors will find that provider strengths vary significantly based on the processes and use case supported. Use this research to assess CPM suite vendor offerings, then use competitive bids to evaluate the providers. Key Findings ■ The corporate performance management (CPM) solutions covered in this research vary in terms of breadth of processes supported, ease of use, the level of implementation and ongoing support effort required as well as typical customer size and application complexity. ■ The ability of each solution to support certain types of CPM processes is highly important but usability and modeling (for more advanced and/or integrated planning needs) also have a major impact in determining the business value a solution provides. ■ CPM environments with multiple cloud and on-premises applications are becoming more common as the need for differentiating, flexible, user-friendly solutions takes priority over architectural consistency and the benefits of single-vendor suites. Recommendations ■ Examine the four use cases to determine which most closely describes your organization; then review the scores for the critical capabilities that relate to your potential use of CPM suite solutions during the next three to five years. ■ Consider the top vendors (four to seven maximum) for these capabilities as strong candidates for further review as part of a comprehensive evaluation and selection process. ■ Use this research in conjunction with the "Magic Quadrant for Corporate Performance Management Suites" and "Survey Analysis: References Rate Their CPM Vendors in Gartner's User Survey" and develop a specific document that identifies your functional requirements and objectives.
Transcript
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G00268951
Critical Capabilities for Corporate PerformanceManagement SuitesPublished: 27 July 2015
Analyst(s): Christopher Iervolino, John E. Van Decker
Corporate performance management application leaders evaluating CPMsuite vendors will find that provider strengths vary significantly based on theprocesses and use case supported. Use this research to assess CPM suitevendor offerings, then use competitive bids to evaluate the providers.
Key Findings■ The corporate performance management (CPM) solutions covered in this research vary in terms
of breadth of processes supported, ease of use, the level of implementation and ongoingsupport effort required as well as typical customer size and application complexity.
■ The ability of each solution to support certain types of CPM processes is highly important butusability and modeling (for more advanced and/or integrated planning needs) also have a majorimpact in determining the business value a solution provides.
■ CPM environments with multiple cloud and on-premises applications are becoming morecommon as the need for differentiating, flexible, user-friendly solutions takes priority overarchitectural consistency and the benefits of single-vendor suites.
Recommendations■ Examine the four use cases to determine which most closely describes your organization; then
review the scores for the critical capabilities that relate to your potential use of CPM suitesolutions during the next three to five years.
■ Consider the top vendors (four to seven maximum) for these capabilities as strong candidatesfor further review as part of a comprehensive evaluation and selection process.
■ Use this research in conjunction with the "Magic Quadrant for Corporate PerformanceManagement Suites" and "Survey Analysis: References Rate Their CPM Vendors in Gartner'sUser Survey" and develop a specific document that identifies your functional requirements andobjectives.
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■ If you currently have a CPM solution, don't be restricted to your incumbent vendor if otherofferings in the suite fail to fulfill your needs. Consider additional solutions from other vendors toaugment both office of finance process optimization and strategic capability.
What You Need to KnowEvery company's finance department requires CPM solutions that facilitate efficient, compliant andtransparent processes and support a more strategic focus. This need can be broken down intoseveral critical capabilities that CPM vendors must satisfy. These factors affect the relativeimportance of the critical capabilities for each use case described in this document.
They include:
■ Financial Close and Reporting
■ Complex Financial Close and Reporting
■ Financial Budgets and Plans
■ Complex Financial Budgets and Plans
■ Disclosure Management — XBRL Reporting
■ Disclosure Management — Performance Reporting
■ Ease of Maintenance/Upgrade
■ Ease of Implementation
■ Ease of Use
■ Hybrid On-Premises/Cloud Budgets and Plans
■ Corporate Planning and Modelling
The degree to which each of the above capabilities is important varies by use case.
The use cases described in this research are for:
■ Public or private organizations with less than $250 million in annual revenue
■ Public or private organizations with $250 million to $1 billion in annual revenue
■ Public or private organizations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue
■ Individual business units within large organizations
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Analysis
Critical Capabilities Use-Case Graphics
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Figure 1. Product or Service Scores for Public/Private (Less Than $250 Million) Use Case
Source: Gartner (July 2015)
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Figure 2. Product or Service Scores for Public/Private ($250 Million to $1 Billion) Use Case
Source: Gartner (July 2015)
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Figure 3. Product or Service Scores for Public/Private (More Than $1 Billion) Use Case
Source: Gartner (July 2015)
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Figure 4. Product or Service Scores for Individual Business Unit Use Case
Source: Gartner (July 2015)
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Vendors
Adaptive Insights
Adaptive Insights is a pure-play cloud vendor headquartered in Palo Alto, California. It providessolutions for budgeting, forecasting, reporting, financial consolidation, dashboards, modeling,analysis and collaboration. It has separate integration (Adaptive Integration), Microsoft Officeconnection (Adaptive OfficeConnect) and revenue planning (Adaptive Revenue) products. Thevendor also offers Adaptive Discovery, an integrated business intelligence (BI) package, as well asdisclosure management support through its partnership with Vintage.
Adaptive received high scores for all ease-of-use capabilities and for financial budgets and plans;these are important for small and midsize businesses as well as individual business units withinlarger organizations. References surveyed indicated Adaptive's growing popularity as a solution forindividual business units within larger enterprises, with 39% of Adaptive's respondents reporting anaverage annual revenue of over $1 billion.
While Adaptive supports a range of deployment sizes, 48% of its survey respondents had fewerthan 50 users. The number of respondents with larger numbers of users should also be noted, 34%had 50 to 199 users and 14% had between 200 and 499 users. Three percent reported between500 and 999 users. For all survey respondents, Adaptive's mean number of users was 128.
Gartner survey results indicated that all Adaptive's respondents used their solution for budgetingand a very high percentage use it for planning and forecasting (97%). Fifty-nine percent ofrespondents use it for financial consolidation and reporting. Of those that reported using financialconsolidation and reporting, 100% used it for internal financial reporting and 53% for externalreporting. These respondents, especially those with less than $1 billion in revenue, also reportedincreasing financial consolidation and reporting application complexity in that 35% used currencyconversions and intercompany eliminations. However, only 12% used journals and supportstatutory consolidations. Also, more than half of the company's respondents reported using itssolution for other purposes such as for reporting and operational planning.
Anaplan
Anaplan is a pure-play SaaS vendor headquartered in San Francisco, California. Anaplan provides aSaaS business modeling and planning platform for finance and other business functions (such assales, marketing and production) capable of supporting integrated planning models and complexuse cases. Anaplan does not have a separate disclosure management offering. Anaplan targetsease of use while providing high performance to allow the business user to create and maintaincomplex models. This is useful when higher volumes of data are modeled more frequently thanfinance-focused monthly or quarterly planning processes require.
Anaplan received high scores for its ease of use, maintenance and upgrade, and its scores wereamong the highest for complex financial budgets/plans, and corporate planning and modeling. Thiscombination of critical capability scores is important not only for individual business units withinlarger organizations but also for midsize and large organizations. Most of Anaplan's respondentsused their solution for planning and forecasting (88%) and budgeting (83%). Forty-five percent
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reported using it for financial consolidation and reporting. Of those that reported using financialconsolidation and reporting, 100% used it for internal reporting and only 16% used it for externalreporting. These reference responses, along with Gartner's customer interactions, indicate acommon usage in business units and departments of larger organizations. For example, 42% ofrespondents had over $1 billion in annual revenue and 21% had $10 billion or more. AlthoughAnaplan has examples of customer implementations with many hundreds of users, 59% ofrespondents had fewer than 50 users and 90% had fewer than 200.
Axiom EPM
Axiom EPM is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, and leverages its relationship with software andconsulting firm Kaufman Hall to provide a more aligned product and implementation offering. Thisrelationship appears to be successful given Gartner's survey results, where satisfaction scores areamong the highest for ease of implementation and implementation cost. Although the vendor has anindustry-specific focus (primarily for healthcare), it also offers cross-industry capabilities for financialservices and, most recently, higher education.
Axiom EPM's platform supports planning and budgeting with some unique industry-specificcapabilities such as patient profitability for healthcare and funds transfer pricing for banking. Thevendor also offers capital and workforce planning, strategy management, financial reporting, andprofitability modeling. Axiom EPM respondents have consistently given high ratings for bothproduct and implementation.
Axiom received high scores for ease of implementation, and scored well for ease of use and forcomplex financial budgets and plans. These capabilities are applicable for midsize organizationsand business units in larger organizations; however, its lack of disclosure management capabilitieslowered its score for larger organizations. Of Axiom EPM's respondents, however, 35% had anaverage annual revenue of over $1 billion. They also had mean of 202 users per implementation (thevendor also has examples of customer implementations with thousands of users). Most customerssurveyed use Axiom for budgeting (94%) followed by planning and forecasting (77%) and financialconsolidation and reporting (74%). Of those that reported using Axiom for financial consolidationand reporting, 100% used it for internal reporting and 70% for external reporting. Respondentscited a mix of complexity in their use of the solution for financial consolidation and reportingprocesses with 13% using it for currency conversion, 26% for intercompany eliminations, 22% forjournals, and a higher percentage for statutory consolidations (39%).
Board International
Board International is headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland. The company's CPM offeringcombines CPM and BI capabilities that can support specialized use cases for planning, simulationand cost analysis. Board targets both midmarket and large organizations, especially those thatrequire more dynamic planning models. Board's product suite includes support for financialconsolidation, planning, profitability analysis, strategy management and statutory reporting. Board'sin-memory and predictive capabilities allow it to satisfy complex planning and modeling needs.Board does not have a separate disclosure management offering. Some of the company's partners
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also host its solution on various cloud platforms, a cloud offering based on Amazon Web Services(AWS) is due out later this year.
Board received high scores for corporate planning and modeling, and scored well for complexfinancial budgets and plans as well as ease of implementation. These capabilities are applicable formidsize organizations and business units in larger organizations; however, its lack of a disclosuremanagement capabilities lowered its score for larger organizations. Despite this, 31% of Board'sclient respondents had an average annual revenue of over $1 billion. They also had a mean of 257users per customer and Board has examples of customer implementations with many hundreds ofusers.
Most surveyed customers use Board for budgeting (88%) followed by planning and forecasting(76%) and financial consolidation and reporting (56%). Of those that reported using Board forfinancial consolidation and reporting, 89% supported internal reporting and 47% supported externalreporting. Respondents cited a mix of complexity in support of financial consolidation and reportingprocesses with 21% using it for currency conversion, 53% for intercompany eliminations, 21% forjournals, and a higher percentage of respondents for statutory consolidations (53%). Almost half ofBoard's respondents reported using its solution for other purposes such as operational planningand modeling.
Host Analytics
Host Analytics is a pure-play SaaS vendor headquartered in Redwood City, California. The vendor'sCPM suite provides broad support of office of finance and strategic CPM processes. Host Analytics'products include Planning Cloud, Close Management Cloud, Reporting Cloud and Analytics Cloud.
The vendor has no separate disclosure management offering. Instead, it includes disclosuremanagement capabilities within its Reporting Cloud offering that can generate XBRL-compliantdocuments and automate controls. Host Analytics' critical capability scores for complex budgetingand planning CPM increased this year given the addition of its Host Analytics Modeling Cloud, theresult of a technology partnership with MongoDB. This solution was introduced earlier this year andHost Analytics is currently expanding its analytics and formula capabilities to support a variety ofmodeling needs. Host Analytics also supports profitability modeling and strategy management withscorecards, dashboards and initiative planning support.
Host Analytics received high scores for all ease-of-use capabilities and for financial close andreporting. Its scores were also respectable for complex financial close and reporting compared tosome of the larger vendors. Host Analytics also received good scores for financial budgets andplans, as well as corporate planning and modeling. This combination of ratings is important forsmall and midsize businesses but also benefits larger organizations and individual business unitswithin them. Clients with an average annual revenue of over $1 billion made up 41% of HostAnalytics respondents. This result, along with Gartner customer interactions, indicates a growinglevel of usage with larger organizations. Respondents had a mean of 90 users, indicating moreextensive use within the office of finance than throughout the organization; however, Host Analyticshas customer examples with many hundreds of users.
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Most respondents used Host Analytics for budgeting (95%) followed by planning and forecasting(90%) and financial consolidation and reporting (60%). Of those that reported using the company forfinancial consolidation and reporting, 100% used it for internal reporting and 83% for external.
Respondents indicated a growing complexity in support of financial consolidation and reportingprocesses with 42% using it for currency conversion, 42% for intercompany eliminations and 17%for journals. However, only 8% of respondents used the solution for statutory consolidation support.
IBM
IBM's CPM suite includes solutions for budgeting and planning, profitability modeling andoptimization, strategy management, and financial consolidation and close management for largeand midsize organizations (Cognos Express). IBM's TM1-based solutions support complex planningand forecasting needs, especially when sophisticated modeling, data visualizations and high levelsof user interface customization are required. IBM customers tend to use their CPM suites to supportmore strategic requirements. The IBM TM1 platform supports strategy management andscorecarding capabilities, and IBM Cognos Disclosure Management (CDM) is available both on-premises and in the cloud.
The Cognos platform employs in-memory computing to support large data volumes and embedsIBM SPSS capabilities for predictive analysis. Cognos TM1 (release 10.1) increased performancewith additional multithreading and 10.2 (due out later this year) includes additional smart cachingand contention locking improvements. All IBM CPM applications are available hosted on the IBMCloud. IBM has a relatively small but growing number of TM1 cloud customers.
IBM received high scores for corporate planning and modeling as well as for complex financialbudgets and plans, and disclosure management. These capabilities are primarily applicable for largeorganizations, but its planning and modeling capabilities are also of benefit to business units withinlarger organizations as well as midsize ones. Of IBM's survey respondents, 48% had an averageannual revenue of over $1 billion. Client respondents also cited a mean of 415 users, this is in thetop quartile for all vendors in this study. Respondents also had relatively high levels of customerimplementations with many hundreds to thousands of users.
Most respondents used IBM's solutions for budgeting (78%) followed by planning and forecasting(83%) and financial consolidation and reporting (74%). Of those that reported using IBM for financialconsolidation and reporting, 100% used it for internal reporting and 65% for external. These results,along with Gartner inquiry feedback, demonstrate IBM's tendency to support larger organizationsfor complex planning and modeling.
Infor
Infor is headquartered in New York City. Infor delivers a broad CPM suite and has a widespreadglobal customer base. Infor's CPM users also commonly use its EPM offerings. Infor has twoseparate CPM offerings, CPM and Infor Dynamic Enterprise Performance Management (Infor d/EPM). Infor continues to support the CPM 10.4 product line (v.10.4.2 was released in June 2014);however, Infor d/EPM represents the vendor's main CPM suite product set going forward. Cloud
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availability for Infor d/EPM through AWS is also available. Infor d/EPM was released in March 2014;this offering duplicates functionality from Infor's current CPM suite, but leverages both its ERP andBI in-memory platform to provide new capabilities such as real-time consolidations and statisticalforecasting. It also integrates with Infor Ming.le, the company's collaboration platform. However, allInfor customers surveyed used its CPM (as opposed to Infor d/EPM) suite. Infor offers additionalsolutions under the Infor d/EPM umbrella including sales and operations planning (formanufacturing), project cost ledger (for project-based cost accounting) and workforce budgeting.The Infor d/EPM suite lacks disclosure and close management capabilities.
Infor's scores were, on the whole, slightly above average for financial budgets and plans, modelingand financial close and reporting. Its capabilities are applicable for midsize organizations andbusiness units in larger organizations, but a lack of disclosure management capabilities, especiallyrelated to performance reporting, lowered its overall scores.
Of Infor's reference respondents, 48% had an average annual revenue of over $1 billion, and amean of 510 users. This is in the top quartile for all vendors in this study; however, additional surveyresponses and Gartner customer interactions suggest that this number is a bit high, and mayinclude users of its ERP offerings.
Most respondents used Infor's solutions for financial consolidation and reporting (90%) followed byplanning and forecasting (85%) and budgeting (80%). Of those that reported using Infor for financialconsolidation and reporting, 100% used it for internal reporting and 89% for external. In addition, arelatively high percentage of respondents reported using functionality indicative of more complexfinancial reporting processes, such as currency conversion (50%), intercompany eliminations (61%),journals (44%) and statutory consolidations (56%). These respondents, along with Gartner inquiryfeedback, indicate a higher reliance on Infor's CPM solution for office-of-finance processes (with theexception of disclosure management) as opposed to supporting complex planning and modelingneeds.
Longview Solutions
Longview Solutions is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Longview offers a traditional CPM suite,which includes a tax provisioning and tax data management solution. Longview CorporatePerformance Management and the Longview Tax solution share the same architectural platform.The company's CPM offerings also include Longview Consolidation, Longview Planning, LongviewProfitability Analytics, Longview Tax Provisioning & Reporting, Longview Tax Data Management,Longview Tax Planning, Longview Integration Suite and DisclosureNet. Longview can also managetransactional data to address additional needs such as transfer pricing and financial and tax taskmanagement.
Longview is unique in its ability to support data provisioning and tax planning capabilities inconjunction with its traditional CPM suite. This is especially useful to customers with complexmultijurisdictional tax reporting challenges. Longview offers a cloud-based version of its CPM suiteleveraging SunGard Enterprise Cloud Services. On 31 March 2015, Longview announced its mergerwith Germany-based BI vendor Arcplan, and has subsequently released Simply Finance, an analyticsolution for Longview Consolidation or any financial consolidation solution.
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Longview's scores were above average for simple and complex financial close and reporting, andsimple and complex financial budgeting and planning. These capabilities are important for bothmidsize and large organizations. Seventy-four percent of Longview's customer respondents had anaverage annual revenue of over $1 billion. They also had a mean of 634 users (this includes usersfor non-CPM processes such as tax planning). These results are the highest of any vendorsurveyed, including IBM, Oracle and SAP.
Most respondents used their solutions for budgeting, planning and forecasting (82%) and financialconsolidation and reporting (65%). Of those that reported using Longview for financial consolidationand reporting, 91% used it for internal reporting and 77% for external. In addition, a fairly highpercentage of respondents reported using functionality indicative of more complex financialreporting processes such as intercompany eliminations (55%), journals (50%) and statutoryconsolidations (64%). Currency conversion was supported by 36%.
Oracle
Oracle's EPM platform supports a broad range of CPM processes, including financial consolidationand reporting with Hyperion Financial Management and Hyperion Financial Close Management(which includes an account reconciliation module). It also offers Hyperion Disclosure Management,Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, and Hyperion Strategic Finance.Additional products exist for extraction, transformation and load (Hyperion Financial Data QualityManagement) metadata management (Hyperion Data Relationship Management) betweenHyperion's EPM modules and other data sources. The vendor also offers its Oracle Hyperion TaxProvision product. Oracle has also offered its Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service since Februaryof 2014 and recently introduced its Enterprise Performance Reporting cloud product in May of 2015.
Oracle's on-premises CPM suite supports a wide variety of complex use cases and addresses theneeds of large organizations. Compared to its on-premises offerings, Oracle's Planning andBudgeting Cloud Service is easier to use, due to new a new user interface, and simplified navigationand administration. It is appropriate for simpler use cases where extensive analytics, modeling andworkflow support are not required (smaller organizations or for departments or business units inlarger organizations, for example). No in-production customers were surveyed by Gartner for thisstudy and no additional customer feedback has been received. Oracle claims an average user countof about 60 users per implementation.
Oracle received high scores for complex financial close and reporting, complex financial budgetsand plans, as well as for corporate planning and modeling and disclosure management. Thesecapabilities are primarily applicable for large organizations but its Planning and Budgeting CloudService product may also be useful to individual business units within these organizations. OfOracle's reference respondents, 61% had an average annual revenue of over $1 billion, and a meanof 543 users, the second highest number in this study.
Most Oracle respondents used their solutions for planning and forecasting (87%), budgeting (83%)and financial consolidation and reporting (83%). Of those that reported using Oracle for financialconsolidation and reporting, 100% used it for internal reporting and 76% for external. In addition tothe broad support of these processes, a high percentage of respondents reported using
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functionality indicative of more complex financial consolidation and reporting processes such ascurrency conversion (72%), intercompany eliminations (72%), journals (76%) and statutoryconsolidations (64%). These results, along with feedback received through Gartner customerinteractions, demonstrate a high degree of process complexity support for financial consolidationand reporting on-premises applications.
prevero
Prevero is headquartered in Munich. The company offers a CPM suite with BI capabilities, as well asseparate solutions for planning, consolidation and treasury. Its suite includes support for budgeting,forecasting, reporting, financial consolidation, dashboards, modeling and analysis, as well as projectportfolio planning and several industry-specific offerings. In 1Q15, prevero purchased BI vendorMIK; however, no related CPM analytics capabilities have been announced to date. Prevero'sMemoLytics IMC engine supports complex models and predictive planning capabilities. Whencombined with application building and modeling functions designed for business users, preverotends to be used for a variety of CPM and non-CPM needs within its customer base, such as forsales planning and materials pricing. The vendor has also developed industry-specific offerings forutilities, sports and airports.
Prevero received good scores for corporate planning and modeling, and complex financial budgets,as well as all ease-of-use capabilities. These are applicable to business units in larger organizationsand midsize organizations. The company's lack of disclosure management capabilities lowered itsscore for larger organizations. However, 20% of prevero's reference respondents had an averageannual revenue of over $1 billion and they had an overall mean of 149 users.
All prevero respondents reported using their solutions for planning and forecasting (100%), the nextpopular use was for budgeting (93%) and then financial consolidation and reporting (76%).Compared to other vendors in this study, prevero respondents did not use their solution for complexfinancial consolidation and reporting. Only 33% used it for internal reporting, 21% for externalreporting, and a relatively a low percentage of respondents reported using prevero to supportcurrency conversion (7%), intercompany eliminations (10%), journals (9%) and statutoryconsolidations (15%). More than half of respondents reported using their solution for otherpurposes, such as operational planning and modeling. These results, along with feedback fromGartner customer interactions, demonstrate prevero's tendency to be used for strategic CPMprocesses such as planning and modeling.
Prophix
Prophix is headquartered in Ontario, Canada. Prophix supports budgeting, planning, forecasting,reporting, analysis and consolidations. The vendor's offering also includes its Model Manager andDetailed Planning Manager capabilities that support additional planning detail, such as for sales,manufacturing, marketing, HR and IT data. Prophix has a disclosure management solution throughits partner Certent.
The Prophix suite is built on the Microsoft SQL Server 2014 platform, and uses Microsoft Excel andSharePoint. It is well-suited for midsize organizations with a Microsoft strategy. Prophix customersreport good ease of use from an end-user, implementation and administration standpoint.
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Prophix received high scores for ease of use and was above average for all ease-of-use capabilities,as well as for financial budgets and plans, and financial close and reporting. These are especiallyimportant for small and midsize companies, as well as individual business units within largerorganizations. Of our Prophix Software reference respondents, 8% had an average annual revenueof over $1 billion and they had a mean of 87 users. These results are consistent with the vendor'sstrategic direction to address the CPM needs of midmarket organizations.
All respondents reported using their solutions for budgeting. The next popular use was for planningand forecasting (85%) and then financial consolidation and reporting (82%). Of those that reportedusing Prophix for financial consolidation and reporting, 93% tended to use their solution for internalreporting and 63% for external. Compared to other vendors in this study, fewer respondentsreported using Prophix to support currency conversion (30%), intercompany eliminations (30%) andjournals (15%). However, 30% of respondents indicated that they supported statutoryconsolidations using Prophix. These results, along with feedback from Gartner customerinteractions, demonstrate that Prophix is used most often to support more simple consolidations;however, it has the design flexibility for a variety of uses. For example, almost half of respondentsreported using the solution for other purposes such as operational planning.
SAP
SAP has a broad portfolio of applications and is typically used by large, complex globalorganizations, especially those standardizing on a SAP ERP and/or BI platform. Its flagshipbudgeting, planning and forecasting, and financial close offering, SAP Business Planning andConsolidation version for SAP NetWeaver, combines the most common CPM needs of the office offinance into a single product. This eases data and metadata management between these tworelated processes. SAP's other key CPM products include SAP Strategy Management, SAPProfitability and Cost Management, and SAP Disclosure Management. SAP's enterpriseperformance management (EPM) solutions support an extensive breadth and depth of CPMfunctionality. In addition, SAP Business Planning and Consolidation for NetWeaver has beenoptimized for Hana in-memory platform to speed planning, forecasting and reporting processes.SAP Profitability and Cost Management, and SAP Financial Consolidation also support Hana. Also,unique among other ERP/CPM vendors, when configured with SAP Accounting in S/4HANA, theproduct delivers new, real-time integrated planning capabilities directly on SAP ERP data.
SAP's on-premises CPM suite has demonstrated its ability to support a wide variety of complex usecases, and address the needs of large organizations. SAP's new Cloud for Planning solutionprovides greater ease of use, new embedded analytics, collaboration capabilities, and calendar-driven workflow/task support by using SAP's in-memory Hana cloud platform. However, thissolution was introduced recently (in February 2015) and no customers were surveyed or interviewedfor this Gartner research.
SAP received high scores for complex financial budgets and plans, corporate planning andmodeling, complex financial close and reporting, and disclosure management. These capabilitiesare primarily applicable for large organizations, especially those using the company's ERP offerings.
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SAP's Cloud for Planning solution may also be useful to individual business units within theseorganizations, as well as midsize companies.
Of SAP's reference respondents, 64% had an average annual revenue of over $1 billion and a meanof 349 users. Most SAP respondents used their solutions for planning and forecasting (81%),budgeting (67%) and financial consolidation and reporting (63%). Of those that reported using SAPfor financial consolidation and reporting, 76% used it for internal reporting and 59% for external. Afairly high percentage of these respondents reported using functionality indicative of more complexfinancial reporting processes such as currency conversion (53%), intercompany eliminations (65%),journals (65%) and statutory consolidations (59%). In addition, over 40% of SAP customerssurveyed reported using its solution for other purposes such as operational planning and modeling.These results, along with Gartner inquiry feedback, indicate the ability to support high degrees ofprocess complexity.
SAS Institute
SAS Institute is headquartered in Cary, North Carolina. The SAS performance management suite iscomposed of four integrated offerings: SAS Financial Management, SAS Strategy Management,SAS Cost and Profitability Management, and SAS Capital Planning and Management. The vendor'sanalytics and in-memory computing competencies are most often used by organizations withcomplex analytics performance management needs. SAS does not offer a separate disclosuremanagement solution.
SAS embeds analytics capabilities — such as correlation analysis of cost drivers and scorecardmetrics, predictive forecasting, and the ability to incorporate macroeconomic data — into forecastprojections. The accompanying visualizations and wizards make these capabilities more accessibleto finance users. The company's Capital Planning and Management offering also integrates financialand risk-planning processes at both office-of-finance and operational levels of detail. It alsosupports industry-specific internal capital planning requirements. The vendor's focus onperformance management and strong modeling capabilities are characteristic of SAS Institute'smore extensive strategic CPM initiatives.
SAS Institute received high scores for budgeting and planning, complex budgeting and planning,and corporate modeling, but its scores were lowered by a lack of close management and disclosuremanagement capabilities. Although SAS Institute's respondents varied in size, a relatively largenumber of them were either government or nonprofit entities (36%, the highest in this study). Surveyrespondents had a mean of 120 users.
Most respondents reported using SAS solutions for financial consolidation and reporting (73%),followed by planning and forecasting (67%) and budgeting (60%). Of those that reported using SASfor financial consolidation and reporting, 55% reported using it for external reporting. Gartnercustomer feedback suggests that a relatively high percentage of SAS customers use its solution tosupport profitability and cost modeling.
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Solver
Solver is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It provides close integration (includingtransactional reporting and drill-down capability) with Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft DynamicsNAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Sage X3, Sage 500, Sage 300, Intacct,Acumatica, NetSuite, and SAP Business One.
Solver's CPM and BI offering BI360 is built on a Microsoft platform and utilizes a Microsoft SQLdatabase that can track transactional data both for CPM and operational reporting.
Through its partnerships with document management vendors PaperSave and DocLink, drill-downscan be performed via hyperlinks to document images, such as those used by ERP sales andpayable modules. Solver provides disclosure management capabilities through its new partnershipwith Certent (formerly Rivet Software) for XBRL, benchmarking data and Microsoft Office integrationfor reports and presentations.
Solver received above average scores for all ease-of-use capabilities as well as for financial budgetsand plans. Solver also received good scores for financial close and reporting. These are especiallyimportant for small and midsize businesses. However, 20% of Solver's reference respondents hadan average annual revenue of over $1 billion (the largest grouping of respondents [57%] were evenlysplit into three segments ranging from $100 million to $1 billion). These respondents also had amean of 140 users.
The majority of Solver respondents reported using the company's solutions for financialconsolidation and reporting (92%), for budgeting (62%) and for planning and forecasting (58%). Ofthose that reported using Solver for financial consolidation and reporting, 100% reported using it forinternal reporting and 83% for external. Solver's respondents also reported a mix of complexity insupport of financial consolidation and reporting processes with 29% using it for currencyconversion, 33% for intercompany eliminations, 13% for journals and a higher percentage ofrespondents for statutory consolidations (42%).
Tagetik
Tagetik is headquartered in Lucca, Italy. Tagetik's solutions support both office-of-finance andstrategic CPM initiatives but the company is particularly strong in statutory reporting and closemanagement capabilities. Tagetik's CPM suite supports budgeting, forecasting, reporting, financialconsolidation, dashboards, modeling and analysis, as well as close and disclosure management.
Tagetik's solution can be deployed either as SaaS with Tagetik Cloud (using AWS or Microsoft Azurearchitecture) or on-premises. Dashboarding and pivoting capabilities are included, while PowerPointintegration and a separate analytics offering (Tagetik Analytics) are available as options. Tagetik alsohas packaged connectors for the Qlik Analytic Platform and Microsoft PowerBI, as well as industry-specific capabilities for manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, banking and insurance sectors.
Tagetik received among the highest scores for financial close and reporting, complex financial closeand reporting, disclosure management, and for all ease-of-use capabilities. These capabilities are
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applicable for both midsize and large organizations. Of Tagetik's reference respondents, 57% hadan average annual revenue of over $1 billion, and a mean of 350 users.
These results compare favorably with the respondents of other large vendors in this study. MostTagetik respondents reported using their solutions for financial consolidation and reporting (87%),budgeting (77%) and planning and forecasting (73%). Of those that reported using Tagetik forfinancial consolidation and reporting, 81% used it for internal reporting and 77% for external. Inaddition, a high percentage of respondents reported using functionality indicative of more complexfinancial close and reporting processes such as currency conversion (58%), intercompanyeliminations (69%), journals (58%) and statutory consolidations (54%). These results, along withfeedback from Gartner customer interactions, indicate the ability to support a high degree ofcomplexity, especially for financial close and reporting processes in conjunction with a high degreeof satisfaction.
Talentia Software
Talentia is headquartered in Paris, and provides both finance and human capital managementsolutions. The vendor can support complex statutory consolidation and reporting requirements, andmost of its customers leverage its CPM solution for financial consolidation and reporting. Talentia'scombination of CPM and human capital management solutions allows for more integrated financialplanning and reporting between the finance and HR areas. The vendor offers both on-premises andcloud-based solutions, as well as industry-specific solutions for banking, insurance and real estate.
Talentia's strongest scores were for financial close and reporting, and complex financial close andreporting. Of Talentia's reference respondents, 16% had an average annual revenue of over $1billion. The company's largest grouping of respondents (38%) was in the $250 million to $500million range. These respondents also had a mean of 44 users. The overwhelming majority (94%) ofTalentia customers surveyed use its solutions for financial consolidation and reporting. Fewer usethem for budgeting (44%) and planning and forecasting (38%). Of those that reported using Talentiafor financial consolidation and reporting, 80% reported using it for internal reporting and 53% forexternal. In addition, a relatively high percentage of respondents reported using functionalityindicative of more complex financial reporting processes such as intercompany eliminations (73%)and statutory consolidations (67%). These results demonstrate a focus on complex financial closeand reporting capabilities.
Tidemark
Tidemark is a pure-play cloud vendor headquartered in Redwood City, California. The companyprovides integrated financial and operational planning, and related performance analytics. Thecompany's solutions also support labor and expense planning, profitability analysis, and financialconsolidation and reporting, as well as a planning solution for higher education. Tidemark cansupport high-volume, structured transactional and unstructured data. Its planning capabilities arealso supported by diagnostic and predictive analytics, allowing it to support more complex modelsand planning use cases. Although Tidemark does not support full disclosure management, itprovides a unique collaborative reporting solution with its Tidemark Storylines offering. Thissupports a performance reporting workflow with expanded narratives and actionable visualizations.
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Tidemark scored well for financial budgets and plans, the performance reporting component ofdisclosure management, corporate planning and modeling, as well as ease of maintenance andupgrade, and ease of use.
Tidemark references had the lowest level of participation in this study. The respondents reported arange of organization sizes with the largest portion, (25%) in the $500 million to $1 billion range.Most customers surveyed use Tidemark for budgeting (80%) followed by planning and forecasting(70%). Only 30% of these respondents use Tidemark to support financial consolidation andreporting. Of those, 100% did so for internal reporting and 33% for external. Respondents reporteda low level of financial consolidation and reporting application complexity, and no respondentsreported using Tidemark solutions to support currency conversion, intercompany eliminations,journals or statutory consolidations.
These results demonstrate a focus on complex financial close and reporting process capabilities.Feedback from Gartner interactions supports these results, indicating that Tidemark's primary usecase is in support of planning and budgeting initiatives.
Context
This research analyzes how successfully the selected vendors (see the Inclusion Criteria section)support core CPM processes, as well as their strategic use and ease of adoption. This analysisdifferentiates the appropriateness of each vendor's solution based on organization size. Thisgenerally reflects use-case complexity, and the related need for more diverse functionality andapplication customization. In addition, the use of each vendor's solution is evaluated for a particularbusiness unit within a larger organization — that is, as a departmental solution for organizations with$1 billion or more in annual revenue.
Product/Service Class Definition
Support for budgeting and planning, as well as financial consolidation, comprise the roots of CPM.CPM can be viewed as both tactical — to optimize financial reporting processes — and strategic —to plan and model in order to support enterprise performance optimization. These applications bringrigor, accuracy and transparency to financial management processes, address compliance needs,and help the office of finance ensure the accuracy of reporting results. They also support morestrategic needs such as corporate planning and modeling, performance reporting, and strategymanagement.
Critical Capabilities Definition
Financial Close & Reporting
This is the creation of an enterprise view of financial information for management and externalreporting with structured financial statements.
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Consolidation and close capability allows for transparent, accurate and timely external reporting,insightful management reporting, and variance analysis from targets. Results can be reported atconsolidated, regional or business-unit levels and a detailed audit trail of activity is maintained.
Complex Financial Close & Reporting
This includes the aforementioned financial close and reporting capabilities, as well as the support oflarger, more complex organizations to reconcile, consolidate and summarize financial data based ondifferent accounting standards and government regulations.
It also includes the ability to support complex transaction processing rules to automateintercompany transaction management (elimination and matching), as well as currency translationand revaluation capabilities. This encompasses the ability to support generally accepted accountingprinciples (GAAP) presentation rules, such as U.S. GAAP, and International Financial ReportingStandards (IFRS), to enable the preparation of statutory financial statements with appropriatecommentary and supplementary notes. Expanded capabilities may be provided within financialclose solutions or through separate offerings to provide additional close management functionality.These capabilities primarily include improved close control process management, reconciliationmanagement, intercompany activity management, journal entry control, financial control testing, andtax data provisioning.
Financial Budgets/Plans
The ability to support control-oriented budgeting, and strategic planning processes.
This includes support for financial budgeting processes in which targets are set for revenue,expenditure and cash generation. This also includes the ability to act as a fixed control mechanismand use financial classifications found in the general ledger to classify financial goals and targets.
This also includes the ability to support planning and forecasting using a modeling engine optimizedfor the office of finance's use by, for example, including profit-and-loss balance sheet and cash-flowforecasting capabilities. This feature distinguishes CPM from other analytics applications that alsocreate plans and forecasts (such as applications for operations planning, or marketing campaignplanning). These capabilities support the creation, review and approval of financially focused plansand forecasts, as well as their associated workflows. They should support driver-based planningand maintain an audit trail of all associated activities.
Complex Financial Budgets/Plans
This includes the aforementioned budgeting, planning and forecasting capabilities as well as theability to support more advanced modeling and analytics, with a broader set of users and expandeddata stores.
These applications help the office of finance to link to related operational planning capabilities, suchas workforce, sales, capital, demand, IT financial planning and tax planning. These solutions createmore-accurate predictions based on experience, can model alternative outcomes if businessconditions change, and often incorporate in-memory computing, advanced statistical techniques
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and other features to help support more collaborative enterprisewide planning, predict performance,and guide strategy.
Disclosure Management — XBRL
The ability to support the external disclosure process and publish compliant XBRL documentstargeting the functionality described below, and generally provided through a separate disclosuremanagement offering.
These solutions include the ability to support collaboration capabilities between the company andthe financial statement publisher by providing business rules, workflow, and audit trails to improvethe ability to meet regulatory, compliance and governance programs. This includes the support offinancial reporting technologies, such as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).
Disclosure Manage — Performance Rep
Disclosure management — performance reporting is the ability to support the internal and externaldisclosure process from a performance reporting standpoint, including related collaboration,workflow support and document management.
Capabilities target the functionality described below and are generally provided through a separatedisclosure management offering.
These solutions are used to create internal and external management performance reportingpackages. They are also used to create report packages (board books, for example) and to aidrelated collaboration efforts supporting their production and consumption. They should enablenarrative reporting, provide workflow support, and include audit and document managementcapabilities in the support of enterprise performance management.
Ease of Maintenance/Upgrade
This capability describes the ability of a solution to be maintained and upgraded with a minimum ofeffort, specialized skills, and cost. SaaS-based applications that include upgrade capabilities havean advantage within this capability.
This includes the ability to provide a common platform (for on-premises solutions) in which financeusers can play a major (or sole) role in maintaining and upgrading the solution. It also refers to theability of the solution to provide version updates with minimal application administration effort, aswell as greater cost predictability and ease of use. The degree of multitenancy, percentage of cloud-based customers and the vendor's experience supporting a cloud-based solution are also keyfactors in determining a solution's capability in this area (see "How to Evaluate CPM CloudSolutions").
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Ease of Implementation
This refers to the solution's ability to be designed and implemented rapidly and with a minimum ofspecialized skills and outside consulting expertise.
Ease of Use
This refers to solution use from both an ongoing administrative and end-user standpoint. It includesend-user satisfaction, ease of adoption, effectiveness and ease of support.
Hybrid On-Prem Cloud Budgets/Plans
This refers to the vendor's ability to provide both on-premises and cloud options as well as theability to integrate both into hybrid solutions.
The choice to use both on-premises and cloud solutions is dependent on an organization's interestin adopting cloud solutions at different times and/or to support different processes. This capabilityinvolves providing a separate cloud solution or a cloud version of an on-premises product withversion update and performance monitoring capabilities.
Corporate Planning & Modeling
This capability extends complex financial planning to include other corporate planning andmodeling efforts in support short-term and long-term planning.
Users within the office of finance need models that are easier to build and maintain, allow for morefrequent modifications of financial assumptions, and leverage additional internal and external datasources. More extensive data allows additional statistical techniques to be used, requires moreextensive in-memory computing capabilities, and can necessitate the involvement of a widercommunity of users (including those outside of finance). This capability supports complex, initiative-specific planning, cost and profitability modeling, and provides decision support.
Use Cases
Public/Private (Less Than $250 Million)
Small organizations that are publicly traded or privately held with less than $250 million in annualrevenue.
Public/Private ($250 Million to $1 Billion)
Midsize organizations that are publicly traded or privately held with $250 million to $1 billion inannual revenue.
Public/Private (More Than $1 Billion)
Large organizations that are publicly traded or privately held with over $1 billion in annual revenue.
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Individual Business Unit
Individual business units within a large publicly traded or privately held organization.
Vendors Added and Dropped
Added■ Axiom EPM
■ Solver
■ Talentia
■ Tidemark
Dropped■ None
Inclusion Criteria
Market presence
■ Vendor has at least 25 live customers using its CPM products.
■ License and maintenance revenue was at least $10 million from CPM applications at the end of2014.
■ Vendor has live customers in two or more of the following regions: North America, SouthAmerica, EMEA, Asia/Pacific and Japan.
■ Vendor provides cross-industry office-of-finance and strategic CPM capabilities for midsize orlarge companies, large public-sector/nongovernmental organizations with multiple, diversedepartments, or business units within these larger organizations.
Product capabilities
Vendor's CPM suite supports (at a minimum):
■ Financial budgeting and planning
■ Financial consolidation and reporting
Vendor viability
■ Vendor must be viable, and must not be in the process of filing for bankruptcy.
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Table 1. Weighting for Critical Capabilities in Use Cases
Critical Capabilities
Public/Private(Less Than$250 Million)
Public/Private($250 Million to$1 Billion)
Public/Private(More Than $1Billion)
IndividualBusiness Unit
Financial Close & Reporting 15% 14% 5% 3%
Complex Financial Close &Reporting
0% 5% 15% 0%
Financial Budgets/Plans 25% 15% 10% 15%
Complex Financial Budgets/Plans 0% 10% 25% 9%
Disclosure Management — XBRL 0% 2% 5% 0%
Disclosure Manage — PerformanceRep
3% 4% 5% 3%
Ease of Maintenance/Upgrade 15% 10% 5% 15%
Ease of Implementation 20% 15% 5% 15%
Ease of Use 17% 10% 5% 10%
Hybrid On-Prem Cloud Budgets/Plans
0% 0% 0% 10%
Corporate Planning & Modeling 5% 15% 20% 20%
Total 100% 100% 100% 100%
As of June 2015
Source: Gartner (July 2015)
This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class of products/services. Each capability is then weighed in terms of its relative importance for specific product/service use cases.
Critical Capabilities Rating
Each of the products/services has been evaluated on the critical capabilities on a scale of 1 to 5; ascore of 1 = Poor (most or all defined requirements are not achieved), while 5 = Outstanding(significantly exceeds requirements).
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Table 2. Product/Service Rating on Critical Capabilities
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Table 3 shows the product/service scores for each use case. The scores, which are generated bymultiplying the use case weightings by the product/service ratings, summarize how well the criticalcapabilities are met for each use case.
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As part of this research, Gartner conducted a survey of organizations using CPM products fromSeptember 2014 to November 2014. The survey participants were customer references nominatedby each of the 17 CPM suite vendors featured in "Magic Quadrant for Corporate PerformanceManagement Suites." These surveyed customers were asked 20 specific questions about theirexperiences with their CPM vendors and solutions; Gartner obtained 449 full responses. In additionto the survey results, Critical Capabilities research is also the result of the significant considerationof extensive information evaluated from ongoing Gartner CPM reference visits and calls. Theseinteractions serve as a critical component of vendor evaluation.
Critical Capabilities Methodology
This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class ofproducts or services. Each capability is then weighted in terms of its relative importancefor specific product or service use cases. Next, products/services are rated in terms ofhow well they achieve each of the critical capabilities. A score that summarizes howwell they meet the critical capabilities for each use case is then calculated for eachproduct/service.
"Critical capabilities" are attributes that differentiate products/services in a class interms of their quality and performance. Gartner recommends that users consider theset of critical capabilities as some of the most important criteria for acquisitiondecisions.
In defining the product/service category for evaluation, the analyst first identifies theleading uses for the products/services in this market. What needs are end-users lookingto fulfill, when considering products/services in this market? Use cases should match
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common client deployment scenarios. These distinct client scenarios define the UseCases.
The analyst then identifies the critical capabilities. These capabilities are generalizedgroups of features commonly required by this class of products/services. Eachcapability is assigned a level of importance in fulfilling that particular need; some sets offeatures are more important than others, depending on the use case being evaluated.
Each vendor’s product or service is evaluated in terms of how well it delivers eachcapability, on a five-point scale. These ratings are displayed side-by-side for allvendors, allowing easy comparisons between the different sets of features.
Ratings and summary scores range from 1.0 to 5.0:
1 = Poor or Absent: most or all defined requirements for a capability are not achieved
To determine an overall score for each product in the use cases, the product ratings aremultiplied by the weightings to come up with the product score in use cases.
The critical capabilities Gartner has selected do not represent all capabilities for anyproduct; therefore, may not represent those most important for a specific use situationor business objective. Clients should use a critical capabilities analysis as one ofseveral sources of input about a product before making a product/service decision.
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