Cloud planning

Drive agility and insights, while cutting costs

Today’s volatile business environment requires increased agility and flexibility. To meet that need, financial planning is quickly morphing from reactive into dynamic and forward-looking. It’s becoming more collaborative and connected too. By embracing insights from other teams, both internally and externally, organizations can make much better business decisions.

If you’re still relying on good old spreadsheets to support your planning processes, however, you might stumble upon some serious hurdles. Cloud planning to the rescue!

The rapid rise of EPM and FP&A …

The responsibilities of your finance team have long exceeded the boundaries of traditional accounting. That’s why Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) solutions have been taking the finance office by storm for a while now. Automating a wide range of capabilities – from budgeting, forecasting and planning to consolidation –, they increase visibility and insight into how your organization is and will be performing and ensure the agility you need to swiftly change directions whenever needed.

… and more and more connected FP&A

To become a truly strategic business partner, however, you need to look beyond financial data alone and gather a more holistic view of their organization’s performance. That’s why forward-looking organizations move to extended – or connected – planning (xP&A). Connected planning breaks down siloes between operational and finance planning, by consolidating planning processes (finance, sales, supply, HR, tax, etc.) across the entire organization.

Gartner expects 30% of FP&A implementations to support operational planning by 2024.

Source: 2022 Gartner® Market Guide for Cloud, Extended Planning and Analysis Solutions

As the scope of financial planning broadens, so do the software and hardware requirements. If you rely on manual processes and spreadsheets like MS Excel for data collection, validation, budgeting and reporting, you must have experienced the restrictions. To save time, reduce errors and boost agility, more and more organizations are shifting from a complex web of spreadsheets to cloud-based EPM and xP&A processes.

The benefits of software as a service (SaaS) planning solutions:

Boost efficiency: automate tasks that would otherwise require manual input, saving you time, while reducing the risk of human error;
Take well-informed decisions: get an up-to-date picture of your financial situations, thanks to real-time data analysis;
Collaborate with ease with team members, regardless of where they’re working;

Reduce your total cost of ownership: skip large costs such as the upfront investment in new hardware, and cut the cost of upgrades, support, maintenance, etc. as these are included in your subscription;
Raise agility and flexibility: pay for what you need, add or remove users, and embrace new features to meet changing business requirements;
Enable innovation: embrace new features that improve the efficiency and accuracy of your system with a click;
Ensure easy access: make sure the system is accessible anywhere, anytime, and on any device
Trust cloud security: protect your sensitive financial data at all times, thanks to advanced security features, including data encryption and secure access controls.

Which cloud platform do you need?

There are many cloud solutions available to replace your familiar spreadsheet environment. Based on our deep-rooted expertise and experience, we can help you decide which platform best matches your needs.

Bring financial planning to the next level. Check out our featured SaaS solutions below.

Vena

Cloud planning platform that combines the familiarity of an Excel interface with the power of performance management.

Explore Vena

Anaplan

Intuitive, powerful cloud-native platform that breaks down silos in organizations to allow truly connected planning.

Explore Anaplan

SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud)

All-in-one cloud platform for planning, business intelligence, and predictive analysis that works seamlessly together with your trusted SAP stack, and also any other environment.

Explore SAC

Questions? Contact us for more information.

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