Nucleus Research Names OneStream a Leader in CPM Software

Continued uncertainty and a rapidly changing business environment have forced businesses to be agile and rethink their approach to budgeting, planning and reporting with greater pressure to run lean finance teams. Finance leaders are turning to corporate performance management (CPM) technology for faster, more accurate planning and reporting capabilities. This technology allows organizations to better manage their budgets, with the ability to pivot based on any variances, as well as perform frequent forecasts in response to economic changes.  CPM software also enables organizations to streamline financial close, consolidation and reporting for a more timely and accurate picture of the business. It is through this lens that Nucleus Research published its 2023 Value Matrix for CPM Software, highlighting key market trends and ranking the top 19 vendors. Read on to learn more about the report’s findings and how OneStream was positioned in the market.

CPM Software Helps Organizations Power Through Uncertainty

For the past several years, businesses have been facing pressure from geopolitical risk, economic uncertainty, supply chain disruption, volatile markets and more. The demand for CPM solutions remains high as organizations seek to enhance their planning and reporting capabilities amid these rapidly changing external market factors and greater pressure to run lean finance teams, according to the 2023 Nucleus Research CPM Technology Value Matrix that published in late January.

The report stated, “Nucleus found that a CPM solution’s most significant benefit is helping businesses protect their cash positions, which is vital in a market downturn. Organizations leverage their CPMs to consolidate financial information for a bird’s eye view of their finances, enabling accurate cash and expense projections. With a real-time view and continuous forecasting, businesses can better manage budget variances, and managers can better adhere to their spending guidelines. Since non-finance department heads can leverage a CPM solution, they can provide input to budgets and update their spending for alignment across finance, sales, marketing and operations.”

Nucleus Research makes the case for CPM technology to drive organizational alignment instead of point solutions or fragmented systems, highlighting that the breadth of functionality across CPM platforms enables integrated business planning (BP) initiatives which allows departments outside of finance to participate in budgeting and planning for continuous organizational alignment.

Whereas other IT industry reports evaluate financial planning software separately from financial close and consolidation solutions, Nucleus Research evaluates vendors on both of these core processes arguing that a single platform that supports both provides a higher level of business value compared to point solutions. Additional key trends highlighted by Nucleus Research in the report include:

• CPM vendors are focusing development on analytics, either developing or embedding these capabilities within their platforms so users can build dashboards and visualize information without data scientists or requesting IT for specific configurations.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) enabled modeling continues to be a development priority for vendors as users have realized increased forecast accuracy and automation benefits.
• ESG reporting and planning modules templates are beginning to be introduced within solutions. ESG functionality is expected to be common stakes within the CPM market moving forward.

Diving Into the CPM Value Matrix

The 2023 CPM Value Matrix report evaluated the top 19 CPM software vendors based on their usability and functionality as well as the value that customers realized from each product’s capabilities. According to Nucleus, the research is intended to serve as a snapshot of the CPM technology market, to help inform customers about how vendors are delivering value and take stock of what can be expected in the future based on present investments.

What other insights did the 2023 CPM Value Matrix report reveal? This year’s report recognized OneStream as a Leader in the CPM Value Matrix – making 2023 the sixth consecutive year OneStream has earned this recognition. (see figure 1)

Here’s what the analysts had to say about OneStream in the report:

“OneStream is recognized as a Leader in the 2023 CPM Technology Value Matrix for its comprehensive CPM platform, delivering capabilities for financial close and consolidation (FCC), budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and analytics. It also includes built-in capabilities for data integration and validation, workflow automation data visualization, as well as operational analytics and reporting to extend customer value and decision analysis capabilities. This unified approach enables customers to replace multiple legacy applications and cloud point solutions so finance teams spend less time managing data and systems and more time performing value-added analysis supporting decision making.”

Figure 1 – Nucleus Research CPM Value Matrix 2023

Learn More

Our continued recognition as a Leader in the Nucleus Research CPM Value Matrix is a testament to the capabilities we provide and the value users gain from OneStream’s unified platform. By streamlining complex financial processes and unifying financial and operational data through one platform, users are able to turn data into actionable insights and spend more time on value-added activities and analysis. In today’s rapidly changing economy, business leaders need near real-time insights to support agile decision-making at the speed of business. We are investing to expand the capabilities of our platform and deliver new solutions that will continue to provide exponential value to our customers.

To learn more, download a copy of the 2023 Nucleus Research CPM Value Matrix report here.

Download the Analyst Report