The top 4 alternatives to Anaplan for FP&A in 2024

Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) software simplifies financial processes using data and analyzing market trends to predict future performance. They enable finance teams and business leaders to automate data collection, consolidation, and verification, allowing companies to refine their assumptions, test scenarios, and make informed decisions. Choosing the right FP&A software necessitates considering the utility of the features available vs. your specific business needs.

Anaplan is a cloud-based financial management platform for enterprise-level SaaS businesses. It improves insights and reduces information silos, offering a connected budgeting and planning experience. Although popular among SaaS companies, it lacks advanced visualization features for detailed reporting.

This article discusses four FP&A software alternatives to Anaplan, with similar or more sophisticated features including better reporting capabilities.

Anaplan software review

Anaplan is a cloud-based corporate performance management and financial planning software mainly used by larger businesses and enterprises. It offers robust financial planning, forecasting, and modeling and planning capabilities by centralizing financial and operational data in real time.

Anaplan contributes to the planning process of different teams through revenue planning, OpEx planning, headcount planning, capital planning, and long-range planning. However, the platform's complexity, high cost, and limited reporting capabilities makes it unsuitable for emerging startups and fast-growing SaaS businesses. 

Key features

Anaplan helps companies create efficient financial planning workflows via:

• Dynamic financial modeling: Facilitates complex and multi-dimensional financial modeling to forecast different financial scenarios.
• ‍Collaboration: Supports cross-team collaboration, enabling them to work on a single integrated plan.‍
• Real-time data updates: Enables users to see immediate changes in forecasts or budgets as new data is entered.

Pros

• Financial forecasting: Powerful forecasting capabilities using real-time insights to help companies prepare for potential opportunities or risks.
• Data automation and consolidation: Real-time data consolidation from across teams to improve forecast accuracy.
• Financial planning: Robust modeling and planning capabilities for different scenarios.

Cons

• Pricing: Complex pricing model; not cost-effective for SMBs.
• Native integrations: Very few native integrations.
• Reporting: Limited reporting functionalities, including lack of formatting and customization options.
• Steep learning curve: New users need training and support to fully utilize all the features.
• Complex setup: Anaplan consultants are sometimes needed for implementation.

The top 4 Anaplan alternatives and competitors

While Anaplan can handle the complexities of financial planning and corporate performance management efficiently, its high pricing model and limited reporting capabilities does not make it suitable for emerging startups and small businesses on a path to rapid growth.

In this section, therefore, we have compared and detailed the top 4 alternatives to Anaplan with easier implementation and better integration at lower costs. We have also highlighted their features, pros and cons to help you make an informed decision regarding the software that meets all your specific business requirements. Let’s get started!

Drivetrain

Drivetrain is a modern, AI-powered FP&A platform, designed specifically for high-growth companies and finance teams users to enhance their financial planning, tracking and forecasting processes, and make data-driven decisions with greater speed and accuracy. 

With 200+ integrations, Drivetrain unifies financial and operational data from various sources and systems to provide a single source of truth for the entire organization. It also centralizes key SaaS metrics and financial KPIs, provides one-click root cause analysis to optimize performance, and generates interactive, board-ready reports and dashboards for strategic planning. 

For SaaS companies, Drivetrain offers a comprehensive solution that connects models to real-time actuals, enables multi-dimensional analysis across various business aspects (geographies, market segments, pricing tiers, etc.), and generates actionable insights for informed decision-making. 

Key features and capabilities

• Intuitive user interface: Provides a simple and user-friendly interface that makes complex financial modeling accessible to both finance experts and non-finance stakeholders.
• Native integrations: Has 200+ out-of-the-box integrations that connect seamlessly with various ERP, CRM, BI, billing systems, and HRIS, leading to connected plans and shared metrics for in-depth analysis and granular insights. 
• Rolling forecasts: Allows finance teams to develop and utilize rolling forecasts for continuous planning.
• Multi-dimensional modeling and analysis: Enables users to create and analyze complex financial models across multiple dimensions, including products, customers, and regions.
• Advanced scenario planning: Enables users to run multiple “what-if” analyses and model various business scenarios to understand their potential financial impact.
• Granular access control: Provides role-based access control, ensuring that sensitive financial data is only accessible to authorized personnel.
• Customized reporting and dynamic dashboards: Generates customized reports and interactive dashboards with easily comprehensible visuals (charts and graphs) to facilitate data-driven decision-making among all stakeholders.

What users say about Drivetrain 

"[Drivetrain] can accommodate different scenarios, buildouts, and integrations, which is beneficial, especially when dealing with various systems. Other companies seem to have more of a canned offering of functionalities and capabilities." – G2 review

Workday Adaptive Planning

Workday Adaptive Planning, formerly known as Adaptive Insights, is a second-generation, cloud-based business planning tool that automates data collection and consolidation, providing a unified view for analysis. Although not specifically designed for SaaS companies, its robust features, including accurate forecasting, collaborative planning, and flexible scenario modeling, work well for mid-sized businesses.

Key features and capabilities

• Real-time reporting: Allows users to track KPIs such as revenue, customer churn, and cash flow, and generate insightful custom reports.
• Automated data consolidation: Integrates with some source systems for collecting and consolidating data automatically.
• Collaborative planning: Enables cross-functional teams to work together on a single integrated plan.
• Budgeting and forecasting: Helps users build daily forecasts based on real-time data and monthly or quarterly budgets.

What users say about Workday Adaptive Planning

“Workday has an easy platform for customers to build, utilize and use for the university's annual budget. The platform is based on the excel spreadsheet, so it doesn't require a separate training for users. Workday has a complex algorism for setup. Since the platform requires more customized settings before use, more engineering skills are needed for administrators in the implementation stage.” – G2 Review

Pigment

Pigment is a business planning software primarily for mid-sized businesses and enterprises. It comes with an AI-powered querying system to automate financial planning and routine analysis. The platform ensures users can create and test financial scenarios, as well as explore the impact of business decisions. 

Key features and capabilities

• Automated data imports: Enables real-time data collection from multiple sources to generate accurate financial reports.
• AI-driven system: Uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to simplify access to data and insights to improve decision-making.
• Data security: Complies with key data security regulations, including SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2, CSA STAR 1, GDPR, and CCPA.
• Access control: Allows administrators to define user permissions and control who can access, view, or modify data.

What users say about Pigment

“Highly configurable tool, with plentiful out of the box data integrations and limitless flexibility in model setup…Formula logic can be hard to ramp to, especially since in-product documentation and error messaging is lacking” – Gartner Peer Insights review

Mosaic

Mosaic is a unified platform for FP&A functions that helps businesses forecast, budget, and plan with ease. The platform automates data consolidation and analysis, and uses AI to generate more granular insights. Mosaic accommodates increased data volumes and complexity of high-growth companies without compromising on performance output.

Key features and capabilities

• Customizable dashboards: Users can personalize dashboards with drag-and-drop functions and interactive data visualization.
• Automated data integration: Integrates with multiple platforms to automate data collection from different sources. 
• AI-powered analytics: Helps businesses gain insights quickly and accurately using AI algorithms to analyze large datasets.
• Budgeting and forecasting: Supports financial forecasting and allows real-time collaboration among different teams on other planning and budgeting tasks.

What users say about Mosaic

“Easy to use and create graphs and visualizations for stakeholders. Great for small company leadership that doesn't have an internal finance team…I would like to have more control over data mapping, creating and reporting on custom metrics. End up often having to export to Excel and layer additional info to get the data in the form desired to present to others.” – G2 Review

Choosing the best Anaplan alternative

FP&A tools help automate and simplify financial processes by:

• Providing a single source of truth 
• Simulating business scenarios
• Supporting cross-departmental collaboration
• Identifying trends for accurate forecasting

Anaplan best fits large enterprises with complex financial modeling needs, but it is not suitable for small to medium-sized businesses due to its high cost and steep learning curve. It lacks the agility smaller businesses need to adapt quickly to market changes.

Drivetrain, on the other hand, is a cost-effective and user-friendly Anaplan alternative. It comes with an easy-to-use platform and 200+ native integrations with various systems and apps for effective data consolidation and analysis in real time and on a single platform.

Learn more about Drivetrain here or request a free demo.