BARC - The Planning Survey 2018

The market for planning products is highly competitive. BARC The Planning Survey 18 is based on findings from the world’s largest and most comprehensive survey of planning software users. The research reveals the strengths and challenges of many of the leading vendors in the space as well as a number of smaller regional vendors which are relatively new to the market.

The survey examines user feedback on planning product selection and usage across numerous meaningful criteria (KPIs) including:

• business benefits
• project success
• business value
• price-to-value, based on how users rate their tool in terms of price-to-value ratio
• product satisfaction
• recommendation
• vendor support, measuring user satisfaction with the level of vendor support provided for the product
• customer satisfaction, a KPI that combines price-to-value, recommendation, product satisfaction, implementer supoort and vendors’ support evaluations
• user experience
• planning functionality, measuring user satisfaction with the planning functionality of the product
• reporting and analysis functionality of the product
• competitiveness

According to BARC, “Board once again achieves great results in BARC’s Planning Survey. Excellent ratings in numerous important KPIs help to consolidate its position as a leading CPM and BI vendor. Benefits enjoyed by companies using Board include improved integration of planning with reporting/analysis, improved integration of different sub-budgets, reduced planning complexity and improved employee satisfaction. Board offers broad functionality and considerable flexibility to users wanting to address various CPM and BI use cases on one integrated platform.”

These results are based on positive customer feedback which praises the ease of use, agility and scalability of the software as well as the self-service component of the platform and the users’ independence from specific IT knowledge. One of the key values of Board – the combination of reporting, analysis, planning and simulation in the same interactive environment – is among the most appreciated features of the product. For example, the BI Project Manager in a manufacturing organization with more than 2500 employees told BARC that Board is an

extremely flexible tool without the common data model limitations you find elsewhere (such as the number of dimensions). A big advantage is that it has a strong BI element within the same tool, while other planning vendors require external BI tools for analysis/dashboards, making Board one integrated solution. It looks simple (less visible options) in comparison to other products, but still allows you to replicate any Excel based planning application. There is a very good ratio between what you can do vs. how many things you have to learn.

The BARC report concludes with a comparison of the limits of Excel spreadsheets against the Board solution. Even though Excel remains one of the most widely used planning and BI products in the world, many users and companies are dissatisfied with it. Common issues in planning projects, such as missing key product features, inflexibility and handling of large numbers of users or data volumes, are not a problem for Board users.

Complete the form to download the full Board Summary of BARC The Planning Survey 18 and discover why Board has achieved its top ranks.