Planful

Leading with Customer Success: Why Nucleus Research Named Planful a Value Matrix Leader

The disruption and strain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year has radically changed how companies operate, but also how they develop plans, forecasts, and budgets. Uncertainty rendered historical data irrelevant and made it even more difficult for FP&A to prepare for an unpredictable future using spreadsheets and email, especially as we transitioned to remote work and online collaboration. 

Our new reality is forcing FP&A to work more collaboratively with the business, to easily and quickly gather more and current data, and to pull insights from across the organization to build well-informed financial plans and projections–all while preserving cash. We’re focused on giving our customers exactly those capabilities: great usability across broad FP&A functionality that quickly returns significant value. With that as our guide, it’s no surprise that Planful has been named a Leader in the Nucleus Research 2021 Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Value Matrix for the eighth consecutive year. 

Planful Recognized for Innovation

Planful’s leadership placement in the Nucleus Research CPM Value Matrix reflects our continued investment in our products and our customers’ success. We’re hyper-focused on FP&A in midsize companies, and the report points to our many and significant product advancements that were made in 2020. Even during the widespread challenges we all faced last year, our product and engineering teams continued to deliver. A few highlights include:

  • Our Winter20 release added beauty and brains to Continuous Planning with an enhanced, elegant user interface, the launch of Dynamic Collaboration for real-time collaboration and communication to understand the story behind the numbers, and Automatic Data Refresh to improve speed and performance.
  • Workforce Planning with Planful was enhanced in 2020 to help companies build a resilient, productive workforce and stay on top of the disruptive business landscape.
  • Further evolutions to Continuous Planning during the year improved navigation, enhanced usability in Dynamic Planning, accelerated reporting collaboration, and enabled faster, more flexible data management across the platform.

In the 2021 CPM Value Matrix, Nucleus Research also notes how Planful’s easy adoption drives company-wide participation in financial processes, and how our ease-of-use and flexibility accelerate the time to value for customers. That’s especially attractive to midsize FP&A as this market quickly moves to continuous planning and forecasting processes.

What Planful Customers Say

Planful solutions empower FP&A with a more continuous, agile planning and decision-making culture. It increases the financial IQ of an organization while also increasing the speed and confidence of Finance to become the company’s strategic guide. While we call this Continuous Planning, it falls under the Nucleus Research term of CPM. This covers solutions that broadly enable planning for and reacting to market forces and internal changes by breaking down data silos and standardizing business intelligence.

We’re always excited when we receive analyst recognition, but we also like to let our customers do the talking, especially when it comes to quick time to value and the benefits of Continuous Planning. Here are just a few comments from Planful customers:

  • “We got up and running on Planful in 4 weeks,” said David Marino, Controller and Associate Vice President at Temple University. “The path for our team to start using and getting value from the platform was very fast and remarkably smooth. Planful drives so many efficiencies for us and allows our team to focus on value-added activities.”
  • “Being able to re-forecast quickly and efficiently in the next 12 months is going to be hugely helpful for us as we pivot and redirect the ship with COVID-19,” said Luiz Martinez Luna, FP&A Manager at Bose
  • “Implementing Planful in under three weeks allowed us to immediately close out Q1 and quickly re-forecast for the rest of the year,” said Cheryl Chow, Sr Finance Manager at Smartypants. “Now we can quickly pull numbers and find the insights we need to better prepare for board meetings.”
Looking Forward to 2021

Last year was a tough one. In many organizations, FP&A was under immense pressure to conserve cash, forecast the unknowable, plan amidst continued uncertainty, and make important and sometimes painful decisions. But, we also saw how Planful customers were able to quickly recover and rebound as the pandemic wore on.

Now, as 2021 is underway, we’re excited by the new products and enhancements on our solution roadmap. Nucleus Research recognizes our continued commitment to innovation, noted by the directional arrow next to Planful that suggests that we will outpace the market in usability and better functionality.

There’s much more to come from Planful and we’re positive both our customers and respected analysts like Nucleus Research will continue to be impressed. Stay tuned!

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