Pigment
What is Pigment?
Modern, cloud-based platform for planning, budgeting and forecasting with integrated functions for reporting and analysis. Flexible, user-friendly support for financial and operational planning with comprehensive collaboration functions.
Self-description of Pigment
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Pigment BARC Review & Rating
Provider and product description
Pigment was founded in 2019 and employs more than 500 people worldwide. The company’s headquarters and software development team are located in Paris, France, with additional offices in Europe and North America. Nearly 600 customers use Pigment worldwide to implement business planning and performance management projects. Several major investors have funded Pigment’s rapid growth and global expansion. The vendor’s current strategic focus is on continued product innovation, expansion of the partner ecosystem, and headcount growth, particularly in North America. Pigment’s go-to-market efforts are centered around North America and Europe, with the UK and Ireland, France, and DACH as its focus geographies. Partners are critical to Pigment’s go-to-market strategy, rapid global expansion, and customer project implementations.
Pigment’s product was officially released in 2020. It is an integrated and collaborative business planning platform with complementary reporting, analysis, and financial consolidation capabilities. It targets organizations of all sizes and industries looking to solve planning, budgeting, and forecasting challenges. Primary buyers include finance, sales, supply chain, and HR executives. Pigment can be deployed for a single use case in a specific team (e.g., finance), but the majority of implementations are deployed enterprise-wide for strategic, multi-use-case finance and integrated planning initiatives.
Pigment is a modern, cloud-native SaaS solution hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The multidimensional planning platform is highly flexible and stores data in relational databases such as Postgres and SingleStore. For data integration, Pigment offers three different approaches: predefined native connectors (to ERPs, CRM, HRIS, data lakes, etc.), third-party ETL/iPaaS solutions (e.g., Workato, Celigo, DataBlend), and import APIs to push data from third-party systems into Pigment. Pigment is a web application that works with the latest versions of all modern browsers. Integrations with Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are available to pull and push data from spreadsheets to Pigment. The platform provides security and control mechanisms that allow users to control data access on a per-record basis for read and write operations.
For planning, budgeting, and forecasting, Pigment offers a fully customizable planning platform with workflow support and collaboration capabilities. It provides a powerful flexible modeling tool and comprehensive functionality to support top-down, bottom-up, and mixed planning processes. Pigment’s flexibility allows customers to address different planning topics on a common platform, with different levels of aggregation (e.g., strategic as well as operational planning) for an integrated business planning approach (including financial planning). Standard but customizable planning templates, designed to provide best practices and speed implementation, are available for customers to use in their entirety or on a per-object basis. A native what-if scenario component allows users to run simulations and sensitivity analyses and compare scenarios side by side. Pigment AI augments business planning with support for data visualization and analysis, natural language data and documentation querying, and ML-generated predictive forecasts and modeling. In 2025, Pigment launched its first AI agent, along with a roadmap to incorporate more AI agents into its platform. Integrated into Pigment, these AI agents will enhance existing capabilities. The Analyst Agent analyzes information from internal and external sources to identify trends, detect anomalies, and determine the drivers behind data and performance patterns. Additional agents, such as the Planner Agent and the Modeler Agent, will be available soon.
Pigment is a visual platform that allows users to create fully customized reports and dashboards (known as boards) from the underlying data. Widgets include charts, grids, KPIs, action buttons (e.g., for navigation and data loading), text widgets, and images. These boards are used for reporting, analysis, and data entry. Ad hoc queries and analysis are supported with multidimensional data pivoting capabilities. For customers with a Microsoft analytics strategy, a Power BI connector via Pigment’s APIs is available to create reports and visualizations with Microsoft’s software based on Pigment’s data.
Finally, Pigment offers a prebuilt financial consolidation application based on the platform’s functionality. This application consolidates actuals and plan figures. It automates data imports, currency conversions, and intercompany eliminations. Guided workflows, audit trails, and access controls ensure that financial statements align with global standards, including IFRS.
Strengths and challenges of Pigment
BARC’s viewpoint on the product’s strengths and challenges.
Strengths
- Modern, cloud-based planning, budgeting, and forecasting platform for business users. Comprehensive workflow and collaboration capabilities for planning process control and conversational planning.
- Flexibility for a wide variety of planning approaches (centralized top-down, decentralized bottom-up) and planning topics (finance, operations, sales, HR, supply chain, etc.); industry agnostic.
- Supports planning at multiple levels of aggregation (e.g., both strategic and operational) for an integrated business planning approach (including financial planning). Rapid global growth and accelerated product development with significant investor funding. Strategic focus on continued product innovation (e.g., augmented planning with Pigment AI, financial consolidation), partner ecosystem expansion, and headcount growth.
Challenges
- Pigment is an enterprise planning, budgeting, and forecasting platform with native dashboarding, ad hoc analysis, and interactive reporting capabilities. Its reporting capabilities are designed to support planning-driven analysis rather than pixel-perfect publishing or large-scale report distribution. For organizations requiring advanced formatted reporting, governed enterprise semantic layers, or report bursting, Pigment complements established BI ecosystems through prebuilt integrations with Google Looker, Microsoft Power BI, Google Sheets, and Microsoft Excel/PowerPoint. Data interoperability is supported through APIs that enable the controlled export of Pigment data to analytics platforms. Currently, direct exposure of the proprietary Pigment data model to third-party front ends is not provided, though integration is enabled through governed interfaces. Advanced data integration relies on third-party technology. Pigment provides its own data loading capabilities, native connectors (e.g., to SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud), and open APIs, while third-party ETL/iPaaS solutions are used to load data in more complex scenarios. The new financial consolidation application offers all the standard functions necessary for basic consolidation scenarios. However, prospects should evaluate the application's detailed functions for more complex scenarios. Currently, only an IFRS starter kit is available. However, the solution can also be used to implement consolidations according to other regional GAAPs. While Pigment is a fast-growing vendor, it does not yet have the global market presence and visibility of its major competitors. Most of Pigments’s business is in North America and Europe (particularly France). However, according to the vendor, its international customer base and revenues are growing rapidly (e.g., in the UK). Prospects should evaluate the local consulting resources and support ecosystem of the vendor and its network of accredited partners.
- Advanced data integration relies on third-party technology. Pigment provides its own data loading capabilities, native connectors (e.g., to SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud), and open APIs, while third-party ETL/iPaaS solutions are used to load data in more complex scenarios.
- The new financial consolidation application offers all the standard functions necessary for basic consolidation scenarios. However, prospects should evaluate the application's detailed functions for more complex scenarios. Currently, only an IFRS starter kit is available. However, the solution can also be used to implement consolidations according to other regional GAAPs.
- While Pigment is a fast-growing vendor, it does not yet have the global market presence and visibility of its major competitors. Most of Pigments’s business is in North America and Europe (particularly France). However, according to the vendor, its international customer base and revenues are growing rapidly (e.g., in the UK). Prospects should evaluate the local consulting resources and support ecosystem of the vendor and its network of accredited partners.
Pigment User Reviews & Experiences
The information contained in this section is based on user feedback and actual experience with Pigment.
Why users buy Pigment and what problems they have using it
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Full user reviews and KPI results for Pigment
All key figures for Pigment at a glance.
- Get independent information on software solutions, market developments and trends in data, analytics, business intelligence, data science and corporate performance management.
- Make data & analytics decisions based on numbers, data, facts and expert knowledge
- Access to all premium articles and all our research, including all software comparison studies, scores and surveys.
- Unlimited access to the BARC media library
- Consume unlimited content anywhere
Individual user reviews for Pigment
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
The ease of use and the front end, also scenario planning.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Dashboards; formula building sometimes complex for currency topics.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Make sure to ask for a proof of concept and scope before the start of the implementation period.
How would you sum up your experience?
Excellent planning and analysis tool.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Flexibilität. Intuitiv. Steile Lernkurve. Keine Datenlimits. Schnelle Berechnung.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Verbesserte Reporting‑Möglichkeiten / mehr Widgets.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Selber machen ohne Implementierungspartner.
How would you sum up your experience?
Einwandfrei. Mega erfolgreich, schnell und umfassend. Alles ist möglich. Außerdem super Team beim Hersteller. Toller Kontakt.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Performance and flexibility to built customized models.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Security and roles.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Prepare in advance, use mock ups. Implementation is the key to success
How would you sum up your experience?
Very good tool, customizable, adapts to our business.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Flexibility and user interface.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Although there have been many AI functionalities launched recently, they could be faster.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Clean your source systems, chart of accounts, cost centers, etc. Be actively involved in the implementation instead of relying on the consultants.
How would you sum up your experience?
Really good tool, but it might be costly for smaller‑sized companies.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Flexibility and scope of the formula language. Once learned, it really gives the user the ability and creative freedom to do what Excel can do while integrated with external data sources and linked to reporting dashboards.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Processing duration of importing transaction lists. The inability to easily sum columns in transaction lists and metrics (selection exceeds visible list items). Processing duration of the GSheet extension (Pigment Connector). Adding widgets to dashboards is cumbersome (requires dragging them all the way to the bottom, often rearranging other widgets). Documentation, especially for formulas, is bare-bones, lacking real examples and screenshots (pigment.com/docs/functions).
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Expect implementation to take time. Practice writing metrics in a sandbox if needed. Get a grip on the time dimension and functions, as these are universal across all plans.
How would you sum up your experience?
Very good. The flexibility is awesome, and the R&D teams clearly work hard to improve its functionalities. I'm glad we got it at a lower price a few years ago because, at current pricing, we wouldn't have been able to.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Besonders schätze ich die leistungsstarke Engine mit durchdachtem Scoping, den modernen Tech‑Stack mit guter Bedienbarkeit, die engagierte Unterstützung durch Customer Success sowie die hohe Flexibilität bei der Modellierung.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Aktuell fehlen mir einige Funktionen, die den Arbeitsfluss erleichtern würden. Dazu gehören eine nutzerdefinierte Timeline in der P&L, einfachere Sortiermöglichkeiten nach Werten in Tabellen sowie die Möglichkeit, variable Hierarchien auf Dimensionen zu nutzen.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Ich würde empfehlen, mit einem klar abgegrenzten MVP zu starten, um früh erste Erfolge sichtbar zu machen. Außerdem ist es wichtig, zentrale Key-User von Beginn an aktiv in das Change Management einzubinden. Und zuletzt hilft es, Vertrauen in die Weiterentwicklung von Pigment zu haben – fehlende Funktionen werden oft zügig innovativ nachgeliefert.
How would you sum up your experience?
Pigment bietet eine intuitive Plattform für Finanzplanung und -analyse. Da es kein vordefiniertes Produkt ist, kann und muss viel eigenes Wissen und Know-how einfließen, was große Flexibilität ermöglicht. Gleichzeitig ist die Lösung so benutzerfreundlich, dass der Schulungsbedarf insgesamt gering ausfällt und eine schnelle User Adoption unterstützt wird.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Flexibilité de l’outil. Très simple de modifier les dimensions. Connecteurs vers des outils tiers.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Capacité de reporting. Les graphiques et autres visualisations sont limités.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Commencer par définir les dimensions de base, notamment les versions.
How would you sum up your experience?
Très bon outil.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Flexibilität, UI, Performance.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Automatisierung im Modeling-Prozess.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Umsetzung ohne Partner und Schulung der Mitarbeiter in Pigment.
How would you sum up your experience?
Vielversprechend.
