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Critical Capabilities for Strategic Corporate Performance Management Solutions

Published: 26 September 2016 ID: G00313633
Analyst(s): Christopher Iervolino, John E. Van Decker

Summary
IT leaders for corporate performance management — and finance executives — will find that the strengths of strategic CPM vendors vary
significantly based on the processes and use cases supported by each product. Use this research to help assess vendor offerings.

Overview
Key Findings
The offerings covered in this research vary in terms of complexity, pricing, planning processes supported, broader modeling and analytics
capabilities, customer satisfaction with implementation, ease of use, integration, maintenance/upgrade and ongoing support, as well as
enterprise scalability and typical customer size.

The ability for each solution to support complex financial budgeting, planning and modeling is highly important, but usability and product
satisfaction also have a major impact on determining the business value each solution provides.
A growing number of the midsize and large organizations requiring complex financial budgeting and planning process support are also
demanding improved ease of use, integrated financial planning and modeling capabilities.

Recommendations
Examine the five use cases to determine which best describes your organization, then review the scores for the critical capabilities that relate to
your potential use of strategic corporate performance management (SCPM) solutions.
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 companion Magic Quadrant, and develop a "specific requirements" document that identifies your
functional needs and objectives.
Do not be restricted to your incumbent vendor if its offerings fail to fulfill your needs in certain areas. To meet your requirements, consider
solutions from other vendors to augment what's in place and evaluate them over time to determine the degree to which they can capably support
additional strategic SCPM processes.

Strategic Planning Assumption

By 2020, 40% of large organizations will extend or complement existing financial planning capabilities with domain-specific modeling and planning
solutions.

What You Need to Know

This Critical Capabilities report covers functionality and releases described in the 2016 "Magic Quadrant for Strategic Corporate Performance
Management Solutions" and the time frames for product releases and survey responses used for that document. Developments made since that
time in specific vendor products may be described in this document; however, the main source for the analysis for this report was the companion
Magic Quadrant.
The office of finance requires budgeting, planning and modeling solutions that facilitate more-transparent, collaborative processes while supporting
a strategic focus. This need can be broken down into several critical capabilities that SCPM solutions must satisfy. These factors affect the relative
importance of the critical capabilities for each use case described in this document.
They include:
Financial Budgets and Plans
Complex Financial Budgets and Plans

Integrated Financial Planning, Modeling and Analytics

Integration
Ease of Implementation
Ease of Use
Ease of Maintenance/Upgrade
Support and Vendor Satisfaction
Enterprise Scalability
The degree to which each of the above capabilities is important varies by use case.

The use cases described in this research are:

Small Organization: Small public or private organization with less than $250 million in annual revenue

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Midsize Organization: Midsize public or private organization with $250 million to $1 billion in annual revenue
Midsize/Large Organization: Midsize to large public or private organizations with $1 billion to $3 billion in annual revenue
Large Organization: Large public or private organizations with more than $3 billion in annual revenue
Business Unit: Individual business units within large organizations
The office of finance must also support financial accounting processes (such as the corporate financial close, financial reporting and
consolidation), and other processes described within Gartner's definition of enhanced financial control and automation (EFCA) processes.

Analysis
Critical Capabilities Use-Case Graphics
Figure 1. Vendors' Product Scores for the Small Organization Use Case

Source: Gartner (September 2016)

Figure 2. Vendors' Product Scores for the Midsize Organization Use Case

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Source: Gartner (September 2016)

Figure 3. Vendors' Product Scores for the Midsize/Large Organization Use Case

Source: Gartner (September 2016)

Figure 4. Vendors' Product Scores for the Large Organization Use Case

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Source: Gartner (September 2016)

Figure 5. Vendors' Product Scores for the Business Unit Use Case

Source: Gartner (September 2016)

Vendors
Adaptive Insights
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Adaptive Insights
Adaptive Insights is a SaaS vendor that provides solutions for budgeting, forecasting, dashboards, modeling, performance reporting, analysis and
collaboration. It has offerings for complementary integration (Adaptive Integration), Microsoft Office connection (Adaptive OfficeConnect) and
revenue planning (Adaptive Revenue Solution).
Adaptive Insights received high scores for all ease-of-use capabilities, support/overall vendor satisfaction, and financial budgets and plans; these
are important for small and midsize businesses as well as individual business units within larger organizations. Most (68%) of the vendor's survey
respondents had less than $1 billion in revenue, and about half (48%) had fewer than 50 users (they had a mean of 123 users). Of Adaptive's
respondents, 32% reported an average annual revenue of over $1 billion; however, 28% had over $3 billion.

These results, and Gartner client discussion, indicate that Adaptive Insights is used less often for complex financial budgets/plans and large
integrated financial planning or modeling needs. Although the vendor does have large customers, these use cases are typically not enterprisewide.
The company does, however, provide an attractive combination of cloud, ease of use, customer satisfaction and consumable analytics that have
allowed it to expand in some customer examples to hundreds and even thousands of users.

Anaplan
Anaplan is a SaaS vendor headquartered in San Francisco, California. Anaplan provides a SaaS planning and performance management platform for
finance and other business functions. Its products support financial planning and forecasting, as well as planning for sales, capital expenditure,
operations, workforce, marketing, and supply and demand.

Anaplan received high scores for complex financial budgets/plans, integrated financial planning (IFP), modeling and analytics, and ease of
maintenance/upgrade. This combination of critical capability scores is important for midsize and large organizations, as well as business units
within larger organizations. Gartner survey results and customer discussions indicate that Anaplan is most appropriate when there is a combination
of a sophisticated processes (for example, high dimensionality, a large number of detailed business rules and large amounts of data) in
combination with the flexibility and ease of use required for business users who want to maintain their own solutions (in such instances, although
the need for IT support may be minimal, IT governance oversight is recommended).

Anaplan's lowest scores were for ease of implementation, where survey results partially reflected the characteristics of the vendor's target market
(larger organizations with more-complex use cases). Gartner's customer interactions indicate a common usage in business units and departments
of larger organizations, as well as wider enterprise use. Of our respondents, 46% had over $1 billion in annual revenue and 30% had over $3 billion.
Only 27% of Anaplan respondents had more than 200 users (11% had over 500 users). Several examples with high numbers of users meant there
was a mean of 334 users. These results, along with feedback received during Gartner client discussions, indicate an initial tendency for Anaplan to
be adopted for a specific process, often within a business unit or department, as opposed to an enterprisewide process. Anaplan also has a
noteworthy number of customer examples in which the solution has expanded to enterprisewide use.

Axiom Software
Axiom Software, a division of Kaufman Hall, has customers across multiple industries, but focuses on specific industries, including healthcare,
financial services, higher education and manufacturing. The product supports planning and budgeting, capital and workforce planning, strategy
management, cost management, and profitability modeling. Its solutions are available both on-premises and through the cloud, making use of
Microsoft Azure. Axiom's platform supports planning and budgeting with unique, industry-specific capabilities (such as cost accounting and
decision support for healthcare, and funds transfer pricing for banking).

Axiom received high scores for supporting complex financial budgets and plans, integration, and nearly all ease-of-use categories. These
capabilities are applicable for organizations over $1 billion in revenue as well as business units in larger organizations. Axiom's lowest score was for
simpler financial budgets/plans, as its use cases in this area tend to be more complex.

The size of the vendor's survey respondent base was balanced between midsize and large organizations. 50% of Axiom EPM's respondents had an
average annual revenue of over $1 billion, 40% had over $3 billion in revenue. Of our Axiom Software respondents, 30% had over 200 users (15% had
over 500 users) with a mean of 426 users per customer. These results, along with feedback received during Gartner client discussions, indicate a
tendency for Axiom to be implemented alongside a strategic finance initiative. For large organizations, this tended to occur more often within a
business unit or specific geography, although Axiom has a noteworthy number of larger customers using its solution enterprisewide to align
business units more closely to wider strategic initiatives.
Board International
Board International takes an integrated approach to SCPM and business intelligence (BI). Board's solutions target both midsize and large
organizations looking for a more-cohesive approach to planning, modeling, profitability analysis and performance reporting. Board can also support
granular business processes that tend to require more-frequent application updates from business users. Its solutions are available both on-
premises and through Board Cloud using Microsoft Azure.

Board received high scores for complex financial budgets and plans, IFP/modeling/analytics, integration, and ease of implementation. These
capabilities are applicable for organizations over $1 billion in revenue as well as business units in larger organizations.
The company had a mean of 204 users per customer; 26% of implementations had over 200 users. These results, along with feedback received
during Gartner client discussions, indicate the ability to support a high degree of process complexity, both in midsize and large organizations (58%
of Board's survey respondents had less than $1 billion in annual revenue, 31% had an average annual revenue of over $1 billion, with 22% over $3
billion). Board supports complex use cases within larger organizations (over $1 billion); however, these tend to be related to financial modeling and
analytics as opposed to support for enterprisewide processes.

Corporater
Corporater provides a configurable business management platform that places the key functions of analytics, planning, and execution within a
business framework. It supports planning, strategy management, analytics, budgeting, dashboarding, scorecarding, KPI management, web and
document reporting, portfolio management, and governance, risk and compliance requirements. Corporater supports the visualization, evaluation
and reporting of strategic, tactical and operational performance in real time throughout an organization. Corporater can be used as either a primary
or complementary solution for budgeting and planning. It provides a unique approach using configurable model objects to support business
frameworks, link the planning process to business outcomes, and manage strategy. Corporater can also be delivered as a SaaS solution via Amazon
Web Services.

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Of Corporater's survey respondents, 42% were in the government sector (split evenly between local, regional, national and international), 29% had an
average annual revenue of over $1 billion, and 24% over $3 billion. The company had a mean of 216 users per customer, and 30% of its
implementations had over 200 users. These results, along with feedback received during Gartner client discussions, indicate the vendor's ability to
support a high degree of process complexity within its business framework approach. Corporater is increasingly supporting more-complex use
cases within larger organizations, particularly for government and commercial organizations targeting particular business frameworks and/or
strategy management initiatives that have a wider scope than the more-traditional database- and analytics-oriented financial budgeting, planning
and modeling capabilities scored in this study.
Host Analytics
Host Analytics is a SaaS vendor whose Cloud EPM platform supports budgeting, planning, forecasting, dashboards, modeling, analysis and
collaboration. The vendor's planning and modeling modules support a variety of use cases, such as revenue, sales and long-range planning. Host
Analytics' technology partners include Microsoft, Qlik (for data discovery and analytics), Dell Boomi (for data integration) and Box (for enhanced
data load functionality).
Host Analytics received high scores for all ease-of-use capabilities. It also received strong scores for financial budgets and plans, as well as
corporate planning and modeling. This combination of ratings is important for small and midsize businesses, but also benefits individual business
units within larger organizations. Thirty percent of Host Analytics respondents had an average annual revenue of over $1 billion with only 11% over
$3 billion. Usage in larger organizations tends to focus exclusively on the office of finance; of the customers surveyed, about half (47%) had less
than 50 users and only 9% of respondents had more than 200 (a mean of 99 users), although the vendor has some deployments with thousands of
users. Survey results, along with feedback received during Gartner client discussions, indicate the vendor's ability to support higher degrees of
process complexity, mostly within small and midsize organizations (58% of survey respondents had less than $1 billion in annual revenue).

IBM
IBM's offerings in this sector include both on-premises (IBM Cognos TM1) and cloud (IBM Planning Analytics) solutions for budgeting, forecasting,
dashboards, modeling, advanced analytics, collaboration and strategy management. In addition, Cognos Command Center facilitates process
automation on-premises, in the cloud, or across both. IBM also offers IBM Cognos Express Performance Management User for midsize companies.

IBM received high scores for complex financial budgets/plans, IFP/modeling/analytics and enterprise scalability. These capabilities are primarily
applicable for large organizations. Of IBM's survey respondents, 65% had an average annual revenue of over $1 billion, with 45% over $3 billion.
IBM's Planning Analytics solution provides greater overall ease of use, as well new data exploration and predictive capabilities. However, this
product was not included in these ratings given its recent release. IBM's lowest scores were for ease of maintenance and upgrade as Cognos TM1
requires a high degree of specialized knowledge to configure and implement compared to newer SCPM solutions (especially those based in the
cloud) in this study.
Of IBM's respondents, 42% had over 200 users, 17% had over 500 users, with a mean of 387 users per customer. These results, along with feedback
received during Gartner client discussions, demonstrate IBM's ability to support larger organizations for complex planning, modeling, analytics and
process support needs, especially where high degrees of customization are desired and implementations are more IT focused.
Jedox
Jedox offers an integrated BI and SCPM platform in the cloud or on-premises. It supports budgeting, planning and forecasting, including write-back
and extraction, transformation and loading (ETL). Jedox enables business users to model, analyze and report without specialist technical
knowledge. It can use either a Microsoft Excel or a Jedox web spreadsheet interface, and it offers both web and mobile clients. The vendor's on-
premises solution can be configured to use the graphics processing units of specialized hardware for performance beyond the capabilities of
traditional in-memory technology.
Nearly all (95%) of Jedox's respondents had less than 200 users, with a mean of 93 users per customer. These results, along with feedback received
during Gartner client discussions, indicate ease of use, strong compatibility with Microsoft Excel and low total cost of ownership as underlying
factors supporting Jedox's use by small and midsize organizations, as well as individual departments/business units within larger ones. Jedox is
typically not used by larger organizations as an enterprisewide solution. As a result, this vendor's lowest scores were for complex financial
budgets/plans and enterprise scalability.

Longview Solutions
Longview Solutions and arcplan were merged in March 2015 and their offerings further unified. This combination provides additional finance and
operational analytics for Longview customers/prospects and additional planning and process support for arcplan customers/prospects.

Longview received good scores for complex financial budgets and plans, IFP/modeling/analytics, and integration. These capabilities are important
for both midsize and large organizations. Of Longview's customer respondents, 73% had an average annual revenue of over $1 billion (40% over $3
billion); 41% of Longview's respondents had over 200 users, 26% had over 500 users (18% over 1,000 users), with a mean of 703 users per customer,
although this includes users for non-SCPM processes such as tax planning. These results, along with feedback received during Gartner client
discussions, demonstrate Longview's ability to support larger organizations for complex planning.

Oracle (On-Premises)
Oracle's on-premises SCPM offerings include Oracle Hyperion Planning, Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, Oracle Hyperion
Strategic Finance, Oracle Scorecard, and Oracle Strategy Management.

Oracle Hyperion Planning received high scores for supporting complex financial budgets and plans as well as for modeling. These capabilities are
primarily applicable for large organizations that require a high level of configurability and can provide the IT resources to support it. Oracle's lowest
scores were for Hyperion Planning's ease of implementation, ease of maintenance/upgrade, and support and vendor satisfaction. These capabilities
are more important to organizations with less than $3 million in annual revenue.

Of Oracle's respondents, 71% had over 200 users, 54% had over 500 users and 34% over 1,000 users (a mean of 1,010 users per customer). These
results, along with feedback received during Gartner client discussions, demonstrate Oracle Hyperion Planning's ability to support larger
organizations for complex planning, modeling and process support needs, especially where high degrees of customization are desired and
implementations are more IT-focused.

Oracle (SaaS)

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Oracle's SaaS SCPM offerings include Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) and the Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud
Service for narrative reporting.

Oracle's PBCS can be used by smaller organizations and for complementary on-premises Hyperion EPM product use for individual business units
within larger organizations. Eighty percent of Oracle's reference respondents had an average annual revenue of over $1 billion.

Oracle PBCS's lowest score was for support and vendor satisfaction; however, this rating was higher than Hyperion's on-premises SCPM products.
Given Gartner client interaction feedback during 2016, this appears to be improving over time for this cloud-based product.

When comparing customer examples related to the number of users, Hyperion Planning customers surveyed had more users than PBCS; however,
use cases with larger numbers of users is expanding, and Oracle has a number of noteworthy examples with hundreds of PBCS users.

prevero
On 11 July 2016, prevero was acquired by enterprise application vendor Unit4. Although detailed information regarding additional integrated solution
capabilities between the two vendors has not been announced, Unit4 will continue to offer prevero as a separate solution for support for budgeting,
forecasting, dashboards, modeling and analysis, as well as project portfolio and sales planning.

Prevero received high scores for IFP/modeling/analytics and integration, as well as most ease-of-use categories. These are applicable for business
units in larger organizations and midsize organizations. Of prevero's reference respondents, 57% had an average annual revenue of less than $1
billion; however, 36% were over $1 billion, and 18% over $3 billion. Although prevero references represented a range of organization sizes, only 16%
had more than 200 users (a mean of 182 users). As a result, prevero's lowest scores were for complex financial budgets and plans, and enterprise
scalability. Survey results, along with feedback received during Gartner client discussions, indicate prevero's ability to support a high degree of
process complexity, mostly within midsize organizations and increasingly for specific use cases within organizations with revenue of more than $1
billion.

Prophix
Prophix's solution is largely used by small and midsize organizations to support budgeting, planning and forecasting, dashboards, modeling,
analysis, strategy management, and financial consolidation. Prophix can also support integrated sales, workforce and project requirements, as well
as revenue planning workflows for SMBs. Prophix is built on the Microsoft SQL Server 2014 platform. It also uses Microsoft Excel and SharePoint.

Prophix received high scores across all ease-of-use capabilities, which are particularly important to small and midsize organizations. Although the
vendor had a high score relative to other vendor's with a concentration of on-premises customers, Prophix's lowest ease-of-use rating was for ease
of maintenance/upgrade. This is because even though Prophix customers generally find the vendor's solutions relatively easy to maintain and
upgrade, its cloud version has only recently become available.
Of Prophix Software's reference respondents, 77% had an average annual revenue of less than $1 billion. Respondents also had a mean of 99 users.
Seventeen percent of the vendor's references had over $1 billion in revenue, with 13% over $3 billion. These results also indicate some successful
usage within business units and/or departments of larger organizations.

SAP
SAP's on-premises SCPM offerings support complex use cases and are typically used by large and complex global organizations. They are favored
by those standardizing on an SAP ERP and/or SAP for analytics (SAP BW for data warehouse and Business Objects for analytics, for example).
SAP's most widely used SCPM offering, SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, supports financial consolidation and close, as well as planning,
budgeting and forecasting. SAP's other on-premises SCPM products include SAP Strategy Management and SAP Profitability and Cost
Management. SAP also offers a SaaS planning and analytics solution, SAP BusinessObjects Cloud.
SAP received its lowest scores for ease of implementation and ease of maintenance/upgrade. Support and vendor satisfaction were also low
compared to some other vendors. These capabilities are less important to organizations with more than $3 million in annual revenue. SAP's
BusinessObjects Cloud (formerly SAP Cloud for Analytics and SAP Cloud for Planning) provides greater overall ease of use as well as new in-
memory analytics and collaboration capabilities (see "SAP BusinessObjects Cloud Offers Integrated Discovery, Analytics and Planning, but Adds
Portfolio Complexity" ). This product was not, however, included in these ratings as no customers using this solution in production for planning were
available for survey or interview by Gartner for this study.

SAP received high scores for supporting complex financial budgets and plans, as well as IFP/modeling/analytics. These capabilities are primarily
applicable to large organizations, especially those using SAP's ERP offerings. Of SAP's reference respondents, 65% had an average annual revenue
of over $1 billion (48% over $3 billion). Of SAP's respondents, 46% had over 200 users, 23% had over 500 users, and 23% over 1,000 users (a mean of
652 users per customer). These results, along with feedback received during Gartner client discussions, demonstrate SAP's ability to support larger
organizations, especially where implementations are more IT focused.

SAS
SAS's performance management suite comprises four integrated offerings: SAS Financial Management, SAS Strategy Management, SAS Cost and
Profitability Management, and SAS Capital Planning and Management. These products draw on the vendor's business analytics competencies and
are most often used by organizations with complex corporate modeling needs.

SAS embeds analytics capabilities — such as correlation analysis of cost drivers and scorecard metrics, predictive forecasting and the ability to
incorporate macroeconomic data — into forecast projections. The accompanying visualizations and wizards make these capabilities more
accessible to finance users. Also, SAS's Capital Planning and Management offering integrates financial and risk-planning processes at both office of
finance and operational levels of detail. It also supports industry-specific internal capital planning requirements. The vendor's performance
management focus and strong modeling capabilities are characteristic of SAS Institute's more extensive strategic CPM initiatives.

SAS Institute received very high scores for IFP/modeling/analytics. Its complex budgets and plans score was also high. SAS's lowest scores were
for ease of implementation and ease of maintenance/upgrade. Support and vendor satisfaction scores were also very low.

Gartner customer feedback suggests that a relatively high percentage of SAS customers use its solution to support profitability and cost modeling,
as opposed to enterprisewide budgeting and planning. Of SAS's reference respondents, 62% had an average annual revenue of over $1 billion;
however, the majority of SAS's survey respondents (89%) had fewer than 200 users, (a mean of 183 users per customer). These results, along with
feedback received during Gartner client discussions, demonstrate SAS's ability to support larger organizations for complex modeling and analytics;
however, these applications are not used as widely across the organization and are designed and maintained primarily by IT.
Solver
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Solver
Solver's BI360 product is an SCPM solution that is frequently sold to complement ERP financial applications. Solver partners with a number of
accounting software vendors, most notably Microsoft (for Microsoft Dynamics AX, GP, NAV and SL), Sage (for Sage X3, Sage 500, Sage 300 and
Sage 100), Intacct, Acumatica and SAP (for SAP Business One). About 95% of Solver's revenue comes through its ERP channels. Solver's tight
integration with these ERP solutions gives it detailed transactional reporting and drill-down capabilities that are unique in this sector. Solver also has
private cloud offerings with joint ERP/CPM installations that allow for real-time reporting in the cloud, through ERP-focused hosting partners like
Concerto, Data Resolution, Njevity, RoseASP and SaaSplaza.
Solver received high scores for integration and ease of use, as well as for support and vendor satisfaction. Solver also received good scores for
financial budgets and plans. These are especially important for small and midsize organizations, particularly those using one of Solver's closely
supported ERP solutions. Of Solver's reference respondents, 62% had an average annual revenue of less than $1 billion. These respondents also had
a mean of 59 users. Solver implementations tend to be focused more exclusively on the office of finance. For these reasons Solver's lowest scores
were for enterprise scalability. These results, along with feedback received during Gartner client discussions, indicate Solver's ability to support
planning and budgeting in small and midsize organizations, especially where operational reporting detail and tight ERP integration is required.

Tagetik
Tagetik supports budgeting, forecasting, performance reporting, dashboards, modeling and analysis. It also offers integrated financial planning,
cash-flow planning and packaged integration for Microsoft, SAP (Hana) and the Qlik Analytics Platform. Tagetik's suite can run on Microsoft SQL
Server, Oracle or SAP Hana databases. Tagetik Cloud is licensed as SaaS, and can also be hosted on private Amazon Web Services or Microsoft
Azure cloud environments.

Tagetik received high scores for complex financial budgets and plans, integration, and support and vendor satisfaction. These capabilities, along
with Tagetik's combination of ease of use and ability to support complex processes is important to both midsize and large organizations. Tagetik
survey responses showed a fairly even split here with slightly more than half (58%) of Tagetik's reference respondents having an average annual
revenue of over $1 billion.

A third (34%) of Tagetik customers had over 200 users with 11% over 500 users and another 11% over 1,000 users (a mean of 430 users per
customer). These results compare favorably to other competitors of a comparable size. These results, along with feedback received during Gartner
client discussions, demonstrate Tagetik's ability to support a high degree of complexity especially where close process integration with financial
reporting is required.

Context
This research analyzes how successfully the selected vendors (see the Inclusion Criteria section) support strategic corporate performance
management processes, as well as their use and adoption. This analysis differentiates the appropriateness of each vendor's solution based on
organization size. This generally reflects use-case complexity, and the related need for more diverse functionality and application customization. In
addition, the use of each vendor's solution is evaluated for a particular single business 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

Strategic corporate performance management solutions support the office of finance's budgeting and planning efforts. They also provide integrated
financial planning, financial modeling, analytics and strategy management capabilities. Ultimately, these solutions help CFOs and other business
leaders orchestrate organizational performance and manage strategy in a more controlled and transparent manner.

Critical Capabilities Definition

Financial Budgets and Plans
The ability to support financial budgeting and planning processes, including 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 mechanism and use financial classifications found in the general ledger to classify financial
goals and targets, as well as the ability to support planning and forecasting using a modeling engine optimized for the office of finance's use (by
including profit-and-loss balance-sheet and cash-flow forecasting capabilities, for example). This feature distinguishes CPM from other analytics
applications that also create plans and forecasts (such as applications for operations planning, or marketing campaign planning). These
capabilities support the creation, review and approval of financially focused plans and forecasts, as well as their associated workflows. They should
support driver-based planning and maintain an audit trail of all associated activities.

Complex Financial Budgets and Plans

Includes budgeting, planning and forecasting capabilities as well as the ability to support more-advanced modeling and analytics, with a broader set
of users, more complex processes and business rules, and expanded data stores.

These applications support large numbers of users, departments and/or business units. They support an extensive amount of business logic with
high complexity, such as intricate allocation rules. They support and automate complex workflows while providing transparency and control, and
can also integrate additional operational data to improve the accuracy of enterprisewide budgets and plans. These solutions can use business
drivers to model alternative outcomes if business conditions change, and can incorporate in-memory computing, advanced statistical techniques
and analytics to control and support financial planning, predict performance and guide strategy.

IFP/Modeling/Analytics
This capability can complement and/or extend complex financial budgeting and planning to more collaboratively integrate financial planning across
business domains. This capability can also include financial modeling efforts in support of short-term and long-term planning.

These applications help the office of finance to link to related operational planning capabilities in other business domains (such as sales or human
resources) or model other financial planning components in more detail (such as revenue, cash, demand, capital and project portfolio planning).
These solutions create more-accurate predictions based on experience, can model alternative outcomes if business conditions change, and
incorporate in-memory computing, collaboration features, advanced statistical techniques, data discovery and other features to help support more-
collaborative enterprisewide planning, predict performance and guide strategy.
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Because these solutions are used across business domains, and require more-frequent and detailed business-knowledge-driven updates, both
finance and other business users need models that are easy to build and maintain, allow for more-frequent modifications, and leverage additional
internal and external data sources. More-extensive data allows additional statistical techniques to be used more effectively (for example, for
predictive or prescriptive purposes) and requires more extensive in-memory computing capabilities. This also includes complex, initiative-specific
planning, cost and profitability modeling, and provides decision support.

Integration
This capability addresses whether a given vendor solution has demonstrated integration to commonly deployed strategic and operational solutions,
and the reliance on IT and external resources to develop and maintain these interfaces.

Ease of Implementation
This refers to the solution's ability to be designed and implemented rapidly with a minimum of specialized skills and outside consulting expertise.

This capability is important for organizations of all sizes, but especially for smaller ones and departments or business units in larger organizations.
Ease of implementation is becoming a more-important capability as a whole, and Magic Quadrant survey respondents rated this the third most
important criterion when selecting a vendor for SCPM solutions.

Ease of Use
This refers to solution use from both an ongoing administrative and end-user standpoint. It includes end-user satisfaction, ease of adoption,
effectiveness and ease of support.

This capability is important for organizations of all sizes, but especially for smaller ones and departments or business units in larger organizations.
Ease of use is now a primary capability as a whole, Magic Quadrant survey respondents rated this the second most important selection criterion
when selecting an SCPM solution. Understandably, only functional capability rated higher.
Ease of Maintenance/Upgrade
This capability describes the ability of a solution to be maintained and upgraded with a minimum of effort, specialized skills, and cost. SaaS-based
applications that include upgrade capabilities have an advantage within this capability.
This capability is important for organizations of all sizes in order to ensure compatibility with related products and leverage new product features.
It's especially relevant for smaller companies with minimal IT resources and less money to spend on third-party consulting support for upgrades.
Support and Vendor Satisfaction
This includes satisfaction with ongoing application support and overall vendor satisfaction.
A critical capability for success depends on how closely a solution can support desired business outcomes and the level of customer trust it earns.
This latter capability is especially true in the cloud, where customers give up more control than with on-premises options. Cloud customers must
rely on their vendors to a greater degree. This is especially important within the office of finance, a business domain that is necessarily risk-averse.

Enterprise Scalability
This includes the ability for the product to scale to support hundreds and even thousands of users for many customers.

No distinction has been made between on-premises and cloud-based solutions, instead this criterion is based on each solution's typical use case,
and the products' (and vendor consultants') ability to support large numbers of worldwide users and complex use cases.

Use Cases
Small Organization
Small organizations that are publicly traded or privately held, with less than $250 million in annual revenue.

These organizations typically have relatively straightforward financial budgeting and planning needs. Application complexity is minimal. For
example, processes involve fewer users, workflows have fewer steps and require less customization, and there are fewer business rules. Lower-cost
solutions are desired. This includes initial solution cost, design and implementation cost, as well as ongoing support costs. As a result of this, and
because few to no dedicated finance or IT resources are available for system support, ease of use is very important.

Midsize Organization
Midsize organizations that are publicly traded or privately held, with $250 million to $1 billion in annual revenue.

These organizations typically have a range of financial budgeting and planning needs, from simple to moderately complex, depending on the
number of ERPs used, the degree of ongoing change in the business environment process complexity, and the need for financial analytics.
Applications need to support a fair amount of complexity; however, initial solution cost, design and implementation cost — as well as ongoing
support cost — are important factors. Time to value and ease of use are also important capabilities.

Midsize/Large Organization
Larger organizations that are publicly traded or privately held, with $1 billion to $3 billion in annual revenue.

These organizations have more-complex financial budgeting and planning needs. The number of users, amount of source data and process
complexity is high. Integrated financial planning, modeling and analytics are more important, given the breadth of relevant financial information
across business domains — supporting SCPM processes is more challenging and leveraging the higher data volumes can yield higher analytic
value. Applications can need to support a high amount of complexity.
Initial solution costs, design and implementation costs, as well as ongoing support costs, are important factors but are secondary to satisfying
business needs. As a result, time to value and ease of use are valued capabilities and important factors during product evaluations.
Large Organization
Large organizations that are publicly traded or privately held, with over $1 billion in annual revenue.

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These organizations can have the most-complex financial budgeting and planning needs. The number of users, amount of source data and process
complexity is high. Integrated financial planning, modeling and analytics are very important, given the breadth of relevant financial information
across business domains — supporting SCPM processes is more challenging and leveraging the higher data volumes can yield higher analytic
value. Applications often need to support a high amount of complexity. Initial solution costs, design and implementation costs, as well as ongoing
support costs are important factors but are secondary to satisfying business needs. As a result, time to value and ease of use are valued
capabilities and important factors during product evaluations; however, dedicated finance and IT resources are typically available to participate in
project implementation and support these SCPM applications on an ongoing basis.

Business Unit
Individual business units within a large, publicly traded or privately held organization.

These organizations have a variety of needs. Financial budgeting and planning processes may be simple or fairly complex; however, these needs
typically exist because the enterprisewide solution:
1. Was not configured for the specific needs of the business unit.

2. Does not have the flexibility to satisfy the more-specific needs of the business unit or its more-dynamic processes, which may more closely
mirror operational planning processes.

3. Does not have the ease of use required.

4. Is not available ("power user" licenses have not been provided).

5. Does not have the modeling and/or financial analytic capabilities needed. These can include the need to support complex models (especially
those finance users can manage themselves), application performance to support larger, detailed datasets, or information visualizations to
provide information to business users.

Vendors Added and Dropped

Added
None — This is a new Critical Capabilities report
Dropped
None — This is a new Critical Capabilities report

Inclusion Criteria
To be included in this Critical Capabilities report, each vendor had to meet the following criteria:

Market Presence

At least 100 in-production customers using two or more of the SCPM applications.

License, maintenance and booked subscription revenue from SCPM applications for the period 1 July 2014 to 30 June 2015 of at least $10
million. Unrealized recurring revenue was not included.
Market presence and demonstrated interest by clients in its solutions and offerings, as determined by Gartner.

License maintenance not overly disproportionate to new revenue.

Implementation services in three or more of the following regions: North America, South America, EMEA, Asia/Pacific and Japan.

Target midsize or large companies, or large public-sector/nongovernmental organizations with multiple, diverse departments.
Support for enterprise-scale deployments with hundreds of users in a variety of industries; industry solutions could not represent more than 70%
of overall revenue.

In addition, ERP vendors had to show continued SCPM investment and market presence outside their ERP customer base.

Product Capabilities

SCPM offerings for at least two of the five SCPM components.

Demonstrable success with investments in new technology.

Vendor Viability

Financially viable, profitable or have a realistic path to profitability.

Table 1.   Weighting for Critical Capabilities in Use Cases

Critical Capabilities Small Midsize Midsize/Large Large Business
Organization Organization Organization Organization Unit

Financial Budgets and Plans 30% 10% 5% 0% 15%

Complex Financial Budgets and 0% 15% 25% 30% 15%

Plans

IFP/Modeling/Analytics 5% 10% 15% 15% 20%

Integration 5% 10% 10% 10% 10%

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Critical Capabilities Small Midsize Midsize/Large Large Business

Organization Organization Organization Organization Unit

Ease of Implementation 15% 10% 10% 5% 5%

Ease of Use 20% 15% 10% 5% 10%

Ease of Maintenance/Upgrade 15% 15% 5% 5% 10%

Support and Vendor Satisfaction 10% 10% 10% 5% 10%

Enterprise Scalability 0% 5% 10% 25% 5%

Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

As of September 2016

Source: Gartner (September 2016)

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; a score of 1 = Poor (most or all defined
requirements are not achieved), while 5 = Outstanding (significantly exceeds requirements).

Table 2.   Product/Service Rating on Critical Capabilities

Adaptive Anaplan Axiom Board Corporater Host IBM Jedox Longview Oracle Oracle
Insights Software International Analytics Solutions (On- (SaaS)
Critical Capabilities Premises)

Financial Budgets and

Plans 4.3 3.2 3.0 3.3 3.2 3.9 3.3 4.2 3.7 3.0 4.1

Complex Financial
Budgets and Plans 2.9 4.3 4.0 4.2 4.2 3.6 4.4 2.7 3.8 4.5 3.7

IFP/Modeling/Analytics 3.5 4.3 3.6 4.1 3.9 3.6 4.4 3.5 3.9 4.2 3.7

Integration 4.0 3.6 4.5 4.1 3.9 4.2 3.8 4.2 3.9 3.8 3.9

Ease of
Implementation 4.5 3.0 4.3 4.0 3.3 4.1 3.1 4.1 3.6 1.9 3.8

Ease of Use 4.4 3.8 4.2 3.9 3.8 4.2 3.3 4.2 3.8 3.2 3.5

Ease of
Maintenance/Upgrade 4.5 4.3 3.8 3.7 3.7 4.5 2.1 4.0 3.3 2.0 4.1

Support and Vendor

Satisfaction 4.5 3.9 4.5 3.9 3.8 4.3 3.8 4.3 3.9 2.8 3.2

Enterprise Scalability 3.0 3.4 3.3 3.2 3.4 3.4 4.5 2.8 3.6 4.5 3.7

Source: Gartner (September 2016)

Table 3 shows the product/service scores for each use case. The scores, which are generated by multiplying the use-case weightings by the
product/service ratings, summarize how well the critical capabilities are met for each use case.
Table 3.   Product Score in Use Cases
Adaptive Anaplan Axiom Board Corporater Host IBM Jedox Longview Oracle Oracle prevero
Insights Software International Analytics Solutions (On- (SaaS)
Use Cases Premises)

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Small
Organization 4.35 3.60 3.81 3.73 3.54 4.12 3.22 4.13 3.69 2.81 3.82 3.82

Midsize
Organization 4.00 3.83 3.96 3.87 3.74 4.03 3.54 3.81 3.72 3.25 3.75 3.84

Midsize/Large
Organization 3.73 3.87 3.96 3.93 3.80 3.88 3.88 3.57 3.77 3.63 3.70 3.81

Large
Organization 3.44 3.90 3.86 3.86 3.82 3.75 4.10 3.29 3.75 3.98 3.71 3.70

Business Unit 3.90 3.87 3.85 3.87 3.75 3.94 3.72 3.75 3.76 3.47 3.76 3.81

Source: Gartner (September 2016)

Evidence
Among the research for this Critical Capabilities report, Gartner conducted a survey of organizations using SCPM products. The survey ran from
November 2015 to January 2016. The survey participants were reference customers nominated by each of the 16 vendors in the companion Magic
Quadrant. These customers were asked 20 questions about their experiences with their SCPM vendor and solution(s). The results were used in
support of an assessment of the SCPM solution critical capabilities. We obtained 736 full responses, which represented companies headquartered
in six different regions, as follows:

North America: 56%

Western Europe: 26%
Latin America: 2%

Central and Eastern Europe: 7%

Asia/Pacific: 7%
Middle East and Africa: 2%

In addition to the survey results, these assessments reflect significant consideration of information gathered from Gartner's interactions with SCPM
reference customers throughout the year.

Critical Capabilities Methodology

This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class of products or services. Each capability is then weighted in terms
of its relative importance for specific product or service use cases. Next, products/services are rated in terms of how well they achieve each of the
critical capabilities. A score that summarizes how well they meet the critical capabilities for each use case is then calculated for each
product/service.
"Critical capabilities" are attributes that differentiate products/services in a class in terms of their quality and performance. Gartner recommends
that users consider the set of critical capabilities as some of the most important criteria for acquisition decisions.
In defining the product/service category for evaluation, the analyst first identifies the leading uses for the products/services in this market. What
needs are end-users looking to fulfill, when considering products/services in this market? Use cases should match common client deployment
scenarios. These distinct client scenarios define the Use Cases.

The analyst then identifies the critical capabilities. These capabilities are generalized groups of features commonly required by this class of
products/services. Each capability is assigned a level of importance in fulfilling that particular need; some sets of features 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 each capability, on a five-point scale. These ratings are displayed side-
by-side for all vendors, 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
2 = Fair: some requirements are not achieved

3 = Good: meets requirements

4 = Excellent: meets or exceeds some requirements

5 = Outstanding: significantly exceeds requirements

To determine an overall score for each product in the use cases, the product ratings are multiplied 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 any product; therefore, may not represent those most important for
a specific use situation or business objective. Clients should use a critical capabilities analysis as one of several sources of input about a product
before making a product/service decision.

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