SAP Analytics Cloud earns top rankings in the Business Application Research Center’s (BARC) The Planning Survey 20. The market for planning products is highly competitive. The Planning Survey 20 reveals the strengths and challenges of many of the leading vendors in the space as well as a number of smaller vendors — some regional and some relatively new to the market — many of which offer outstanding value to their customers.
The Planning Survey 20 is the world’s largest comprehensive independent survey on planning and budgeting software conducted from November 2019 to February 2020. It is based on a worldwide survey of 1,406 planning users, consultants and vendors from all over the world. Also survey covers issues ranging from the selection and purchase of software through to deployment and use, including questions about the success of planning software projects, the usability of each product and problems encountered.
Every year, BARC conducts the survey among users and consulting firms. Its purpose is to examine in detail their purchase decisions, implementation cycles and business benefits they have gained.
Organizations are selecting, implementing and using planning tools across the world. Topics covered in this report include:
- Planning software use cases
- Comparisons between Excel and specialist planning tools
- The business benefits derived from using planning products
- Product selection approaches
- Why companies are purchasing planning tools
- The optimum length of planning projects
- Product satisfaction levels
- The challenges of using planning software
Survey questionnaire was also designed to gauge end-user feedback on current hot topics and technologies in the planning market, revealing present adoption levels and future plans across a number of exciting trends such as:
- Integration of different sub-budgets and financial planning
- Self-service planning
- Simulation and analysis of scenarios
- Value driver-based planning
- Mobile BI/Planning
- Predefined planning content
SAP Analytics Cloud achieved 32 top rankings and 29 leading positions in five different peer groups including Enterprise Sortware Vendors and Solution-focused Planning Products. SAP Analytics Cloud is ranked higher than any other eterprise software vendor in 22 categories including customer experience, business, value, and product satisfaction.
Top ranked:
– Simulation: SAP Analytics Cloud has received two top-ranks in the simulation category in the last two years, thanks to its multiple options for simulating future outcomes for corporate development planning. With “What-if” simulation tools, decision-makers can uncover worst-case and best-case scenarios to make informed decisions.
– Ease of Use: SAP Analytics Cloud provides a modern web interface with ease of use on its purely cloud-based approach. Finance and business users, the primary target audience for the software, require only minimal IT expertise to run the system and perform planning, data acquisition, analyses, and reporting.
– Reporting & Analytics: Customers using SAP Analytics Cloud are frequently implementing analytical use cases such as ad-hoc query, reporting, and dashboards/scorecards, according to user and use case demographics. SAP Analytics Cloud’s strategic analytics platforms combines data discovery, visualizations, planning, and augmented analytics together to support different user roles in one centralized product.
– Workflow: The workflow process is equipped with commenting and annotations, predefined planning models, and simulation features, while creating a decentralized bottom-up planning process. Planning activities are organized in SAP Analytics Cloud using a calendar display, and planners can also use data allocations and strong collaboration features to work with the team in real-time. SAP Analytics Cloud ranks top for workflow support against its rivals in the ‘Enterprise Software Vendors’ peer group.
– Product Satisfaction: The solution continues to become richer in features to support strategic, operational, functional, and financial planning, including developments in application design, planning and predictive functionality, and planning business content.
