The disruption, uncertainty, and volatility we’ve seen in the past 2 years have had a big impact on enterprises across all industries around the world.  And as supply chain bottlenecks, inflation, and geopolitical challenges continue to cause uncertainty, the need for business agility and resilience has remained in the spotlight – driving steady demand for agile corporate performance management (CPM) and analytics software solutions.

Drilling into these market trends was the focus of the 2022 Pulse of Performance Management webinar, hosted by Craig Schiff, CEO of BPM Partners.  Read on to learn what the BPM Partners annual survey revealed about key market trends, who the key players are in the CPM/BPM market, and how OneStream stacks up in the marketplace.

The Pulse of Performance Management

Craig Schiff is CEO of BPM Partners, a vendor-neutral advisory services firm helping clients address performance management challenges with a comprehensive, rapid, and cost-effective BPM methodology.  The Pulse of Performance Management annual webinar series hosted by Mr. Schiff is designed to provide an unbiased and up-to-date overview of the world of business performance management (a.k.a. corporate performance management). The information provided is intended to enable companies to have intelligent and informed discussions as they plan their performance projects

So what did this year’s survey of over 300 Finance and IT executives, across industries, reveal in terms of key market trends?

With the theme of “Transform – Extend – Evolve”, this year’s BPM Pulse survey found that 65% of respondents view their CPM/BPM projects as part of a broader Finance Transformation initiative designed to streamline, automate and optimize processes and transition from static, Finance-driven planning and reporting to dynamic and comprehensive planning, consolidation, reporting, and analysis.  Organizations are extending their planning and analysis processes across the enterprise – and evolving their planning processes with more advanced techniques, including rolling forecasts, scenario modeling, and predictive analytics.

When asked what’s important for the next 12 months, respondents highlighted continuous forecasting, strategic planning, scenario modeling, and cash flow forecasting as the top 4 priorities. (see figure 1)

Figure 1 – What’s Most Important for the next 12 months?

Survey respondents also highlighted the increasing focus on extending CPM/BPM into Operational Planning and Analysis.  Key areas of focus include Revenue Performance Management, Profitability Analysis, Workforce Planning, and Financial Signaling according to the survey. (see figure 2)

Figure 2 – Operational Planning and Analysis Focus Areas

When asked about their usage of rolling forecasts, 52% of respondents indicated their forecasts extend beyond the end of the fiscal year, while 43% said their forecasts extend only until the end of the fiscal year.

When asked about their Finance Transformation projects, the top areas of focus include streamlined processes (74%), increased insights (61%), a more unified system (50%), and increased planning frequency and reduced cycle time (47%) each.

The survey revealed the following trends in planning, budgeting, and forecasting:

• Continued adoption of purpose-built budgeting/planning applications (63%) as alternatives to spreadsheets, with 45% using cloud-based solutions, up from 38% a year ago.
• Increased usage of alternatives to direct entry for planning and forecasting including driver-based planning (31%), scenario modeling (12%), and predictive analytics (6%).

The survey revealed the following trends in financial consolidation:

• Increased need for consolidation capabilities in budgeting and planning, with 72% highlighting this need including intercompany eliminations, alternate rollups, journal entries, and currency conversion.
• Increased recognition that consolidations should take place in a unified BPM/CPM application with planning (59%), while 20% prefer the GL/ERP approach.

And the survey revealed the following regarding selection of BPM/CPM software solutions:

• 80% of respondents prefer cloud-based BPM/CPM applications on-premise solutions.
• 65% of respondents prefer to source BPM/CPM solutions from best-of-breed vendors, while only 21% use solutions from their ERP vendor.

The BPM/CPM Vendor Landscape

 In reviewing the BPM/CPM vendor landscape, Mr. Schiff reviewed profiles of 15 “core vendors” as well as several new vendors that have entered the market over the past 12 months.  Based on customer surveys, the vendors were rated on a 1 – 5 scale and categorized from Fair to Outstanding based on their overall “Pulse Rating.” (see figure 3)

So how did OneStream’s CPM software platform fare in the Pulse Rating?  I’m happy to report that OneStream received an Excellent rating of 4.70 out of 5.  OneStream’s unified Intelligent Finance platform, with built-in financial intelligence, was cited for its core strengths including Complexity Simplification, Performance/Scalability, Easy Expandability, Integrated Planning, and AI-Driven.  Mr. Schiff also highlighted OneStream’s Analytic Blend engine and its capabilities to blend large volumes of transactional data with governed financial data to support financial and operational signaling.  He also highlighted the recent introduction of our Sensible ML solution for intelligent demand planning.

 In the 2022 BPM Pulse Awards, OneStream was recognized for Excellent ratings in Overall Satisfaction (4.70) and Financial Consolidation Functionality (4.71).

Learn More

To learn more about how OneStream’s ratings in the Pulse of Performance Management compare to our key competitors, download a customized version of the BPM Partners Vendor Landscape Matrix, and feel free to contact OneStream if your organization is ready to take your BPM/CPM game to the next level.

Download the Analyst Report