The Best Financial Performance Management Tools: An In-depth Review

Most organizations would agree that effectively managing financial performance is critical, yet often challenging.

In this comprehensive review, we spotlight the top-rated financial performance management platforms capable of unlocking data-driven insights to optimize planning, forecasting, and reporting.

You'll discover the core capabilities and key evaluation criteria for selecting the right performance management solution to meet your organization's specific needs and objectives.

Introduction to Financial Performance Management

Financial performance management (FPM) tools provide businesses with visibility into key financial metrics to enable data-driven decision making. In this introductory section, we'll cover the fundamentals of FPM software and set the stage for our in-depth review of top solutions.

Defining the Landscape: What is Performance Management Software?

FPM software consolidates financial data from multiple sources into a single version of truth. Key capabilities include:

Financial reporting and dashboards: Connect to data sources like ERPs to build real-time reports and visualizations of KPIs.
Budgeting and forecasting: Streamline budget planning across the organization and run what-if analyses to forecast performance.
Advanced analytics: Conduct root cause analyses, model different growth scenarios, and more to guide strategic decisions.

By centralizing key financial metrics and leveraging predictive insights, FPM enables stakeholders to track progress, identify issues early, and plan for growth.

Unlocking the Benefits of FPM Software

Adopting a dedicated FPM solution can lead to:

Better forecasting accuracy: By combining data from multiple sources, FPM provides a more holistic view of financial performance to create more precise forecasts.
Improved decision making: Real-time analytics and modeling equip executives, managers, and frontline employees to make better decisions.
Faster period-end close: Automation around tasks like reconciliations helps shorten the close process by up to 30%.

Ultimately, FPM software leads to optimized financial operations, strategic planning, and overall performance.

Exploring Core Capabilities of Top FPM Platforms

Leading FPM tools share several must-have capabilities:

Reporting and dashboards: Visualize real-time metrics across GL, AP, AR, and other subledgers.
Budgeting: Collaboratively build departmental budgets tied to organizational goals.
Forecasting: Run what-if scenarios to predict performance.
Analytics: Spot trends and drill into root causes of issues.

In the remaining sections, we will compare popular FPM systems based on these and other key features.

How do you evaluate a firm's financial performance?

When assessing a company's financial health, there are a few key metrics to analyze:

Gross Profit Margin

The gross profit margin measures how efficiently a company can generate profit from its sales. A higher margin means the company is able to convert more revenue into gross profit. Benchmarking against competitors can indicate if there's room for improvement.

Working Capital

Working capital measures a company's liquid assets available to fund day-to-day business operations. Positive working capital means the company can pay off short-term debts. Tracking working capital over time shows efficiency in managing cash flow.

Current Ratio

The current ratio compares current assets to current liabilities, indicating a company's ability to cover short-term obligations. A ratio of 1.5-3 is ideal. Anything lower may raise concerns about liquidity risks.

Inventory Turnover

Inventory turnover rate shows how fast inventory sells during a period. Higher turnover indicates efficient inventory management. Comparing turnover ratios over time and against industry averages points to potential issues.

By regularly assessing these and other financial ratios, businesses can identify areas for operational improvements and strategic changes to strengthen financial performance. Consulting with accounting professionals can provide further insights and recommendations.

What is planful?

Planful is a leading financial performance management (FPM) software designed to help businesses gain insights into their financial data to inform better decision making.

The key features and capabilities of Planful include:

Flexible Modeling and Planning

Planful allows users to model different financial scenarios and create forecasts, budgets, and long-range plans tailored to their business needs. It has multi-dimensional modeling capabilities to capture operational complexities. Users can also perform what-if analysis to weigh various options.

Reporting and Analytics

The software provides real-time analytics into financial and operational KPIs through interactive dashboards and custom reports. These insights enable data-driven actions across the organization.

Workflow Automation

Planful automates and streamlines financial planning processes including data integration from source systems, validation checks, commentary collection etc. This helps improve efficiency and reduce manual errors.

Collaboration

With Planful, finance teams can collaborate with business users through controlled access to reports, plans and models. Stakeholders enterprise-wide can provide inputs into the planning process.

In summary, Planful is a robust FPM platform that makes financial planning processes faster, leaner and more insightful. It is particularly helpful for complex, data-intensive enterprises looking to optimize planning.

How can a company improve its financial performance?

Improving a company's financial performance is critical for long-term growth and success. Here are some of the top ways a business can boost its financial health:

Reduce Operating Expenses

One of the quickest ways to improve financial performance is by cutting operating costs. Examine expenditures to identify areas of waste and inefficiency. Renegotiate vendor and supplier contracts to bring down prices. Streamline processes to increase productivity. Small reductions in operating expenses can significantly impact the bottom line.

Recover Accounts Receivable

Actively pursuing collection of overdue customer payments can provide an influx of cash. Evaluate accounts receivable aging reports to prioritize high-value outstanding payments for recovery. Automate payment reminders and leverage technology to make the payment process seamless. Offer incentives for early or on-time payment.

Liquidate Obsolete Inventory/Assets

Sell off inventory, equipment, company vehicles or other assets that are outdated, unused or no longer essential. The revenue from liquidation sales along with eliminated storage and maintenance costs can directly add to a company's profitability.

Consolidate High-Interest Debt

Replace multiple high-interest debts with a single, lower-interest consolidation loan. This reduces the total interest paid over time. Work with lenders to negotiate better repayment terms or rates. Use the monthly savings to reinvest in growth initiatives.

Streamlining operations, minimizing expenses, improving collections processes and debt reduction provide practical ways to bolster financial health. The key is taking a strategic approach tailored to one's unique business model and market landscape. With consistent commitment to financial performance management, companies can transform their balance sheet.

What are the measures of financial performance?

Financial performance measurement is critical for businesses to track progress towards goals and make data-driven decisions. Key ratios used to assess financial health include:

Liquidity ratios like current and quick ratios measure a company's ability to pay short-term obligations. Higher liquidity indicates better financial positioning to handle cash needs.

Profitability ratios like return on assets and equity analyze profits relative to investments. Higher profitability signals efficient use of assets and shareholder value creation.

Solvency ratios like debt-to-equity and debt-to-assets evaluate debt levels. Lower solvency ratios mean higher financial risk from excess leverage.

Efficiency ratios like inventory turnover and receivables turnover determine how well assets are managed. Higher efficiency reflects greater productivity from assets.

Leverage ratios like interest coverage highlight debt burdens. Higher coverage ratios indicate more operating income to service debt obligations.

Monitoring these vital signs over time and against industry benchmarks helps businesses track financial performance. Advanced analytics and reporting software provide greater visibility for data-driven planning.

Benchmarking the Best Performance Management Software for Small Business

Discover the most suitable FPM tools tailored for small businesses, featuring an analysis of platforms that best cater to their unique needs and constraints.

Spotlight on User-Friendly FPM Solutions

When evaluating performance management platforms, small businesses should prioritize solutions with intuitive user interfaces that enable easy adoption across the organization. Complex platforms with steep learning curves present barriers that resource-constrained teams cannot afford.

Below we analyze two top FPM tools praised for their ease-of-use and user-friendly design:

Scoro

Scoro streamlines financial and project management in a single, unified platform. Their software centralizes crucial business data to provide real-time visibility into company performance through customizable dashboards and reports. Reviewers highlight Scoro's simple interface using principles of clarity, consistency and reduction of cognitive load for users. The platform requires minimal training, allowing staff to quickly leverage Scoro for financial insights.

NetSuite

NetSuite also offers an intuitive user experience that accelerates employee onboarding. Their ERP solution was built on a unified data model that eliminates the need for complex data integrations across modules. NetSuite's interface allows custom configurations using drag-and-drop tools, empowering staff to tailor financial reports to their specific needs without developer help. While powerful, NetSuite maintains ease-of-use by hiding advanced features until users indicate readiness to adopt more complex capabilities.

Achieving Efficiency with Employee Performance Management Software

Leading FPM platforms like Anaplan and Adaptive Insights now incorporate holistic employee performance management features alongside traditional financial metrics. This enables small businesses to connect operational efficiency with workforce productivity.

For example, Anaplan's software provides real-time visibility into sales outcomes against quotas. Users can drill down to assess the performance of specific teams and individuals in driving revenue growth. The platform empowers leaders to tie sales incentives and commissions directly to Anaplan dashboards, incentivizing staff to hit personalized targets.

Meanwhile, Adaptive Insights allows HR to set goals and track development plans for each employee. Managers can monitor progress against OKRs on personalized dashboards. By integrating financial and people data, Adaptive Insights improves visibility into workforce performance and enhances data-driven decision making to optimize human capital - a key capability for resource-constrained small business.

Corporate Performance Management Software: A Gartner Perspective

Leveraging insights from Gartner's research, we evaluate the leading corporate performance management software and its impact on enterprise-level decision-making.

Evaluating Market Leaders and Innovators

Gartner regularly evaluates the corporate performance management (CPM) software landscape and recognizes leaders that enable data-driven decision making through financial planning, reporting, modeling, analysis, and more. Based on their latest Magic Quadrant report, we analyze the top vendors.

Anaplan stands out as a Leader for its strong focus on financial planning and modeling capabilities. Key strengths include:

Flexible, scalable modeling and forecasting for complex business needs
User-friendly interface and workflows for business users
Robust supply chain planning and sales operations planning modules

With an emphasis more on governance and centralized finance processes, Oracle and SAP also earn Leader positions.

Oracle offers a complete finance-focused CPM solution integrated with ERP and BI systems.
SAP enables unified financial planning and consolidation across entities with drill-down analytics.

As a Visionary, Adaptive Insights shines for its ease-of-use and rapid implementation advantages. It provides intuitive what-if analysis and streamlined reporting tailored for FP&A use cases.

Other notable Visionaries called out are Planful and Prophix. By focusing heavily on supporting the needs of specific departments and users like sales operations, they carve out strong niches despite some broader platform limitations.

Gartner also highlights several disruptive Innovators including Vena Solutions which delivers an Excel-based approach allowing power users more flexibility to build reports and models. insightsoftware stands out for its focus on unifying financial and operational data analytics.

As the CPM landscape continues to shift towards more intelligent, collaborative, and configurable platforms, we can expect constant innovation from both emerging and established vendors. Businesses should look to leaders like Anaplan for cutting-edge modeling capabilities but also evaluate targeted solutions from Visionaries and Innovators that can address their unique needs or use cases.

CPM Software Examples: Real-World Implementations

CPM (Corporate Performance Management) software has become an invaluable tool for enterprises across all industries to gain visibility and insights into their financial performance. By leveraging the analytical capabilities of these platforms, companies are optimizing business strategies based on accurate, up-to-date data.

In this section, we explore some compelling examples of successful CPM software implementations spanning diverse sectors and use cases. These real-world case studies showcase the remarkable adaptability and utility CPM solutions offer modern organizations seeking to boost growth and productivity through data-driven financial management.

Case Studies of Successful CPM Deployments

Here, we present a selection of case studies where CPM software deployments have delivered tangible improvements in financial oversight, planning, reporting, and decision making:

Global Bank Streamlines Financial Processes

A leading multinational bank implemented a unified CPM solution to consolidate their previous fragmented systems for budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting and analytics. By integrating all these capabilities onto a single platform, they optimized performance monitoring with drill-down analysis and interactive dashboards.

The streamlined financial processes and transparency empowered executives to adjust business strategies based on real-time data. This boosted their agility in responding to market dynamics, ultimately driving significant gains in profitability and shareholder value.

Regional Hospital Group Enhances Resource Optimization

A hospital group with over 20 locations implemented CPM software to improve visibility into clinical and financial KPIs at individual facilities. The rich analytics and reports enabled comparison of profitability, asset utilization, cost structures and quality metrics across sites.

These actionable insights allowed executives to optimize resource allocation decisions when investing capital into new medical equipment and expansion projects. By leveraging CPM-driven analytics, the hospital group increased bed occupancy rates by 5% while simultaneously improving patient outcomes.

Global Retail Conglomerate Manages International Operations

A retail corporation operating big-box stores across Europe, Asia and the Americas struggled with financial consolidation and reporting across distinct regional entities. Implementing CPM software centralized management of their global operations, providing real-time visibility into performance regardless of geography or currency.

The unified financial intelligence platform improved continuity in strategy execution across international teams. It also reduced month-end close cycles by over a week through process automation. These capabilities proved crucial in steering the retailing giant through market volatility amidst the global pandemic.

As evidenced by these real-world examples, CPM software delivers immense value to enterprises seeking enhanced control and optimization of financial operations. The versatile nature of these platforms allows tailored implementations across diverse industry environments and use cases. For any modern organization, leveraging CPM promises actionable intelligence to drive better decision making and accelerate success.

Behind the Scenes: Performance Management Software Companies

Performance management software is transforming how modern organizations track, analyze, and optimize workforce productivity. As this market grows and evolves, several notable companies are leading the charge in developing innovative solutions.

By examining the offerings and approaches of the top providers in the space, we can better understand the state of performance management technology and get a glimpse into the future. In this section, we’ll explore some of the major players shaping the performance management landscape.

PeopleGoal

Founded in 2014 and based in San Francisco, PeopleGoal focuses specifically on providing user-friendly performance management software for small to medium-sized businesses.

Their platform emphasizes features like:

Customizable performance review templates
Automated reminders and notifications
Integration with popular HR systems
Real-time progress tracking tools
Customizable performance review templates

PeopleGoal touts an easy-to-use interface enabling managers to regularly monitor employee progress and provide timely feedback. Their solutions aim to replace cumbersome paper reviews and spreadsheet trackers with efficient digital workflows.

Pricing starts at $7 per employee per month, with volume discounts available. They offer a free 14-day trial to experience platform capabilities firsthand.

SAP SuccessFactors

As a leader in enterprise software, SAP SuccessFactors offers full-scale human capital management solutions tailored for large global organizations. Their performance management modules connect into an integrated cloud platform covering the entire HR value chain.

Specific capabilities include:

Customizable performance scorecards
Automated talent calibration and comparison analysis
Individual and team goal management
Real-time progress monitoring
Integrations with SAP ERP and 3rd party systems

SuccessFactors positions itself as a one-stop cloud solution for large enterprises seeking to manage intricate, global workforces. With strong analytics functionalities, SuccessFactors aims to help executives benchmark performance, identify high and low performers, and make strategic talent decisions.

Pricing is customized based quote for each client.

Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM

As another enterprise software giant, Oracle offers full-scale cloud HCM solutions for complex global workforces. The Fusion Cloud HCM platform contains modules for core HR, payroll, workforce management, analytics, and specialized performance management.

Key features include:

Automated goal setting and alignment
Customizable review templates
Embedded competency assessment
Succession planning integration
Real-time progress monitoring
Comparative performance analysis

Oracle sells primarily to large enterprise clients, providing heavy-duty cloud infrastructure for managing intricate HR processes across global operations. The performance module feeds into Oracle’s broader HCM ecosystem, connecting workforce management initiatives into a single unified platform.

Pricing requires a customized quote based on each client's unique needs. Oracle positions itself as a long-term strategic partner rather than just a software vendor.

Key Evaluation Criteria for FPM Software

When researching FPM solutions, focus on functionality, analytics, collaboration features, and more. As you evaluate vendors, here is a framework to guide your assessment process:

Planning and Budgeting Capabilities

Leading FPM tools have robust planning and budgeting capabilities that facilitate collaborative, accurate plans and budgets. Key aspects to evaluate include:

Self-service functionality: Look for a solution where business users can create plans and budgets without extensive IT support. Seek capabilities like spreadsheet integration, template libraries, and guided workflows.
Collaborative features: Assess social collaboration, commentary, and task management features that foster teamwork and alignment during planning.
Predictive analytics: Advanced systems leverage AI and machine learning to generate insights and forecasts to enrich planning. Review predictive modeling, what-if analysis, and scenario comparison capabilities.

Reporting and Visualizations

Evaluate an FPM system's reporting functionality and visualization options. Key criteria include:

Ad hoc reporting: Leading solutions enable self-service data discovery with interactive filtering, grouping, exporting, and more. Users should be able to easily create reports relevant to their role.
Interactive dashboards: Look for responsive, intuitive dashboards with drill-down capability into reports and transaction details. Charts, graphs, and KPIs should provide actionable insights.
Notifications and alerts: Seek real-time notifications when metrics hit defined thresholds. Alerts foster rapid response to changing business conditions.
Natural language search: Explore how easily users can search for and assemble reports using conversational inputs rather than complex query languages.

Financial Consolidation

If financial consolidation is required, verify the system's capabilities around:

Multi-GAAP support: Assess capabilities for parallel accounting under different standards such as ASC, IFRS, IPSAS within one solution.
Currency conversion: Leading tools handle currency translations and configurable exchange rates for international consolidation.
Intercompany eliminations: Automating eliminations for internal transactions increases efficiency and reduces risk. Evaluate available rule configuration options.
Audit trail tracking: Review capabilities to store detailed audit logs of all changes, supporting compliance and transparency.

The key is finding a flexible FPM system aligned to your unique processes and objectives across planning, reporting, analysis and consolidation. Consider both current and future needs as you evaluate solutions. Leverage this framework highlighting key aspects to scrutinize during your assessment process.

Maximizing Returns: Best Practices for FPM Software Adoption

Follow best practices like clean data governance, change management, and user enablement to maximize FPM ROI.

Ensuring Access to Reliable Data

FPM benefits require quality, timely data. Integrate FPM solutions with core financial systems like ERPs to enable automated data flows. Enforce sound data governance policies through:

Establishing a data stewardship team to oversee integrity
Implementing controls to ensure accuracy and completeness
Monitoring KPIs like data age, consistency, and lineage
Proactively identifying and resolving data quality issues
Continuous auditing to verify reliability

With robust data governance, businesses can trust insights from FPM systems to drive strategic decisions.

Cultivating Expertise: Driving User Adoption with Training

User training and support drives FPM solution adoption and proficiency. Allocate resources to build skills through:

Conducting needs assessments to identify knowledge gaps
Offering classroom and online training programs on features and use cases
Providing quick start guides, video tutorials, and searchable help content
Assigning mentors to coach new users hands-on
Hosting office hours for ad hoc questions

An emphasis on enablement accelerates proficiency, delivering faster time-to-value. Consider incentives like gamification to motivate engagement.

Strategic Deployment: Start with Priority Processes

Focus initial FPM rollouts on one or two top pain points like budgeting. Then expand to more use cases. This staged approach:

Lets users get comfortable with basic functions first
Enables gathering feedback to refine configurations
Allows time to build integrations and data flows
Reduces disruption relative to organization-wide deployments

Starting small also helps demonstrate ROI. Use quick wins to build support for broader initiatives. With a strategic roadmap, businesses can ultimately scale FPM through the enterprise.

Synthesizing Insights: Key Takeaways from Our FPM Review

In closing, FPM software delivers major productivity and decision-making improvements for businesses. By streamlining financial planning, analysis, reporting, and actions, FPM enables finance teams to provide more strategic guidance.

To maximize the value from FPM solutions, companies should:

Prioritize capabilities that empower finance with insights to guide strategic decisions
Ensure the platform has strong governance, analytics, and ease of use to drive adoption
Start with targeted use cases that alleviate pain points like budgeting or financial statements

When thoughtfully implemented, FPM software unlocks finance's capacity to partner with the business on data-driven growth and performance.

Empowering Strategic Finance with FPM Software

Leading FPM platforms transform how finance teams plan, analyze, report, and act on financial data. By consolidating siloed sources into a governed system, they create a trustworthy "single source of truth." Intuitive analytics and models enable faster, higher-quality decisions.

For example, FPM software can integrate operational data with financials to provide insights for:

Financial planning and budgeting - Streamline budget modeling, forecasting, allocations across business units
Management and statutory reporting - Automate internal and external financial statements, operational reports, KPI dashboards
Profitability analysis - Understand product, segment, channel, customer-level profit drivers

With these enhanced analytics, finance shifts from rear-view reporting to providing forward-looking guidance. Rather than just assembling periodic reports, they become strategic advisors to the business.

The Role of Ease of Use and Governed Data in FPM Success

To achieve ROI on FPM investments, user adoption is crucial. Solutions should have strong system governance while remaining simple and intuitive to use.

Robust data management ensures quality information sources via:

Centralized rules for data models, business logic, Security protocols
Automated integration and transformations
Workflow, validation, and lineage tracking

Meanwhile, self-service analytics empowers users to explore and find insights independently. Some ways FPM solutions promote ease of use:

Interactive dashboards with on-the-fly filtering, drilling, calculations
Automated reporting packages and distribution
Natural language search and AI-driven analytics

With governance ensuring data quality plus usability promoting utilization, FPM solutions reliably inform business decisions companywide.

Tailoring Initial Use Cases to Address Pain Points Effectively

Organizations evolve capabilities over multiple FPM solution phases. Quickly tackling top priorities and pain points demonstrates value and builds adoption momentum.

Common starter scenarios include:

Budgeting or forecasting - Centralize planning across the enterprise, compare budgets vs. actuals, create rolling forecasts.

Financial reporting - Automate and standardize internal and external accounting reports and financial statement generation.

Operational analytics - Identify profit drivers by modeling product, customer, or regional performance.

As capabilities expand over time, finance can support more advanced decisions leveraging predictive analytics regarding risks, growth opportunities, and financial impacts of strategic options.

With focused solution scopes delivering rapid time to value, finance can showcase FPM benefits and progressively scale usage.