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THE Planning Survey 16 – 2

Introduction

The market for planning products is highly competitive. This report summarizes the strengths and

challenges of most of the leading vendors in the space as well as many smaller vendors that ordinarily

don’t get much press but which, in many cases, offer outstanding value to their customers. THE

Planning Survey also provides a detailed quantitative analysis of why customers buy planning tools,

what they are used for, what problems they experience with the tools and how successful they are.

THE Planning Survey 16 features 13 planning products from 12 different vendors. It includes not just

products from well-known global giants, but also specialist tools from much smaller vendors.

THE Planning Survey 16 is the second edition of THE Planning Survey, and follows on from

13 successful editions of The BI Survey (formerly The OLAP Survey). Based on the real-world

experiences of 1,245 respondents, the value of THE Planning Survey depends on us analyzing a

sufficiently large, well-distributed and unbiased sample effectively. THE Planning Survey is the largest

and most thorough fact-based analysis of the planning and budgeting market currently available, using

more than 15 years of experience to analyze market trends and challenge some of the myths

surrounding the planning and BI industry.

After data cleansing and removing responses from participants unable to answer specific questions

about their use of planning products, we were left with a sample of 811 end-users, 167 consultants

and 132 vendor and reseller employees. Participants from all over the world took part in THE Planning

Survey 16. 45 percent of respondents stated they have a finance and controlling job function,

30 percent an IT job function while the rest perform various line-of-business roles.

THE Planning Survey 16 is not based on anecdotal accounts or personal opinions, unlike much

analyst research, neither is it intended to be a measure of market shares. It does not attempt to

forecast future trends – indeed it often provides evidence that undermines the reliability of many such

forecasts.

The findings from THE Planning Survey 16 are presented in several documents, each focusing on a

specific set of the survey results.

Document Description

THE Planning Survey 16 – The Results

An overview and analysis of the most important findings and topical results from THE Planning Survey 16. Furthermore, the document provides advice to buyers of planning software as well as users of existing planning solutions based on the results of our analysis.

THE Planning Survey 16 – Sample, Products, Methodology and KPIs (this document)

Provides details of the sample, the products included and an overview of our methodology. Descriptions of the KPIs used in THE Planning Survey 16 are also provided, including details of our calculation methods.

THE Planning Survey 16 – Vendor Performance Summaries

A series of executive reports on each product featured in THE Planning Survey 16. Each report contains a short vendor and product overview by BARC’s analyst team plus a summary of the relevant product-related results from THE Planning Survey 16.


Table of contents

(The Results)

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 3

The Results .............................................................................................................................................. 4

Software in Use and Usage Scenarios .......................................................................................... 4

Business benefits from Planning Products .................................................................................... 7

The Software Selection Process .................................................................................................. 12

Satisfaction and challenges ......................................................................................................... 18

Trends .......................................................................................................................................... 22

About BARC ........................................................................................................................................... 24

BARC — Business Application Research Center ........................................................................ 24

BARC research reports bring transparency to the market ........................................................... 24


Table of contents

(Vendor Performance Summaries)

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 3

Vendor Performance Summaries ............................................................................................................. 4

Peer Groups ................................................................................................................................... 4

The KPIs ........................................................................................................................................ 4

Anaplan .......................................................................................................................................... 5

BOARD ........................................................................................................................................ 15

Corporate Planning ...................................................................................................................... 25

Cubeware ..................................................................................................................................... 35

IBM ............................................................................................................................................... 45

Infor .............................................................................................................................................. 55

Jedox ............................................................................................................................................ 65

macs Software ............................................................................................................................. 75

Oracle ........................................................................................................................................... 85

prevero ......................................................................................................................................... 95

SAP Business Planning and Consolidation ............................................................................... 105

SAP BW Integrated Planning ..................................................................................................... 114

Software4You ............................................................................................................................ 123

About BARC ......................................................................................................................................... 133

BARC — Business Application Research Center ...................................................................... 133

BARC research reports bring transparency to the market ......................................................... 133


Vendor Performance Summaries

Peer Groups

THE Planning Survey 16 features a range of different types of planning and budgeting tools so we use

peer groups to help identify competing products. The peer groups were defined by BARC analysts

using their experience and judgment, with segmentation based on three key factors:

1. Flexibility – is the solution development-oriented or does it provide plenty of predefined

planning content (e.g. for financial planning)?

2. Specialization – is the vendor a performance management/planning specialist or a software

generalist?

3. Geographical reach – does the vendor have a truly global reach or does it concentrate on

the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland)?

For more details on the peer groups, see the “Sample, Products, Methodology and KPIs” document.

The KPIs

THE Planning Survey 16 provides the reader with well-designed KPI dashboards packed with concise

information, which can be absorbed at a glance. The KPIs all follow these simple rules:

Only measures that have a clear good/bad trend are used as the basis for KPIs

KPIs may be based on one or more measures from THE Planning Survey 16

Only products with samples of at least 20-30 responses (depending on the KPI) to each of

the questions that feeds into the KPI are included

For quantitative data, KPIs are converted to a scale of 1 to 10 (worst to best)

A linear min-max transformation is applied, which preserves the order of, and the relative

distance between, products’ scores.

The terms ‘top-ranked’ and ‘leader’ are used in the KPI chart titles. ‘Top-ranked’ indicates first position.

‘Leader’ denotes the second position.

For more details on the peer groups, see the “Sample, Products, Methodology and KPIs” document.


Vendor A

Vendor and product overview

Product A was originally founded in 1956. The company is based in Munich, Germany, and has a

workforce of more than 220 employees worldwide (including 20-30 in research and development) as

well as an international partner network. Product A is one of the largest performance management

vendors in the DACH region in terms of software revenues, and claims to have a client base of 4,500

companies in 34 countries.

In mid-2004, Product A acquired the software vendor XX with its complete solution portfolio and

competencies in development and consulting. This was followed up in 2015 by the acquisition of XX,

with its ZSX technology-based BI solution. Whereas Product A and the ex-XX portfolio operate as

Product A, X Product A’s product portfolio includes BI solutions for business departments in mid-size

and large companies (Product A.core, XXZ) as well as small to mid-size companies (Product A). The

Pro duct A product offers a flexible development environment for building individual BI applications for

planning, reporting and analysis with the help of wizards. No knowledge of scripting is required.

Product A is suitable for conducting centralized and local planning for mid-size to large scenarios. The

tool provides good capabilities for supporting both top down and bottom up planning.

Product A has a strong footprint in the utilities sector for historical reasons and offers pre-built content

specifically for this industry. An additional predefined industry model is available for airports, and

Product A also offers predefined business applications for areas such as project portfolio

management, strategic controlling and risk management.

…


User and use case demographics

Besides planning, standard/enterprise reporting, ad hoc query and data analysis are the main BI

use cases Product A is used for today. Predictive analysis/data mining and dashboards are also

in the future plans of many customers. Product A is primarily used in mid-sized companies with

101-2,500 employees (78 percent of respondents) with a median number of 60 users in a

common environment (with 35 of them using planning functionality). However, a mean figure of

50 users per company for planning suggests that the product is used in larger planning

environments as well.

…


Why organizations buy Product A

…

Problems encountered by Product A users

…

KPI results for Product A in the ‘XY’ peer group


Table of contents

(THE Planning Survey 16 - Sample, Products, Methodology and KPIs)

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 2

The Sample ............................................................................................................................................10

Sample size and make-up ........................................................................................................... 10

Organization sizes by headcount ................................................................................................ 11

Vertical markets ........................................................................................................................... 11

Featured products ..................................................................................................................................12

Peer groups ............................................................................................................................................15

Overview of the key calculations in THE Planning Survey 16 ................................................................17

Measuring business benefits ....................................................................................................... 17

Project Success ........................................................................................................................... 17

Means and medians .................................................................................................................... 17

Understanding multiple response questions ............................................................................... 17

Survey data collection ............................................................................................................................18

Understanding the KPIs ..........................................................................................................................19

Reading the KPI Charts ..........................................................................................................................20

The KPIs (Overview) ..............................................................................................................................22

Product picklist used in The Survey .......................................................................................................23

About BARC ...........................................................................................................................................24

BARC — Business Application Research Center ....................................................................... 24

BARC research reports bring transparency to the market .......................................................... 24


The Sample

Most surveys are conducted or sponsored by an organization based in, and focused on, one country.

However, planning is a worldwide market and we wanted to capture a larger international sample.

The net result was an extraordinarily international panel. Respondents were located in 81 countries.

The countries with the most respondents are Germany, United States of America and France. The

regions with the most respondents are Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

The online questionnaire was published in three languages: English, German and French.

Sample size and make-up

Many thousands of people around the world were invited to participate in THE Planning Survey 16,

using dozens of email lists, magazines and Web sites. As with last year, the questionnaire offered

different sets of questions for vendors and users (or consultants answering on behalf of a user).

The results of the online data collected are shown in the following chart, with the numbers of

responses removed also displayed.

Responses

Total responses 1,245 100%

Filtered during data cleansing -36 -3%

Remaining after data cleansing 1,209 97%

Not yet considered buying -99 -8%

Total answering questions 1,110 89%

Table 1: Responses removed from the samples

The number of responses is split between users, consultants, vendors and non-users. Vendors

answered a different set of questions to those answered by end users. This document focuses on the

analysis of the user results.

Figure 1: Has your organization acquired, or considered acquiring, any planning or business intelligence

(BI) products or applications? (Please indicate your role) (n=1209)

67%

14%

11%

8%

User

Consultant

Vendor/Reseller

Not a user


Organization sizes by headcount

…

Vertical markets

…


Featured products

When grouping and describing the products featured in THE Planning Survey, we did not strictly follow

the naming conventions that the vendors use. Note that the names we use in this document are our

own and are not always the official product names used by the vendors.

One of the key reasons for this is that the products we analyze are not necessarily the latest version of

the tool. Vendors often change the product name between versions, making it difficult to have a single

official name for several versions of the same product. The point is not to challenge the naming

conventions of the vendor, but simply to reduce the complexity of the Survey findings for the

convenience of the reader. In some cases, we also shorten the names of the products to improve the

formatting of the charts.

We asked respondents explicitly about their experiences with products from a pre-defined list, with the

option to nominate other products. This list is updated each year and is based on the sample size of

the products in the previous year, as well as additional new products on the market. Our pre-defined

list can be found at the end of this document. In cases where respondents said they were using an

‘other’ product, but from the context it was clear that they were actually using one of the listed

products, we reclassified their data accordingly.

We solicited responses on all surviving products with more than a minimal response in the last Survey,

plus a few others whose numbers have potentially grown to the point where there is enough data to be

analyzed.

The following table shows the products included in the detailed analysis. The number of the ‘other’

responses is also included in this table.

Product label Product name Respondents

Corporate Planning Corporate Planner (CP-Suite) 60

IBM Cognos TM1 TM1 59

Infor Infor BI 38

SAP BW IP BW Integrated Planning 38

BOARD BOARD 37

Anaplan Anaplan 34

Oracle Hyp Plan Hyperion Planning 33

Jedox Jedox Suite 32

Cubeware Cockpit 30

Software4You 4PLAN 30

macs Controlling macs complete 28

prevero prevero 27

SAP BPC Business Planning and Consolidation 27

Other 170

Table 2: Products included in the sample (excluding ‘don’t know')


This year we have seen an increase in the proportion of international respondents. This is partly due

to cooperation with international vendors and market entries of some international vendors in Europe

and the German speaking region.

This year we also included a few new vendors including Anaplan and Software4You.


The following table (Table 3) contains the products that had responses but are not included in the

detailed analysis. Not every product mentioned by participants is necessarily a specialized planning

tool.

Table 3: Products in the sample but not in the detailed analysis

Other vendors

arcplan

Bissantz

Calumo

Chartio

CoPlanner

cubus

Cyberscience Cyberquery

Decisyon

Denzhorn

Dimensional Insight

Dundas

evidanza

IDL

Logi Analytics

Longview

LucaNet

MicroStrategy

MIK

prevero Professional Planner

Procos

Prophix

PST-BI

Sage

Solver

SpagoBI

SWOT

Tableau

Tagetik

Talentia

WebFocus

Yellowfin


Peer groups

THE Planning Survey 16 features a wide range of planning tools so peer groups are used to help

readers identify and compare competing products. The peer groups are defined using the

characteristics in

Table 4.

The peer groups are designed to help readers compare similar tools in terms of handling

(development-oriented or flexible planning solutions), software focus of the vendor (generalist or

specialist) and geographical focus (DACH focused or global vendor).

In a change from last year’s Survey, we decided to add two geographical peer groups: One for the

German-speaking region (DACH focused vendors) and one for international vendors (Global vendors).

For an overview of the products in each peer group, see Table 5.

Peer group Description

Development-oriented planning

solutions

Development environments are most suitable for implementing

completely individual planning requirements. Development-

oriented planning or BI tools with an emphasis on reporting

and analysis, which also allow the entry of target figures, offer

a fairly high degree of flexibility in building various planning

applications. Typically they have no predefined planning

models, and usually only best practices are available as a

framework for creating individual planning applications.

Flexible planning solutions

Flexible planning tools provide opportunities for realizing

various planning goals, often based on or supplemented by

predefined planning models. Predefined planning models are

available for special applications (e.g. integrated financial

planning, HR) or industries (e.g. energy, manufacturing). They

have been developed by either the software provider itself or

partners and can be adapted to application-specific

circumstances.

Software generalists

Software generalists are vendors that offer a broad portfolio of

software for a variety of business requirements (e.g. ERP,

CRM, SCM). Business intelligence and performance

management are only a part of the company’s portfolio.

Performance management

specialists

Performance management specialists are software vendors

who focus solely on performance management and business

intelligence.

DACH focused vendors Software vendors whose main focus is on the German

speaking region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland).

Global vendors Software vendors with a truly global sales and marketing reach.

Table 4: Peer group descriptions


Development-oriented planning solutions

Flexible planning solutions

Software generalists

Performance management specialists

DACH focused vendors

Global vendors

Anaplan

x

x

x

BOARD x

x

x

Corporate Planning

x

x x

Cubeware x

x x

IBM Cognos TM1 x

x

x

Infor

x x

x

Jedox x

x x

macs Controlling

x

x x

Oracle Hyp Plan x

x

x

prevero

x

x x

SAP BPC

x x

x

SAP BW IP x

x

x

Software4You

x

x x

Table 5: Products by peer group matrix


Overview of the key calculations in THE Planning Survey 16

Measuring business benefits

…

Project Success

…

Means and medians

This Survey makes frequent references to different forms of averages — means and medians. Just in

case your statistical knowledge is a little rusty, here’s a quick reminder of the definition of the terms:

The mean is the usual arithmetic average. Its value is affected by every value in the sample, so a

single large outlier can materially affect the mean, particularly with small samples.

The median is the value in the middle of the sample; that is, half of the sample is larger than the

median, and the other half is smaller. It could be regarded as the ‘typical value’, and is affected by the

number, but not the value, of outliers. One or two large or small outliers therefore do not affect the

median.

Understanding multiple response questions

Several questions in THE Planning Survey 16 allow the user to make multiple responses. For

example, we asked users what problems (if any) they encountered in their projects. Because many

users had more than one problem, the number of responses is larger than the number of respondents.

This means that there are two ways to calculate the percentage of a given response: based on the

total number of responses, or based on the total number of respondents. We present THE Planning

Survey results based on the number of respondents.

Calculating percentages based on the number of respondents tells us how likely a given respondent is

to have the problem, but results in percentages higher than 100 percent when all the problems are

added together (e.g. 44 percent of all respondents reported that they have no significant problems).

Conversely, calculating percentages based on the total number of responses would result in a total of

100 percent.


Survey data collection

The Survey was conducted by BARC, with data captured from the end of November 2015 to –

February 2016. All data was captured online from a total of 1,245 respondents.

Respondents were solicited individually from dozens of vendor and independent lists and from Web

sites from many different countries, with emailed invitations being sent to the lists in a staggered

fashion.

At our request, most of the vendors notified their customers about The Survey using either their

regular newsletters or Web sites. We also asked some bloggers to mention The Survey. Each list and

Web site had a different survey URL, though in all cases, the same questionnaire (in English, German

or French) was used.


Understanding the KPIs

The goal of this section is to help the reader spot winners and losers in THE Planning Survey 16 using

well-designed dashboards packed with concise information. The Survey includes a set of 20

normalized KPIs for each of the 13 products. It includes 2 aggregated KPIs.

This year we have calculated a set of KPIs for each of the six peer groups. The values are normalized

on the whole sample. Peer groups are used to enable fair and useful comparisons of products that are

likely to compete.

The KPIs all follow these simple rules:

Only measures that have a clear good/bad trend are used as the basis for KPIs

KPIs may be based on one or more measures from The Survey

Median figures should be used wherever possible to minimize the distorting effect of extreme outliers

Only products with samples of at least 15-30 (depending on the KPI) for each of the questions that feeds into the KPI are included for each KPI

Each KPI is normalized so that the least possible value is 1 and the best is 10

KPIs are only calculated if the samples have at least 15 - 30 data points (this varies from KPI to KPI) and if the KPI in question is applicable to a product. Therefore some products do not have a full set of root KPIs. It is important to exclude KPIs based on small (and therefore not representative) samples to ensure that the graph scales are not distorted by outlier KPIs. In such cases, the product is still shown in the tables, but with a blank KPI value and no bar in the bullet graph or bar chart.

Aggregated KPI KPIs

Business benefits

Project success

Recommendation

Customer satisfaction

Product satisfaction

Vendor support

Implementer support

Performance satisfaction

Planning functionality

Integrated planning

Reporting/analysis functionality

Predefined data connections

Ease of use

Agility

Flexibility

Self-service

Project length

Considered for purchase

Competitive win rate

Price-to-value


Reading the KPI Charts

We provide two different types of dashboards for viewing the KPIs. The first type is the Product

Dashboard. A Product Dashboard displays all the KPIs for a single product. The second type is the

KPI Dashboard, which displays the KPI values for each product in a peer group using simple bar

charts. The products are sorted by value in descending order.

Figure 2: KPI dashboard used for displaying KPIs

In the KPI Dashboards (see Figure 2), the peer group average is indicated by a gray bar.


Figure 3: Product dashboard used for displaying all KPIs for a product in a specific peer group

In Figure 3, the first column shows the KPI name. The middle column indicates the product rank in the

specific peer group. As previously mentioned, not every product is represented by the complete set of

KPIs. The gray squares show how many products in the peer group have an adequate sample to be

classified in each KPI. The blue bars in the third column represent the KPI values for the product in

question in each KPI. The vertical gray line indicates the peer group average.


The KPIs (Overview)

…


Product picklist used in The Survey

Adaptive Insights LucaNet

Anaplan macs Controlling

Arcplan MIK

Axiom EPM Oracle Hyperion Planning

Bissantz Prevero Prevero

BOARD Prevero Professional Planner

CoPlanner Procos

Corporate Planning/CP Suite Prophix

Cubeware SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC)

cubus SAP BW Integrated Planning

Denzhorn SAP Cloud for Planning

evidanza Software4You

Host Analytics Solver

IBM Cognos TM1 SWOT

IDL Tagetik

Infor Talentia

Jedox Thinking Networks

Longview Tidemark


About BARC

BARC — Business Application Research Center A CXP Group Company

BARC is a leading enterprise software industry

analyst and consulting firm delivering

information to more than 1,000 customers

each year. Major companies, government

agencies and financial institutions rely on

BARC’s expertise in software selection,

consulting and IT strategy projects.

For over twenty years, BARC has specialized

in core research areas including Data

Management (DM), Business Intelligence (BI),

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

and Enterprise Content Management (ECM).

BARC’s expertise is underpinned by a

continuous program of market research,

analysis and a series of product comparison

studies to maintain a detailed and up-to-date

understanding of the most important software

vendors and products, as well as the latest

market trends and developments.

BARC research focuses on helping companies

find the right software solutions to align with

their business goals. It includes evaluations of

the leading vendors and products using

methodologies that enable our clients to easily

draw comparisons and reach a software

selection decision with confidence. BARC also

publishes insights into market trends and

developments, and dispenses proven best

practice advice. BARC consulting can help you

find the most reliable and cost effective

products to meet your specific requirements,

guaranteeing a fast return on your investment.

Neutrality and competency are the two

cornerstones of BARC’s approach to

consulting. BARC also offers technical

architecture reviews and coaching and advice

on developing a software strategy for your

organization, as well as helping software

vendors with their product and market strategy.

BARC organizes regular conferences and

seminars on Business Intelligence, Enterprise

Content Management and Customer

Relationship Management software. Vendors

and IT decision-makers meet to discuss the

latest product updates and market trends, and

take advantage of valuable networking

opportunities.

Along with CXP and Pierre Audoin Consultants

(PAC), BARC forms part of the CXP Group –

the leading European IT research and

consulting firm with 140 staff in eight countries

including the UK, France, Germany, Austria

and Switzerland. CXP and PAC complement

BARC’s expertise in software markets with

their extensive knowledge of technology for IT

Service Management, HR and ERP.

BARC research reports bring transparency to the market

The BI Survey 15 is the world’s

largest annual survey of BI users. Based on a sample of over 3,000 survey responses, it offers an unsurpassed level of user feedback on 35 leading BI products.

The BARC Big Data Use Cases Survey explores the

usage of big data in companies worldwide. 559 business and IT decision-makers completed the survey in the first quarter of 2015.

The new BI Trend Monitor 2016

reflects on the trends currently driving the BI and data management market from a user perspective. We asked close to 2,800 users, consultants and vendors for their views on the most important trends.

http://bi-survey.com/

http://barc-research.com/research/big-data-use-cases-2015/

http://barc-research.com/research/big-data-use-cases-2015/

http://barc-research.com/research/bi-trend-monitor/

Copyright © BARC GmbH 2016. All rights reserved.

Business Application Research Center – BARC GmbH

Germany

BARC GmbH

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+49 (0) 931 880651-0

www.barc.de

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Rest of the World

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