Planful is a financial performance management cloud software provider. Its mission is to be the undisputed champion in Financial Performance Management. Planful aims to help its customers achieve peak financial performance by providing tools that assist with budgeting, planning, forecasting, and reporting. The company’s stated goal is to equip finance and accounting professionals with the tools and structure needed to translate their vision into actionable plans.
Planful’s platform is designed to streamline business-wide planning, consolidations, and analytics. The company’s goals include accelerating cycle times, increasing productivity, and improving accuracy for its users. Planful is recognized in the market and has been named a Challenger in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Financial Close and Consolidation Solutions. The company emphasizes a customer-first approach as part of its core values.
Offerings, Capabilities, and Integrations
Planful provides a cloud-based financial performance management platform designed to streamline and automate financial processes for businesses. The platform integrates budgeting, planning, consolidation, reporting, and analytics into a single solution. Planful’s core capabilities are centered around financial planning and analysis (FP&A), enabling finance teams to move from manual, spreadsheet-based processes to a more automated and collaborative system. This allows for faster financial closing, more accurate forecasting, and deeper insights into business performance.
A key competitive edge for Planful is its use of AI and machine learning embedded within the platform to provide predictive insights and flag potential data anomalies. Planful offers extensive integration capabilities, with pre-built connectors for thousands of systems, including ERP, CRM, and HRIS platforms. This allows for the consolidation of data from various sources into a centralized location, creating a single source of truth for financial data. The platform is designed to be finance-owned, requiring minimal IT involvement for implementation and management.
Products and Services
Planful’s offerings are delivered through its comprehensive financial performance management platform. The company’s specific solutions are designed to address various aspects of financial and operational planning.
- Financial Planning: This is a core offering that allows businesses to accelerate their planning cycles with features for budgeting, forecasting, and scenario analysis. It utilizes pre-built templates and financial intelligence to streamline these processes.
- Financial Close and Consolidation: Planful automates the financial close process, including account reconciliations, intercompany eliminations, and currency translations. This capability is designed to reduce the time and risk associated with closing the books.
- Reporting and Analysis: The platform enables the creation of ad-hoc and standardized financial and management reports. Users can create dynamic dashboards and visualizations to track key performance indicators and investigate trends.
- Workforce Planning: This solution helps organizations plan for their largest expense: their workforce. It connects HR and finance teams for more strategic headcount and compensation planning.
- Marketing Planning: Planful offers tools specifically for marketing teams to build and manage goals-based marketing plans, connecting marketing spend to business results.
- Cash Flow Forecasting: This service allows businesses to better manage their liquidity by providing tools to stabilize their cash position and forecast future cash flow.
- Planful Solution Hub: A collection of over 25 pre-built, customizable solutions for various use cases across different functions and industries, developed by both Planful and its partners.
Target Customers
Planful’s primary target customers are mid-market companies, though its customer base also includes larger enterprises. The platform is designed for use by finance and accounting professionals, as well as other business users across an organization, such as those in marketing, HR, and operations. Planful serves a wide range of industries, including technology, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, and retail.
Target customers benefit from Planful’s platform by automating time-consuming manual financial processes, which increases productivity and reduces errors. This automation allows finance teams to focus more on strategic analysis and less on data collection and consolidation. By providing a centralized platform for planning and reporting, Planful helps align different departments around a single set of financial data, fostering better collaboration and more informed decision-making across the business.
Cloud Integrations and Marketplaces
Planful offers extensive cloud integration capabilities, allowing its platform to connect with a wide range of business systems. The company provides thousands of pre-built connectors to systems such as ERP, CRM, HRIS, and cloud storage. Planful’s platform can pull data from cloud-based data warehouses like Snowflake, as well as from flat files and legacy on-premise systems. The integration strategy includes RESTful APIs, SFTP, native integrations, and iPaaS/ETL connections to facilitate data transfer.
Planful itself is a cloud-based platform that utilizes Amazon Web Services (AWS) for hosting its financial planning and marketing planning services.
Specific cloud integrations and connectors include:
- Microsoft Power BI: Planful provides a connector that allows users to integrate their Planful data into Microsoft Power BI. This enables the creation of reports and visualizations in Power BI using financial and operational data from Planful’s structured and workforce planning models.
- Microsoft Power Automate: A Planful connector is available for Microsoft Power Automate, allowing for the automation of data loading and extraction workflows between Planful and other applications within the Microsoft ecosystem.
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Business Central: Planful offers an integrated solution for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Business Central, providing users with a combination of ERP, CRM, and FP&A capabilities in a unified business application.
- Google Sheets: Through Planful Spotlight, users can keep their Google Sheets files updated with data from the Planful platform.
Based on available information, Planful does not have a direct listing on the major cloud marketplaces:
- AWS Marketplace: A search of the AWS Marketplace does not show a listing for Planful. A listing for a similarly named but different company, Planview, exists.
- Microsoft Azure Marketplace: There is no evidence of a direct Planful offering on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
- Google Cloud Marketplace: A search of the Google Cloud Marketplace does not return a direct listing for the Planful platform.
Key People
- Chief Executive Officer: John Herr
- Chief Financial Officer: Dan Fletcher
- Chief Marketing Officer: Rowan Tonkin
- Chief Product Officer: Steve Welsh
- Chief Customer & People Officer: Melissa Dreuth
- Chief Sales Officer: Pier Barattolo
- Chief Technology Officer: Sanjay Vyas
- General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, and Data Protection Officer: Eugenia Bergantz
- Senior Vice President of Software Engineering: Amit Singh
- SVP, International: Andy Bottrill
Key Facts
- Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States.
- Number of Employees: Approximately 718.
- Annual Revenue: Approximately $143.7 million.
- Parent Company: Vector Capital.
- Subsidiary Companies: Plannuh, Planful Software India Private Limited.
- Publicly Listed: No.
Analyst Recognition
Planful has been recognized by several major analyst groups for its financial performance management cloud software.
- Gartner recognizes Planful in multiple categories. Planful was named the only Visionary in the Magic Quadrant™ for Financial Planning Software. The company is also positioned as a Challenger in the Magic Quadrant™ for Financial Close and Consolidation Solutions.
- Forrester has included Planful as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™ report for Digital Operations Planning and Analytics.
- IDC named Planful a Leader in its MarketScape for Worldwide Enterprise Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting Applications for Midmarket Organizations.
- Everest Group did not have specific recognitions for Planful mentioned in the provided search results.
