The idea that the role of FP&A is the same as what it was a decade ago is outdated and simply untrue; as the function takes more of a strategic leadership role within every organization, it needs to be equipped with the right tools to have an impact. Finding the best corporate performance management software is a challenge; there are many on the market and a number of them offer similar functionality. Instead of expecting finance leaders to sift through all the available options, we have put together a list of the top corporate performance management tools on the market.
In our breakdown, we include pricing, differentiating features, and our expert opinion on each, making it easier for every finance function to focus on their journey toward becoming the finance function of tomorrow. We are examining CPM solutions through the lens of small to medium-sized businesses with 100-500 employees, though many of the options below are versatile enough to flex to smaller or larger organizations, too.
What is CPM Software?
Often confused with Enterprise Performance Management Software, which has a more broad, enterprise-level application for tracking performance, CPM software is most often used by the finance function to monitor business performance, condu
ct financial reporting, and track key performance indicators within the function. This type of SaaS solution usually includes forecasting functions, budget tracking, automation capabilities, and more. With the industry moving toward real-time visualization, most CPM software aims to enable sophisticated data visualization as well.
Benefits of Corporate Management Software
With the right corporate performance management software in place, finance professionals are able to access data with ease, make pivotal business decisions in a fraction of the time it usually takes, and spend less time budgeting and more time building strategic plans. Some of the major benefits of CPM tools are:
- A reduction in the timeline of month-end close processes
- Advanced analytics and actionable insights
- Conversation drivers for leadership and FP&A teams
- Scenario analysis testing that can lead to better business decisions
- The automation of time-consuming, repetitive tasks
To select the best corporate performance management software for your organization, examine the information below, browse a few to find the best fit, and select two or three to test out. In each section, you’ll notice an “our rating” line item which is comprised of platform availability, versatility, and customer reviews.
Let’s get into the details of the best CPM software options of this year:
Best CPM Software choices this year
In order to be considered a “best-in-class” CPM tool, software solutions must be able to support forecasting and budgeting functions, as well as ad-hoc analysis. Going further, these tools should enable visualization capabilities within the platform itself.
We also analyzed customer reviews to understand each vendor’s customer service experience. As most finance professionals know, it’s not uncommon for unique processes and insights to require specific functionality from CPM tools. Here are the best tools on the market for small-to-medium businesses this year.
1. Abacum
Abacum is the FP&A automation platform to drive efficient growth with off-the-shelf CPM templates, faster revenue forecasts, scenario analyses, and budgeting workflows.
With Abacum’s best-in-class integrations, FP&A teams can connect all their business systems to automatically report and forecast financial, operational, and workforce metrics in a single corporate performance management platform.
Abacum enables businesses to seamlessly deliver ad-hoc insights in real-time, automate budgeting workflows with custom permissions, and combine bottom-up or top-down forecasts with a powerful multi-dimensional modeling experience.With faster insights, accurate forecasting, and budget owner accountability, Abacum delivers complete FP&A automation, saving businesses time and money every single day.
Price: Tailored pricing plans are based on unique business requirements.
Great for: Automating BvA reports, ad-hoc analyses with off-the-shelf templates, forecasting using multi-dimensional modeling, driving stakeholder accountability with custom workflows and vendor level budgeting
Advantages: Abacum’s list of integration partners is longer than average, and its customer service team is committed to ensuring a seamless adoption process for its clients. With ease of use its priority, finance stakeholders can ensure stakeholder accountability and performance management.
Feature Highlight: An expansive library of visualization tools and off-the-shelf automation capabilities ensure Abacum makes an impact right away. Budgeting is easy and forecasting becomes a breeze with Abacum.
Our Rating: 5/5 stars
G2 Rating (April 2023): 4.6/5 stars
2. Oracle
(*There are several Oracle solutions to consider when choosing the right one for your needs, such as Oracle Cloud ERP, Essbase, and Planning Cloud. Research and evaluation can help you select the best solution to achieve your goals.)
One of the longest-standing corporate performance management tool providers, Oracle has a suite of products that can be used in conjunction with one another and with other business systems.
This brand is a household name for large, enterprise organizations, which is why Oracle’s CPM software may not be suited for small and medium-sized businesses.
Price: Cost only available via custom quote.
Great for: Enterprise organizations that need a robust system can depend on Oracle to deliver.
Advantages: Many organizations use some combination of Oracle products, enabling businesses to leverage the advantages of working with one single vendor.
Feature Highlight: The multi-module system allows you to connect many different systems and data sources into one, making this a great option for larger organizations with multiple locations, subsidiaries, and complex business lines.
Customer Complaints: For users unfamiliar with Oracle, there can be a steep learning curve to effectively use these corporate performance management tools. The implementation timeline can also last between 8-12 months, delaying the time-to-value for FP&A teams.
Our Rating: 3.8/5 stars
G2 Rating (April 2023): 4.1/5 Stars
3. SAP
(*There are several SAP solutions to consider when choosing the right one for your cpm needs, such as SAP Analytics Cloud, Business Planning, and Consolidation. Research and evaluation can help you select the best solution to achieve your goals.)
SAP corporate resource management tools work together seamlessly with one another and have the power of a household name behind them. The SAP Analytics Cloud and related CPM tools allow you to partner with other functions, model multiple scenarios and test cases, and run your financial planning processes. With a wide-reaching community of users, SAP forums are collaborative and helpful spaces, offering many ways to resolve issues and troubleshoot challenges.
Price: Business plan starts at $21 per user/month.
Great for: Organizations that already use other SAP legacy products and have standardized their data to SAP’s suite of products.
Advantages: SAP works with and supports enterprise businesses, making its solutions great for multi-corporate organizations.
Feature Highlight: The reporting features provide standard business KPIs in a single dashboard.
Customer Complaints: Some common customer complaints are that complex data drill down requirements are challenging with SAP Analytics Cloud. As well as the product offers limited data preparation features making it difficult to integrate different business systems
Our Rating: 4/5 Stars
G2 Rating (April 2023): 4.2/5 Stars
4. Anaplan
Users commend Anaplan’s thoughtful user interface and ability to navigate complex data sets in an analytical capacity. Anaplan serves customers at the enterprise level, with 90% of its customer base falling within that segment.
This CPM tool can be relied on for quintessential finance functions like the close process, financial consolidation, compliance audits, and analytics. It offers dashboard functionality as well as PDF reporting for leaders who may struggle with high-tech features.
Price: Cost only available via custom quote.
Great for: Finance professionals that work in enterprise or publicly listed organizations, and are not required to produce ad-hoc analysis frequently.
Advantages: Anaplan’s versatility allows it to span beyond finance into supply chain and other functions, providing a high value to the enterprise businesses it serves.
Feature Highlight: With access to multi-dimensional scenario testing, Anaplan users can forecast and plan their business activities in a single platform. Regular financial spreadsheets can be created and saved for future use.
Customer Complaints: Some customers mentioned that Anaplan requires having a dedicated in-house team in order to leverage the platform. Performing custom changes within Anaplan requires technical coding skills, this can create time-sensitive obstacles during planning periods.
Our Rating: 4.5/5 Stars
G2 Rating(April 2023): 4.6/5 Stars
5. Workday Adaptive Planning
Probably more of an enterprise planning management software than solely a corporate performance management tool, Workday Adaptive Planning boosts data analysis and decision-making across finance, sales, human resources, and other functions.
It connects with any ERP, GL, or other spreadsheets to create insights, automate forecasts, and output management reports. Since it can be used across functions, it’s incredibly robust and ready to take on any challenge.
Price: Cost only available via custom quote.
Great for: Medium and large enterprises that are looking for one tool to use in a variety of functions and settings. Absorbing the level of data that Workday Adaptive Planning does isn’t something that many other applications can handle.
Advantages: This CPM software has the most readily available cross-functional capabilities, positioning finance teams as a strategic business function with ease. Scaling sustainably is an art form that is made easier with Workday.
Feature Highlight: Workforce management and labor metrics do not happen separately from finance; Workday is one of the first tools to see it that way and integrate employee information with financial data, driving valuable HR and finance insights simultaneously.
Customer Complaints: Though customers appreciate the many ways this application can be used, they struggle with its slow calculation speed and lack of customizable. functionalities. Many organizations have one-off data inputs that happen irregularly or need to be manually added, and Workday isn’t compatible with those requirements.
Our Rating: 4.2/5 Stars
G2 Rating (April 2023): 4.4/5 Stars
6. IBM Planning Analytics
Bringing together the infrastructure of a financial database and the user interface of Excel, IBM Planning Analytics is a CPM software that most finance organizations find very easy to learn and adopt.
Meant to democratize data, IBM’s corporate performance management tool is widely used and well-liked by many enterprise organizations.
Price: Cost only available via custom quote.
Great for: Finance organizations that are ready to take their analytical capabilities to the next level but don’t want to struggle with change management and adoption. IBM Planning Analytics uses a Microsoft Excel interface, making it easy for any finance professional to start benefiting from its features. From simple spreadsheets to complex workflows, IBM can do it all.
Advantages: IBM PA can reconcile data from different sources, highlight discrepancies, and even provide information as to where discrepancies are coming from. Any organization with multiple data sources knows how much of a headache data discrepancies can be, but with IBM PA, the process is optimized.
Feature Highlight: Drag and drop analysis makes it easy for finance teams to conduct detailed analytical investigations without complex modeling.
Customer Complaints: Customers do not feel supported in mastering and adopting the solution, citing a lack of customer service from IBM.
Our Rating: 3.8/5 Stars
G2 Rating (April 2023): 4.3/5 Stars
7. BI360 Suite (now Solver)
Solver’s BI360 is a business intelligence (BI) software solution that combines the features of Microsoft Excel with a data warehouse and a modern web portal. This easy-to-use application enables simple and complex financial performance reporting while keeping the user interface intuitive. It seamlessly integrates with multiple ERP systems and its own data warehouse, ensuring flexibility for its customers.
Price: Base licensing cost starts at $312 per user/month.
Great for: Non-technical users that are looking to benefit from powerful reports and insights with a few clicks of a button.
Advantages: Solver’s key features offer easy system integrations with current systems, can be used by non-technical employees, and offers all the reporting features of Power BI due to its links with the platform.
Feature Highlight: Because of its link to Power BI, this product enables cash flow simulations using interactive sliders, illustrating the relationship between cash flow and business performance.
Customer Complaints: Customers have struggled to resolve specific issues with Solver’s customer support team. Sometimes, the team is unable to replicate the issue and other times a solution is not available.
Our Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
G2 Rating (April 2023): 4.5/5 Stars
8. OneStream Software
With one of the only truly customizable platforms in the CPM software industry, OneStream allows its users to build new solutions directly within its platform. It maintains a single source of truth while providing as much flexibility as possible, which is a challenging combination to perfect in today’s digital landscape. When data is ready to be processed, OneStream offers AI and machine learning tools to take that data to the next level.
Price: Cost only available via custom quote.
Great for: Growing organizations that have at least a base level of expertise with VB coding and more advanced languages.
Advantages: Financial close timelines can be greatly reduced with OneStream while maintaining industry-standard data security measures. Budgeting, annual planning, and data visualization are all key features of this financial management system.
Feature Highlight: With a built-in financial intelligence library, OneStream effortlessly processes multiple currencies, account ownership, and intercompany activities. In even the most advanced financial organizations, these items can be a source of massive challenges, and OneStream can help optimize those challenges without any outside input.
Customer Complaints: It’s not a solution that can work for no-code finance professionals, and due to its newness, the support infrastructure isn’t as strong as other, larger corporate planning management tools.
Our Rating: 3.6/5 Stars
G2 Rating (April 2023): 4.6/5 Stars
9. Vena
As a corporate performance management software, Vena uses an Excel interface and a proprietary growth engine to help its customers grow to their full potential. This cloud-based CMP tool brings together multiple data sources and easily integrates with existing systems to boost your organization’s functionality with very little effort on your part. You won’t need to provide complex training classes or hold the hands of your employees as they adopt Vena; it’s built to be used with existing finance skill sets.
Price: Cost only available via custom quote.
Great for: Organizations that aren’t ready to abandon Excel or completely revamp their finance talent pools can use this planning software. With Vena, up-leveling the finance function is as intuitive as a classic monthly forecast process.
Advantages: With Vena, team collaboration is easy. Multiple people can work in the same financial statements while still protecting from errors with document locking or cell freezing.
Feature Highlight: Vena’s long list of data integrations makes it easy for your organization to enjoy a single source of truth without overhauling your data landscape.
Customer Complaints: To access some of the more complex features Vena offers, a more advanced technical skill set is necessary. However, customers also mention that the Vena support team is quick to respond and helpful in resolving any issues.
Our Rating: 4/5 Stars
G2 Rating (April 2023): 4.5/5 Stars
Picking CPM Software for your business needs
At the end of the day, you know what the best corporate performance management software is for your organization. For a finance team with a bit more advanced technical resources, the right tool will be different than the one that is meant for a finance team with legacy finance skills and less technical prowess.
Many of the above tools offer free trials, and we recommend participating in some level of trial prior to making your final selection.
Ultimate CPM Software: Abacum!
Designed with mid-size companies in mind, Abacum’s software is a cut above the rest.
If you’re still not sure which CPM tool to go with, Abacum is the perfect solution. It is the leading CPM platform for mid-market companies and its award winning in-house FP&A team delivers the fastest onboarding in the market.
Here are the top 5 reasons we know you’ll love it:
- Equipped with an in-house implementation team, you’ll never feel like you’re navigating uncharted waters without support.
- It’s logical and intuitive; while other tools require coding experience and a technical background to use effectively, Abacum is made for non-technical and technical employees alike.
- Its UX and UI are unmatched, boosting adoption rates and shortening ROI timelines.
- Capabilities such as data wrangling automation, data source integration, and built-in data reconciliation will ensure that your teams aren’t wasting time chasing numbers or tying out systems. With Abacum, #REF errors, Vlookups, and SumIf formulas are a thing of the past.
- We let our product speak for itself. While our competitors can make the sales cycle feel like another item on your to-do list, we see ourselves as a partner who is ready to uplevel your business when you’re ready for us.
We know you’ll love it. Reach out to us for a demo or informational call today!
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