2023 Vendor and Product Assessment
Business Planning
The purpose of business planning is not simply to create a plan — it is to make better decisions. Planning and budgeting software should make the process faster, more agile, less burdensome and more intelligent so that managers can make better decisions more consistently. Since the early 2000s, Ventana Research has advocated using a dedicated application to increase the business value of planning and budgeting. In 2008, we first articulated a new vision of using a planning software platform to improve the business value of corporate budgeting. This approach allows business units to plan the way that best serves their needs while enabling the financial planning and analysis (FP&A) group to integrate their plans to construct a unified operating plan and budget. This idea has since been widely embraced by software vendors and increasingly adopted by organizations. Our Value Index methodology assesses the ability of specific applications to achieve this vision.
Organizations do a lot of planning. Some of this planning is formal, but in practice, much of it is informal and almost always in business silos. People plan sales and how to produce products and deliver services. They plan for the headcount they will need and how to organize distribution and their supply chain. They also produce a budget, which is a financial plan. When business managers are asked to prepare a budget, they first create a business plan, often informally, and then translate that into financial terms.