Best FP&A Tools - Speed Up Planning, Forecasting & Analysis

By Thomas Sword

Understanding the Best FP&A Tools and Their Benefits

Managing your business’s finances through excel is manageable – at first. But at a certain inflection point, this becomes untenable; a few excel sheets becomes a few dozen or even hundred, draining hours of your time. The best FP&A tools can put an end to this wasteful cycle – and better yet, they can help your organization leverage key insight that otherwise may not be attainable with excel.

That’s because sophisticated FP&A planning tools are able to consolidate data from across a variety of sources, automate data sorting, and provide insights into your business’s finances that can help inform your decision making.

The right FP&A tool integrated into your budgeting and reporting workflow at the right stage of your growth can do all the above – and more. Top FP&A software is designed to help your organization continue to grow without wasting needless hours compiling and checking budget templates. To that end, let’s talk more about the best Cloud FP&A tools, how they do what they do, and how an FP&A platform can help your business grow.

FP&A Planning Tools – How Do They Do What They Do

FP&A software solutions can do amazing things:

Complete budgets in half the time
Provide deep insights into your financials, empowering data-driven decision making
Reduce the frequency of errors
Make scaling easy with cloud support and intuitive FP&A dashboards able to competently organize large volumes of data
Enable accurate and comprehensive forecasting and workforce planning (learn more about the best strategic workforce planning software)
Allow for what-if scenario planning
Integrate with ERP and HR systems to centralize your data
Allow for increased collaboration between teams

FP&A software can provide all this, but what is FP&A software?

Put succinctly, it’s software that is able to optimize your financial planning, forecasting, reporting, and budgeting process to make them faster, more accurate, and increase their functionality.

The right FP&A solutions can help your business reach its full productivity potential, in other words.

When Is the Right Time to Implement FP&A Software

Each business is unique in its budgeting and forecasting needs. That said, there is no business that does not benefit from more accurate forecasting and automated budgeting.

See Industry-Specific FP&A Software Solutions for:

The right time to implement said FP&A planning tools is dependent, ultimately, on your business’s size.

For many small businesses with only a handful of employees, the financial cost may not make sense as excel is still rather manageable at that stage. You will still miss out on data-driven insights and other benefits of working with top FP&A solutions, but you may also not wish to allocate capital on FP&A while being in a high-growth stage.

But as a business progresses from small to midsize and enterprise level, the benefits of FP&A applications and tools rise significantly.

Enterprise financial planning software, in other words, is absolutely necessary - otherwise you risk falling behind to your competitors who will be able to leverage analytics-based insights to improve their workflows while yours are still mired with inefficiencies and vulnerabilities.

It’s not uncommon for businesses to discover hundreds of thousands of dollars in hidden costs after centralizing their data via financial planning and analysis tools.

FP&A Software vs an FP&A Platform - Which FP&A System Is Right for Your Organization

While technically still falling under the SaaS (software as a service) designation, an FP&A platform differs greatly from a less robust FP&A tool.

In fact, the best FP&A tools are in fact full-on platforms.

But what’s the difference?

You may find an FP&A tool that is able to help your business with its financial planning and reporting needs, certainly. But these FP&A tools can be rather simple, small integrations with excel that mitigate some of the issues you’re facing, but don’t eliminate them outright.

An FP&A platform, conversely, provides you with a much higher level of service; you’ll be able to leverage an entire FP&A system that is designed to move beyond excel onto another level of FP&A functionality.

An FP&A platform will include:

Intuitive dashboards
Simple yet comprehensive forecasting tools
What-if planning capabilities
Workforce planning capabilities
Collaboration tools
Data synthesization tools

And more.

Can FP&A Software Solutions Integrate With My ERP?

Yes! . . . probably.

This very much depends on the FP&A tool in question and which ERP your organization deploys.

That said, here’s a list of FP&A ERP integrations:

The FP&A Software List

While this list is by no means exhaustive, below you’ll find a list of the best tools for financial planning and analysis on the market today.

It’s a mix of both FP&A platforms and FP&A tools. But these corporate financial planning tools provide the best combinations of functionality, intuitiveness, services, and price.

Best FP&A Tools - an FP&A Software List

FP&A Software Comparison

While all the above FP&A tools have their positives and drawbacks, ultimately, Limelight FP&A Software has the features, capabilities, and customer service that makes it one of the best FP&A tools.

One of the leaders in FP&A cloud software. With Limelight you can leverage real-time data to inform your business critical decisions, empowering your financial team to more effectively plan your business’s future.

Limelight excels at:

Industry-leading usability
Cutting down your budgeting report times
Putting an end to excel bloat and waste
Powering effective workforce planning
Allowing What If Scenario planning
Making scaling easy
Uncovering hidden costs
Integrating seamlessly with your ERP
Providing industry-specific support

Limelight’s customer service is centered on a personalized approach. This equates to leveraging the benefits faster so your business’s growth won’t be constrained by inadequate and/or inefficient financial planning and analysis software.

Medium-sized companies with over 200 employees that are ready to make the jump from SME to enterprise-level functionality.

Limelight features an intuitive UI/UX that leads to higher adoption rates, increased collaboration and budget contribution for a more comprehensive and robust financial analysis.

The Best FP&A Tool to Unlock Growth and End FP&A Frustrations

While there are many FP&A tools out there, you won’t find one that has the combination of functionality and ease-of-use as Limelight.

Our platform excels at ensuring all your budgeting, forecasting, planning, and analysis needs are addressed and completed faster - and more accurately - than ever. With our powerful platform backing your business, you can save thousands of hours and uncover hundreds of thousands in hidden costs, reduce budget reviews, and give you your time back.

Save money, get a more comprehensive picture of your business’s financial health, plan and forecast easier - do it all with Limelight. Book a demo to see the platform in action and learn how it can help your business thrive.