Cube and Anaplan are leading FP&A software options in today’s market. Both tools offer powerful financial planning and analysis capabilities to businesses.
While they share some similarities, there are key differences between the two that could influence your choice.
Here’s a detailed comparison of Cube vs Anaplan to determine which might be the better fit for your organization’s needs.
Cube Software: Embracing the Spreadsheet
Cube is a real-time FP&A platform designed to integrate with your spreadsheets. It provides FP&A teams with instantaneous access to financial and operational data, accelerating strategic planning, reporting, and analysis processes. This efficient approach reduces errors and improves insights, aiding in a faster and more comprehensive understanding of the financial story behind the numbers.
Cube marries the flexibility and familiarity of spreadsheets with the control and scalability of performance software, allowing teams to get started quickly and without a steep learning curve.
Who is Cube’s Target Audience?
Cube Software offers a tailored solution especially for small to mid-size organizations based in North America. Its particular focus is on supporting Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) teams seeking to optimize and simplify their spreadsheet-based operations.
The typical decision-makers interested in Cube often hold leading positions within the FP&A teams, including:
- Heads of FP&A or Finance
- Vice Presidents of FP&A or Finance
- Directors of FP&A or Finance
However, Cube is not just a tool for leadership; it’s also designed for comprehensive team use. Everyone within an FP&A team, from top-level VPs to hands-on analysts, can benefit from Cube’s robust features.
A Closer Look: How Cube Works
To better understand the value proposition of Cube, let’s delve into its inner workings. The Cube platform operates by following three key stages: connection, centralization, and creation.
Connect: Seamless Data Integration
Cube excels at effortlessly integrating and mapping data from your existing technological ecosystem. This means that data from your ERP, CRM, HRIS, business intelligence tools, and other systems can easily be imported and utilized within Cube. This capability facilitates the process of getting the required data right where it’s needed, making it a truly user-oriented tool.
Centralize: Unified Source of Facts
Cube’s powerful engine centralizes your data, allowing for instant complex calculations. Always have a precise grasp of your financial and operational status. Tailored to your needs, this consolidated view equips experienced finance and FP&A professionals the insights needed for sound business decisions.
Create: Unparalleled Flexibility and Collaboration
Cube gives you the freedom to work where you’re most comfortable, be it Excel, Google Sheets, or directly within Cube’s interface. For seasoned finance and FP&A pros like you, this means streamlined collaboration and dashboard creation. Keep everyone on the same page with a clear, real-time view of your financials.
Delving Deeper: Noteworthy Features of Cube Software
Cube’s appeal lies not only in its adaptability and integration capability but also in its myriad of powerful features. These are designed to provide an efficient, streamlined, and comprehensive financial planning and analysis experience.
Consolidating Data Automatically
Cube shines in its ability to integrate data from various sources, streamlining the process through automatic rollups and drill-downs. This feature allows you to have an accurate, timely, and holistic view of your data.
Modeling Multiple Scenarios
One of Cube’s significant strengths is its ability to perform multi-scenario analysis. This feature enables you to effortlessly model and understand the impacts of changes to key assumptions on your overall outputs, facilitating proactive decision-making.
Limitless Integrations
Cube supports integrations with spreadsheets (Google and Excel), as well as with tools from various business functions. It includes accounting & finance, HR, ATS, billing & operations, sales & marketing, and business intelligence. This level of integration promotes seamless workflows and improves efficiency.
Personalized Dashboards
Cube also provides the capability to build and share customizable dashboards. This feature allows you to visualize your data in a way that best suits your needs. As a result, making data analysis more intuitive.
Seamless Spreadsheet Integration
Cube’s compatibility with native Excel and Google Sheets is bi-directional, allowing for data flow in either direction. This feature supports those who prefer working in a familiar spreadsheet environment while benefiting from Cube’s advanced functionalities.
Support for Multiple Currencies
Cube’s multi-currency support lets you evaluate your financials in both your local and reporting currencies. This global perspective enhances your financial understanding and informs strategic decisions.
User-based Controls
Cube incorporates user controls, validations, and audit trails to ensure the accuracy and security of data. It ensure that the right data reaches the right people at the right time, enhancing data governance.
Centralization of Formulas and KPIs
With Cube, all your calculations and key performance indicators (KPIs) can be stored and managed from a central location, serving as your single source of truth. This centralization reduces the risk of errors and discrepancies.
Drilldown and Audit Trail
Cube’s also drill down and audit trail feature lets you trace the transactions and history behind a single data cell with just one click. This capability aids in detailed analyses and audits, providing a clear picture of your financial operations.
Anaplan: A Transformative Approach to Business
As a cloud-based financial analysis and planning platform, Anaplan provides businesses with the tools to master their performance and confidently implement financial strategies. Anaplan is more than just a planning tool. It also acts as a catalyst for confident decision-making, equipping teams with the data and insights they need to guide the company’s direction.
Anaplan’s comprehensive suite allows for detailed planning of complex financial scenarios. It’s an essential tool for financial forecasting and long-term strategic planning, down to the finest details. The platform’s ability to generate sophisticated models enables businesses to anticipate and prepare for a multitude of potential future circumstances.
Beyond just planning and forecasting, Anaplan empowers teams to make better, data-driven decisions. With its robust analytical tools and real-time data, teams can gain an in-depth understanding and insights into their performance, enhancing their decision-making process. Anaplan is thus a comprehensive solution. Since it combines planning, analysis, and execution in one platform, promoting greater business efficiency and effectiveness.
Who is Anaplan’s Ideal Users?
Anaplan serves as a potent tool for large, rapidly expanding organizations that require advanced financial management solutions. Its substantial computational power, capable of performing intricate tasks, positions Anaplan as an ideal choice for the following user groups:
- Medium-sized businesses with complex financial operations.
- Large corporations need to manage extensive and diverse financial portfolios.
- Fast-growing companies looking for robust, scalable financial planning and analysis solutions.
Anaplan’s capacity to handle complex, large-scale operations underlines its value to organizations with sophisticated financial management needs, making it a top-tier choice in the realm of financial planning and analysis software.
Diving Deeper into Anaplan: Noteworthy Features
Anaplan stands out in the market with its extensive suite of features designed to simplify business planning and enable informed decision-making. Its comprehensive capabilities, from granular financial analyses to adaptive modeling, position Anaplan as a leader in the financial planning and analysis arena.
Here’s some of the key features that make Anaplan a formidable solution:
- Consolidated Planning: Anaplan’s platform enables users to create and connect an unlimited number of planning streams through a centralized dashboard. This interconnected approach to planning fosters alignment and coherence across different business functions, promoting a more integrated business strategy.
- In-Depth Financial Analysis: It is among of Anaplan’s most significant assets. Users can inspect and understand their financial data at a granular level, promoting greater transparency and empowering them to make well-informed decisions.
- Robust Calculation Engine: Anaplan’s proprietary Hyperblock™ technology serves as a robust calculation engine. It is capable of performing complex computations on large volumes of data. This feature allows businesses to process and analyze their data in real time, enabling rapid and agile responses to changing business environment.
- Dynamic Modeling: Anaplan offers the capacity to adapt models swiftly and easily. This flexibility means that Anaplan’s solutions can grow and evolve with your business, ensuring that your planning and analysis tools remain fit for purpose no matter how your business landscape evolves.
Each of these features underlines Anaplan’s commitment to providing comprehensive, versatile solutions that cater to a wide range of business planning needs.
Understanding Anaplan’s Approach: Functionality and Industry-Specific Solutions
Solutions for Your Function
Anaplan shines in its ability to deliver solutions that can effectively tackle your most intricate planning challenges. It provides function-specific solutions that cater to various teams and roles within an organization:
- Finance: The platform effortlessly bridges strategic, financial, and operational planning. Finance teams can better align their strategies with overarching company goals, leading to more unified and impactful planning.
- Sales & Marketing: The system facilitates the synchronization of revenue strategy with the tactics of sales and marketing. This integration enhances revenue planning, sales forecasting, and marketing budgeting, ensuring tighter collaboration between sales and marketing departments.
- Supply Chain: With Anaplan, businesses gain heightened visibility, quicker decision-making, and adapt rapidly to changes. The platform assists in creating more responsive and agile supply chains that can swiftly respond to fluctuating market conditions and customer demands.
- HR & Workforce: Anaplan provides the tools necessary to optimize workforce readiness, enabling better strategic workforce planning, talent management, and improved business outcomes.
Solutions Geared for Your Industry
Beyond role-based solutions, Anaplan also provides industry-specific solutions to meet the unique challenges your business might face:
- Consumer Goods: Anaplan aids in controlling production and enhancing profitability by offering tools for demand planning, trade promotion planning, and sales forecasting, among others.
- Financial & Business Services: The platform can help chart a path to higher returns, facilitating strategic planning, revenue management, and risk analysis, enabling more informed and profitable decisions.
- Manufacturing: Anaplan’s solutions can spark dynamic supply chain decisions, helping to manage supply and demand, reduce costs, and enhance production efficiency.
- Retail: Anaplan’s retail solutions help create outstanding customer experiences, managing inventory, workforce, and financial planning, thereby leading to improved customer satisfaction and sales.
- Technology, Media, & Telecom: The system aids in accelerating growth and profitability in the TMT sector, providing solutions for revenue management, workforce planning, and budgeting. It’s tailored to help these fast-paced industries to stay on track with their rapid growth.
In essence, Anaplan’s functionality extends far beyond standard financial planning and analysis, providing tailored solutions to meet the unique needs of various roles and industries. This flexibility sets Anaplan apart as a comprehensive planning platform.
Cube vs Anaplan: Positioning Against Competitors
Anaplan distinguishes itself by offering its cloud-native SaaS platform to optimize business planning and performance management across a variety of functions such as finance, sales, supply chain, workforce, and marketing. Its tools are versatile and can be utilized for budgeting, forecasting, modeling, pricing optimization, analysis, and other planning and management tasks.
Cube, on the other hand, positions itself as an intuitive FP&A platform that harnesses the power of spreadsheets. Its strengths lie in its ability to consolidate data from various sources, enabling more streamlined and efficient financial planning and analysis.
Ultimately, the choice between Cube and Anaplan comes down to your specific needs. If you’re a smaller business that relies heavily on spreadsheets for your financial planning, Cube might be the better choice. If you’re a larger, fast-growing business with more complex financial planning needs, Anaplan could be the right fit for you. As with any software decision, it’s important to consider your unique business requirements and conduct a thorough evaluation of both platforms before making a decision.