Imagine your SaaS company is a self-driving car with an annual operating plan (AOP) as its road map. Operational planning software is your car’s dashboard, tracking your progress in real time. It monitors resources, performance, bottlenecks, and market conditions to keep your journey smooth.
Operational planning software is not just a tracker but an active driver for your SaaS company. It recalculates routes, adjusts for detours, and fine-tunes operations so you can stay on track and hit your goals without the constant need for manual intervention. For rapidly scaling SaaS companies, operational planning software helps efficiently manage resources and aligns teams to execute strategic plans.
In this guide, we will discuss the leading operational planning software solutions, their unique benefits, and how they overcome the limitations of spreadsheets. We’ll explore how using FP&A software can improve operational efficiency by reducing manual work.
The best operational planning software tools compared
There are numerous operational planning software tools on the market, each with its own set of features and capabilities. We have narrowed down the top options and provide in-depth comparisons here to help you make a more informed decision.
| Software/ Platform | Drivetrain | Mosaic | Cube | Pigment | Anaplan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $$ | $$ | $$ | $$$ | $$$ |
| Best for | Mid-Market to Enterprise | SMB to Mid-Market | SMB to Mid-Market | Mid-Market to Enterprise | Enterprise |
| Scalability | High | Moderate | Moderate; Same limitations as MS Excel | High | Scalable with upgrades |
| Type of FP&A solution | 3rd Generation | 3rd Generation | 3rd Generation | 3rd Generation | 2nd Generation |
| Time to implemetation | 4-6 weeks | 2-3 months | 2-3 months | 3-4 months | >4 months |
| Native Integrations | 200+ OOTB integrations | 30+ OOTB integrations | 13 OOTB integrations | 18 OOTB integrations | 10 OOTB integrations |
| Multi-scenario planning and "What-If" analysis | |||||
| Predictive forecasting | |||||
| Flexible budgeting | |||||
| Headcount planning | |||||
| Real-Time Analytics and Reporting | |||||
| Collaboration with access controls | |||||
| Ease of use |
Drivetrain
Drivetrain is an advanced financial planning and analysis (FP&A) solution that empowers CFOs and their teams to create agile and accurate annual operating plans with features like cash flow forecasting, workforce planning, and scenario modeling. The platform enables forecasting revenue and identifying areas for cost optimization. While purpose-built for SaaS companies, businesses in other industries are now discovering the power under the hood of Drivetrain’s technology.
Unlike traditional spreadsheet-based planning, Drivetrain helps businesses create detailed operational plans and track performance in real time. The platform is particularly adept at tackling the challenges SaaS companies face, like scaling operations, managing recurring revenue, and keeping up with fast-changing markets.
Like many operational planning software tools, Drivetrain automates the consolidation of financial data to reduce manual effort and human error. However, unlike most other tools, Drivetrain can connect to virtually any other business system out there. With more than 200 integrations, you can automate the flow of all the data you need for operational planning into Drivetrain from any system in your tech stack.
With all your data in one place, plus powerful features including real-time collaboration, scenario analysis, and predictive analytics, Drivetrain helps CFOs and their finance teams build operational plans tailored to their unique business and strategic goals.
$$
Mid-market and Enterprise
200+ popular integrations for smooth data flow across systems
Comprehensive financial planning from the top down and/or bottom up
Agile planning with the flexibility to implement rolling forecasts with ease
Supports strategic budgeting methods, including driver-based and zero-based budgeting
Advanced features for collaboration and workflow management
Easily accessible insights with automated reporting and interactive dashboards
Extensive customization options
Unparalleled ease of use
Heavily focused on B2B businesses
Rolling forecasts
Predictive analytics
Scenario planning and what-if analysis
Real-time budget and forecast vs. actuals
Flexible templates for vendor, headcount, and sales planning
Mosaic is a strategic finance platform designed to be more of a financial business intelligence (BI) tool rather than a full-fledged FP&A solution. However, it can support operational planning by consolidating data for FP&A activities, such as financial modeling and reporting, headcount planning, and SaaS metric benchmarking.
$$
Small and Mid-market
Automates workflows
Financial modeling and what-if analysis
Role-based, cross-functional collaboration
Doesn’t support weekly reporting
Limited customization and rigid modeling
Lacks depth for complex financial planning
Multiple scenario analysis
Rolling forecasts
Collaborative planning
Cube is an FP&A tool that combines the modern capabilities of a SaaS platform with the familiarity and flexibility of spreadsheets. As an Excel add-on, Cube extends Excel’s limited capabilities with a multi-dimensional database structure that enables users to generate insights on dimensions like products and regions. This is what makes it suitable for financial and operational planning.
$$
Small and Mid-market
Simple and easy to use
Template-based routine reporting
Flexibility due to Excel-based architecture
Limited scalability and performance constraints
Needs multiple “Cubes" for comprehensive planning
Transferring data between different “Cubes" is complex
Seamless data integration with third-party systems for real-time data access
Bi-directional compatibility with Excel and Google Spreadsheets
Scenario modeling
Pigment is a business planning platform that targets mid-market and enterprise-level SaaS businesses. It is designed to streamline their financial and operational processes with real-time data integration, scenario modeling, and collaborative planning features. It tackles complex operational challenges to help FP&A teams forecast revenue, manage budgets, and track performance.
$$-$$$
Mid-Market to Enterprise
Real-time, organization-wide planning
Sophisticated scenario modeling
Interactive dashboards
Pricing makes it less affordable for mid-market businesses seeking to scale
Steep learning curve
Complex features, some of which are suitable only for large-scale companies
Data consolidation
Financial analytics
Scenario planning
Anaplan is a connected planning platform designed for enterprise-level businesses. While not purpose-built for SaaS, its advanced capabilities make it adaptable for most FP&A use cases of SaaS businesses.
$$$
Enterprise
Scenario planning
Interactive dashboards
Multi-level financial modeling
Limited visualization features
A steep learning curve for users
Need to engage external consultants/implementation partners
Collaborative planning
Driver-based forecasting
What-if scenario analysis
Why Drivetrain is the best operational planning software solution?
The operational planning tools we evaluated mostly fall into two categories:
- Those that offer powerful but complex functionality that requires technical expertise
- Those that simplify the process but lack the depth needed for advanced operational planning
Drivetrain bridges the gap between these by offering an intuitive interface of a robust, scalable platform that handles complex data operations and integrations without the need for IT intervention. Its programmatic ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) approach ensures that data from any system, application, or format can be seamlessly imported and transformed, making it usable not only for planning, but also performance tracking and financial reporting.
Drivetrain also shines in the power it offers users to quickly create complex, multi-dimensional models in a fraction of the time it would take in other tools. With plain English formulas and an intuitive interface, users can easily model and adjust their operations without a steep learning curve. This combination of power and simplicity makes Drivetrain the go-to operational planning solution for SaaS and other businesses that need both flexibility and scalability.
See how Drivetrain empowers FP&A teams to optimize operational planning
How to choose the right operational planning software for your business
With a wide range of planning software available, choosing the ideal operational planning software for your business requires careful evaluation.
Let’s take a closer look now at what operational planning is and the essential features you should look for when choosing the best operational planning tool for your business.
What is operational planning software?
Operational planning software is a tool that helps businesses build, execute, and monitor their operational plans. This software helps companies create and implement their annual operational plans by analyzing historical data to forecast performance.
It also improves collaboration among team members and supports better operational efficiency. Features like the ability to drill-down into your data to surface real-time insights, scenario modeling, and automated reporting help businesses adjust their operational plans according to business needs.
While both annual planning software and operational planning software focus on the company’s yearly goals and objectives, they serve different purposes.
Annual planning software provides a high-level view of the entire organization. It helps your leadership create an overall business plan with annual targets and allocate budgets accordingly.
In contrast, operational planning software helps you determine the activities necessary to meet those annual targets, monitor your performance, and make adjustments when needed based on real-time insights. It can also help improve the efficiency of specific business operations to achieve annual goals.
6 key benefits of operational planning tools and software
Operational planning software offers a range of benefits that help FP&A teams simplify and improve their planning process. The key benefits are:
1. Efficient resource allocation
Operational planning software helps businesses use their resources efficiently. Many SaaS companies struggle with either overusing or underusing resources or budgets. With real-time tracking and intelligent resource management, operational planning software helps to ensure every resource is optimized to improve cost-efficiency while achieving the expected or better project outcomes.
2. Real-time visibility
Operational planning software offers real-time dashboards and analytics to monitor workflows and track bottlenecks. The granular visibility allows timely adjustments and prevents delays in decision-making. With up-to-the-minute insights, decision-making becomes proactive rather than reactive.
3. Enhanced collaboration across teams
Cross-functional collaboration is key for smooth operations, whereas silos and miscommunication disrupt workflows. Operational planning software acts as a central hub for planning and communication. Teams can align priorities, share updates, and coordinate effectively so that everyone works toward the same goals.
4. Flexibility to adapt to change
Operational planning software provides the flexibility to adapt plans in real-time, whether due to changing market conditions, customer demands, or internal priorities. This provides greater agility for SaaS businesses, helping them stay adaptable to changing situations.
5. Improved scenario planning
Operational planning software enables better scenario planning by allowing FP&A teams to create and evaluate multiple what-if scenarios. This helps teams proactively assess potential outcomes and weigh risks to make data-driven decisions.
6. Better alignment between strategy and execution
SaaS businesses struggle with bridging the gap between high-level strategic goals and their day-to-day execution. Operational planning software turns organizational objectives into actionable and trackable tasks for teams. The alignment ensures every activity supports broader business goals, improves efficiency, and increases accountability.
Why spreadsheets fall short for operational planning in SaaS?
Spreadsheets have long been the go-to solution for operational planning in SaaS, but they fall short in several key areas. One of the biggest issues is accuracy. Since data and formulas are manually entered, there’s a high risk of errors. Inaccurate data leads to faulty analysis and misinformed decisions.
Additionally, operational plans typically involve several teams or departments within the company, each with their own methods and spreadsheets. Reconciling all these plans into a unified strategy is a time-consuming process. Because of this, they’re even more prone to error because numbers may change in the meantime. While spreadsheets do offer some basic version control, they fall short for tracking changes through a complex process like operational planning which involves several collaborators.
These and other challenges are why many SaaS businesses are moving away from spreadsheets and adopting FP&A software. The table below will give you a good idea of how reliant each of the software tools we’ve covered here is spreadsheets.
Note: We've adapted the table below from FP&A software classifications developed by Paul Barnhurst (The FP&A Guy).
| Software/ Platform | Drivetrain | Mosaic | Cube | Pigment | Anaplan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web application that replaces spreadsheets | |||||
| Web application that integrates with spreadsheets | |||||
| Application uses a spreadsheet for calculations | |||||
| Add-in for spreadsheet applications |
Real-world use cases for operational planning software like Drivetrain
Operational planning software allows companies to streamline and optimize their operations to increase efficiency, improve performance, and grow profits. Mindtickle, a leading sales readiness platform, was dealing with several challenges in managing its operational planning processes when it found Drivetrain.
When Mindtickle started working with Drivetrain, its primary objectives were to address the fragmentation in its data, a cumbersome spreadsheet-based planning process, and inefficient forecasting methods. With Drivetrain, the company consolidated data from systems like Salesforce, NetSuite, and BambooHR into a single source of truth, ensuring accurate, real-time insights. Drivetrain also enabled Mindtickle to plan collaboratively across departments and reduce the length of its reporting cycles from weeks to just days.
Drivetrain’s forecasting capabilities enabled Mindtickle to create weekly forecast updates, allowing the company to adjust to changing business dynamics.
The bottom-up forecasting model built using Drivetrain is giving us great results. We have a high degree of confidence in our projections on where we will land at the end of each quarter and how the overall year will pan out.
— Aman Bafna, Office of the CEO, Mindtickle
Key features to look for in an operational planning software
1. Multiple scenario planning & what-if analysis
Multiple scenario planning and what-if analysis help businesses prepare for potential outcomes and make better decisions. Operational planning software should also make it easy to create and compare scenarios in real time.
For example, Drivetrain helps users model strategies, test assumptions and see how changes in key variables impact the business. Users can easily model and visualize scenarios like market downturns, shifts in demand, or supply chain changes to create flexible and resilient plans.
| Software/ Platform | Drivetrain | Mosaic | Cube | Pigment | Anaplan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scenario creation tools | |||||
| Adjustable assumptions | |||||
| Side-by-side comparisons |
2. Predictive forecasting
Analyzing historical data helps businesses forecast future performance. By analyzing trends, patterns, and external factors, companies can foresee potential challenges, opportunities, and changes in demand. Operational planning software uses advanced algorithms to predict trends and identify opportunities.
Drivetrain's predictive forecasting feature helps businesses make data-backed projections for revenue, expenses, headcount, and other critical metrics. The feature helps businesses better understand upcoming challenges and opportunities. Using real-time data for projections gives companies more confidence in their decisions.
| Software/ Platform | Drivetrain | Mosaic | Cube | Pigment | Anaplan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Historical data analysis | |||||
| Customizable forecasting models | |||||
| Real-time data updates |
3. Flexible budgeting
Operational planning ranges from managing large, multi-departmental budgets to fine-tuning granular cost allocations. This is particularly important for SaaS companies that need greater control over their financial planning and the flexibility to adjust budgets quickly in response to changing circumstances.
Drivetrain is an ideal tool for fast-growing companies with complex budgeting requirements. The platform makes it easy to track and adjust spending if needed to ensure financial goals are met. You can also reforecast budgets if necessary to accommodate changes in priorities or take advantage of new opportunities in the market.
| Software/ Platform | Drivetrain | Mosaic | Cube | Pigment | Anaplan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Departmental budget allocation | |||||
| Top-down and bottom-up budgeting | |||||
| Customizable templates | |||||
| Version control | |||||
| Real-time updates |
4. Headcount planning
Headcount planning is key to scaling operations and managing costs. Integrating headcount data with financial and operational planning ensures that each department has the right resources to drive performance.
Drivetrain’s headcount planning feature allows businesses to forecast staffing needs based on projected growth, departmental requirements, and financial forecasts. It also helps HR and finance teams work together to keep the workforce aligned with organizational goals.
| Software/ Platform | Drivetrain | Mosaic | Cube | Pigment | Anaplan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workforce modeling | |||||
| Compensation forecasting | |||||
| Attrition analysis | |||||
| Role-based planning | |||||
| Approval workflows |
5. Real-time analytics and reporting
Real-time access to up-to-date data and monitoring KPIs consistently helps FP&A teams evaluate progress accurately. Tracking progress against goals helps them quickly identify areas requiring attention.
Drivetrain’s real-time data capabilities, custom reporting features, and intuitive dashboards empower FP&A teams to perform detailed analyses quickly. In Drivetrain, users can drill down deeply into their data in any dimension to root out the causes of variance for more robust variance reporting. This feature also helps to identify insights and trends hiding in the data enabling more proactive decision-making.
| Software/ Platform | Drivetrain | Mosaic | Cube | Pigment | Anaplan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cross-functional views | |||||
| Real-time KPI tracking | |||||
| Drill-down capabilities | |||||
| Global and chart level features | |||||
| Customizable dashboards | |||||
| Flexible reporting templates |
6. Collaboration with access controls
Collaboration is important for effective operational planning, as all teams must be aligned and working towards common goals. Operational planning software facilitates seamless teamwork by allowing multiple departments to collaborate on plans, forecasts, and reports in real time.
Drivetrain’s collaboration tools simplify teamwork and communication across departments. The platform also includes granular access controls, enabling administrators to allow who can view or edit specific data. This feature protects sensitive information as it is shared across departments. Combining access controls with collaboration tools ensures tight control over operational processes while encouraging efficient teamwork.
| Software/ Platform | Drivetrain | Mosaic | Cube | Pigment | Anaplan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dimensional level access control | |||||
| Slack notifications | |||||
| Data masking | |||||
| Audit logs | |||||
| In-app commenting |
7. Ease of use
Teams struggling with spreadsheets will likely find any operational planning software helpful, but it might not meet all their needs. An intuitive interface, user-friendly workflows, and minimal learning curve empower users to focus on planning rather than navigating complex systems.
Drivetrain provides a seamless user experience. The platform’s clean, intuitive design ensures that even non-technical users can easily create models, analyze data, and generate reports. Drivetrain’s ease of use reduces friction and makes operational planning easy for everyone in your organization.
| Software/ Platform | Drivetrain | Mosaic | Cube | Pigment | Anaplan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| User-friendly UI | |||||
| Natural language formula writing | |||||
| Drag-and-drop visualization |
FAQ
1. Who uses operational planning software?
Operational planning software can benefit businesses of all sizes, from startups to enterprises by helping them develop and track budgets, forecast performance, and monitor KPIs.
2. What is the difference between operational planning software and annual planning software?
Yes, while both annual planning software and operational planning software focus on the company’s yearly goals and objectives, they serve different purposes.
Annual planning software provides a high-level view of the entire organization, helping leaders create an overall business plan with annual targets and allocate budgets accordingly.
In contrast, operational planning software helps to plan for the activities necessary to meet those annual targets, monitor performance, and make adjustments when needed based on real-time insights. It can also help improve the efficiency of specific business operations to achieve annual goals.
3. Can non-finance teams use operational planning software?
Ideally yes, but this depends on the complexity of the software and the learning curve it requires. For example, some software uses a proprietary syntax for writing financial formulas, which could make the software more difficult for a non-finance user.
However there are other tools that use Excel-like formulas, which will make them more familiar to a broader range of users. Drivetrain is a good example of this with its plain English formulas and Excel-like functions and an intuitive user interface that’s easy for non-finance users to pick up and run with.
Related operational planning software guides
We have even more information on operational planning related software and tools. Check them out.
