Publication: March 2026

BARC Score Integrated Planning & Analytics DACH

Compare 13 software vendors at a glance using BARC Score Integrated Planning & Analytics for the German-speaking region.

To purchase the BARC Score, please contact us.

Using BARC Score Integrated Planning & Analytics DACH

  • you will get an overview of the integrated planning & analytics market segment in the German-speaking DACH region.
  • you will be able to assess the market position and portfolio of software vendors.
  • you will have the foundation to build your long list or short list.

Further information

A challenging economic environment continues to create demand for planning and corporate performance management (CPM) solutions. Planning, budgeting, and forecasting are important elements of corporate management to align operational business with strategic corporate objectives. In recent years, the dynamics of markets and competition have increased rapidly and many companies are struggling to keep pace. In particular, resilient corporate planning and forecasting are more essential than ever to cope with increasing dynamics. Well-founded decisions based on current forecasts and data analytics, the efficient evaluation of possible future developments in scenarios and simulations, as well as the automation of processes and the relief of planners with AI are becoming massively more important. However, successful CPM requires comprehensive planning and forecasting, analytics, and reporting functionality.

This BARC Score focuses on the market for integrated planning and analytics (IP&A) products and portfolios in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). The combination of these topics is of great importance for a growing number of companies. Based on countless data points from various BARC surveys and many analyst interactions, vendors are rated on a variety of criteria, ranging from portfolio capabilities and architecture to sales and marketing strategy, financial performance, and customer feedback.

Selection of vendors

To be considered for inclusion in this BARC Score, products must align with BARC’s definition of integrated planning & analytics (IP&A):

Integrated Planning & Analytics (IP&A) is a modern performance management approach that seamlessly combines corporate planning with analytics to enable better decision-making. Unlike traditional financial planning, IP&A integrates strategic, financial (FP&A), and operational planning (xP&A), encompassing areas such as P&L, balance sheets, cash flow, sales, supply chain, workforce planning, and other operational sub-plans. By integrating reporting, dashboarding, and AI/ML-driven insights into planning processes, IP&A ensures consistency and adaptability. Central to IP&A is the use of integrated software platforms built on a unified data foundation, which eliminates the need for data transfers and ensures actuals and plan data are represented in a consistent data model.

Moreover, there are two separate categories of inclusion criteria in this BARC Score: the first is associated with a vendor’s product capabilities and portfolios and the other is linked to the market presence and financial results relating to those products.

Functionality for planning (including write-back of planning data to a central database and other advanced planning features such as workflows, forecasting, and simulation) is the ‘entrance ticket’ to be evaluated in this BARC Score. Moreover, a vendor has to supply additional functionality for all three analytics technologies from the following list in a solution not merely focused on one industry or use case:

  • Reporting and dashboarding
  • Ad hoc query and analysis
  • AI/ML insights, predictions, and assistance

All steps of planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes, such as the creation of a planning model and model provision, creation of planning masks, and definition of planning processes (workflows) as well as user functionality for planning (e.g., plan data entry, comments, forecasting, and simulation), reporting, dashboarding, and analysis must be accessible and usable by business users. Seamless integration between all components is required.

In addition, a vendor must have at least 250 productive customers and generate a minimum of
20-25 million EUR in revenue per year (software revenue) with the evaluated product set in this BARC Score. Furthermore, the product set must have a significant number of implementations and license or subscription revenues in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland).

There is no differentiation between on-premises offerings and cloud-based product sets.

Software evaluation

Software providers are evaluated on two dimensions, ‘Portfolio Capabilities’ and ‘Market Execution’, each representing an axis on the chart.

In addition to BARC’s analyst opinion, user experience also plays an important role.

Our BARC Score IP&A is based on the world’s largest surveys of planning and BI & analytics software usage, the BI & Analytics Survey and the Planning Survey, which ask companies each year about their satisfaction with software vendors and solutions.

Detailed analyst knowledge and comprehensive survey results are summarized in the BARC Score report and chart. The chart provides a clear view of each vendor’s market position and portfolio.

Authors

Dr. Christian Fuchs
Senior Analyst Data & Analytics
Dr. Christian Fuchs is Senior Analyst and Head of Data & Analytics Research at BARC.
Kelley Lynn Kassa
Senior Analyst Data & Analytics
Larissa Baier
Senior Analyst Data & Analytics
Larissa is a Senior Analyst working in research and consulting.
Robert Tischler
Senior Analyst Data & Analytics
Robert's focus is on research and advisory. He is also responsible for BARC's business in Austria.
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