Constellation ShortList™: Planful Named for Ninth Consecutive Year

Planful has been named—for the ninth consecutive year—to the prestigious Constellation ShortList™ for Cloud-Based Planning Platforms in Q1 2021. This report identifies the top planning platform vendors based on technology investment, use cases, strategic vision, customer value, executive leadership and price. 

Download the Constellation Shortlist™ to see why Planful made the list.

We’re incredibly excited about being named to the ShortList, especially since feedback from our customers drives so much of the decision by Constellation. Unlike other grids, matrices or waves, Constellation bases the ShortList results on conversations with customers and partners, and then combines their own research to identify the leading vendors. For planning platforms specifically, the criteria for selection includes an assessment of each vendor’s ability to deliver, among other things.

• Rapid cloud deployment and configuration
• Modern, intuitive interface designed to ease frequent planning cycles
• Flexible modeling and “what-if” scenario planning capabilities

In addition to this ShortList, Constellation Research also released a report detailing how modern planning platforms are bringing agility and flexibility to businesses as they continue recovering from the pandemic. This report, Modern Planning Platforms Drive Business Agility and Better Outcomes, finds that those organizations which came through 2020 in a relatively good position did so by accelerating their planning and analysis cycles from quarterly or monthly to weekly or even daily. 

Download this Constellation Research “Trends” report to learn more.

In both the ShortList and the related report, Constellation Research points to speed, ease of use, and flexibility as keys to financial planning success. Here’s how Planful stacks up.

Planful is Fast

If you’re a Planful customer, you already know that our solutions are unmatched in the speed of deployment and configuration. We have Planful Now, which gets new customers on our platform in under 30 days for a range of use cases. And, we have customers like Temple University, Smartypants, and others who’ve realized immense benefits in under a month. 

Cheryl Chow, Sr Finance Manager at Smartypants, said, “Implementing Planful in under three weeks allowed us to immediately close out Q1 and quickly re-forecast for the rest of the year.” While David Marino, Controller and Associate Vice President at Temple University, was running on planful in just 4 weeks, remarking that, “The path for our team to start using and getting value from the platform was very fast and remarkably smooth.”

Planful is Easy to Use

Our product updates continue to focus on ease of use, an intuitive user experience, and the ability for everyone in FP&A and beyond to collaborate while raising their financial IQ. Winter21 was recently released, and it brings even more of that ease to our customers. 

“Because of the Planful UI, it was a great and easy transition,” said Tim Zue, Executive Vice President & CFO at Boston Red Sox, in an interview on their use of Planful. “This has been an absolute game changer in our goal of being more efficient and accurate.”

Planful is Flexible

Planful’s longtime presence on the ShortList reflects the company’s continued momentum and success in the cloud FP&A space. Our cloud-based FP&A platform accelerates planning by unifying financial planning, financial close and consolidation, reporting, and visual analytics to help Finance leaders drive faster, and more collaborative, business-wide planning and decision-making cycles.

But today’s uncertain and fast-changing world requires an additional dose of flexibility to truly elevate FP&A to a strategic level within their organizations. With the constant planning, re-planning, and re-everything of 2020, our customers leaned on Planful solutions to accelerate and improve their decision-making, eliminate days from periodic close and consolidation cycles, and provide more insights to every corner of the business. 

Get the ShortList and the Trends Report

To learn more about Planful’s inclusion in the Constellation ShortList, click here. To download the Modern Planning Platforms Drive Business Agility and Better Outcomes report, click here.