Sneak Preview: The 2022 BARC Score Financial Performance Management (FPM)

The age of digitalization presents the office of finance with new challenges. Many markets have become more dynamic and disruptive as a result of new business models. As a consequence, the monitoring, management and controlling of financial performance is becoming increasingly important. In the last 18-24 months, many companies have painfully recognized the importance of transparency in financial processes for efficient management and securing liquidity. This transparency not only means looking back into the past (‘what has happened’) but increasingly requires the forecasting and analysis of future developments (‘what will happen’). Key challenges that companies currently face are therefore:

• An accelerated supply of information for decision-makers.
• Increasing consideration of internal and external data for decision-making.
• Greater use of data and analytics in decision-making and management processes.
• Short-term planning and forecasts with a higher updating frequency.
• Digitalization and greater software support for internal processes as an essential basis for their optimization and further automation.

Support from modern and requirements-oriented software solutions is an essential element to be able to achieve these goals. The integration of different financial performance management processes in common software platforms (e.g., planning, budgeting and forecasting with financial consolidation and close as well as reporting and analytics) is a means of avoiding problems and user dissatisfaction.

The software market for financial performance management software is highly competitive with a large number of offerings available. The search for the right software solution for your own requirements is therefore no easy task. With BARC Score Financial Performance Management, BARC supports you in your software selection project and condenses detailed analyst knowledge together with extensive survey results into a unique market overview.

This new BARC Score analyzes the market for financial performance management and its products and product portfolios. Based on the experience and detailed knowledge of BARC analysts and well-founded feedback from numerous user companies in the world’s largest surveys on the use of BI, analytics and planning tools, vendors are evaluated on the basis of a variety of criteria. The BARC Score provides an up-to-date, independent and reliable summary of the market for financial performance management.

The competitors: These vendors made it into BARC Score Financial Performance Management in 2022

Vendors are included in this BARC Score on the basis of two different categories of criteria. They must provide a certain amount of financial performance management functionality with the evaluated product set as well as meeting a minimum level of license and maintenance revenue with the solutions under consideration.

To be rated in this BARC Score, a vendor must have a strong focus on financial performance management. At least four out of the following five following functional areas must be covered by a vendor’s product or product portfolio, regardless of industry:

• Financial planning
• Financial consolidation and close
• Operational planning and forecasting
• (Financial) reporting
• Analysis

Functions for financial planning and financial consolidation and close are particularly heavily weighted here.

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To ensure that our analysis focuses on market-leading vendors with frequently used products, vendors must meet a set of general criteria as well as having the aforementioned functional capabilities. In addition to license and maintenance revenues of at least EUR 20 million with the evaluated product set, the geographical distribution and reach of each vendor is taken into account. Since there are two versions of the BARC Score Financial Performance Management – a global version and a version that focuses specifically on the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) – vendors must be able to demonstrate a significant number of implementations as well as license and maintenance revenues in the respective regions.

The vendors that met our criteria this year and qualified for the BARC Score Financial Performance Management are shown in the table below:

In addition to the vendors evaluated, it should be mentioned that there are a number of other interesting and emerging players in the market, but they were not included in our analysis because they do not yet meet the inclusion criteria listed above.

BARC Score Financial Performance Management 2022

The global market for financial performance management software offers many powerful and mature products from global vendors as well as local specialists.

While the market-leading vendors will continue to advance in 2022, most vendors are positioned in the ‘Challengers’ segment. Products in this segment are often solutions for corporate performance management that also cover functional areas such as financial planning and financial consolidation and close. Many of the vendors have a comprehensive product portfolio, but with lower global penetration for financial performance management, or have strengthened through acquisitions in 2021 and now face the challenge of seamless portfolio integration.

In comparison, four vendors have established themselves as ‘Market Leaders’ and offer a comprehensive portfolio for financial performance management. These vendors achieve strong market penetration and their products enjoy a high level of brand awareness. They have a solid product strategy and financial position, robust sales and marketing programs, and a strong partner network and ecosystem.

Many vendors have expanded their portfolio capabilities for financial performance management (X-axis) in 2022. Others have strengthened their position through acquisition and thus achieved an increase in portfolio capabilities. The growing market is reflected in particular in the area of market execution (Y-axis). Numerous vendors achieved strong growth in 2021, which is reflected in a healthy gain in new customers and significant revenue growth.

Final recommendations and next steps

This year’s BARC Score Financial Performance Management will be published on March 31, 2022. In addition to the clear chart, the detailed report offers well-founded descriptions of all vendors and their solution portfolios, including a strengths / weaknesses analysis. This BARC Score can help you drive your own software selection process and enables a comparison with your own requirements.

To see financial performance management tools live in action, exchange ideas with experienced experts or get feedback on your individual project, we recommend you participate in our annual Digital Finance & Controlling online event on April 27th and 28th, 2022 (German-speaking). Register now for free!

For more helpful tips on working with BARC Scores, check out our next (and last) blog post in this series. Stay tuned!