SAP is Exemplary in the 2022 Business Planning Value Index

Ventana Research is sharing insights about SAP, drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The 2022 Ventana Research Value Index: Business Planning is a distillation of a year of market and product research efforts.

In all of our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal and vendor selection process for business planning. We evaluated SAP and 13 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability) and two related to the vendor (Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment and Vendor Validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our expertise and research.

SAP is an enterprise and global provider of business applications. SAP Analytics Cloud offers an exceptional set of capabilities for business planning at scale. SAP was categorized as an Exemplary Vendor, ranking second overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked third in Product Experience, where it was designated as a Value Index Leader in Adaptability, Capability, Manageability and Reliability. It ranked third in Customer Experience, and was a Value Index Leader in TCO/ROI. SAP’s overall performance was impacted by its lower ranking in Usability and Validation, which represent 30% of the weighting in the overall Value Index.

Our assessment finds that SAP could perform better in Usability, where it placed fifth, by improving accessibility and simplifying the use of planning for everyone to participate. In Validation, where it ranked ninth, SAP could examine customer growth and investment for supporting business planning. This assessment was based on SAP Analytics Cloud, available in September of 2021.

As a result of the rapidly changing business landscape since 2020, and the need to quickly – and intelligently – change business plans and budgets to be agile and build resiliency, many organizations decided to adopt dedicated software to support a planning approach that offers speed and flexibility. Transforming how organizations plan and budget has become a top-of-mind issue for chief financial officers and CEOs. Our Value Index can help organizations make better informed decisions on software that is best suited to business needs.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of business planning software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here, and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.