Dresner’s 2024 EPM Market Study rates Unit4 FP&A as a high-value ‘Overall Leader’ when ranked against other vendors

We’re pleased to report that Unit4 has ranked strongly against the competition as an ‘Overall Leader’ in the ‘Customer Experience Model’ and a ‘Trust Leader’ in the ‘Vendor Credibility Model’. 

To learn more about EPM and FP&A systems, Unit4’s ranking compared to other vendors, and hear what real users think of our platform, just keep reading!

What is an EPM system?

Dresner writes, an EPM system “allows an organization to plan for the impact of various internal and external factors on its future performance and business outcomes. This includes strategic, operational, and financial planning and forecasting.

EPM systems also include reporting and analytics capabilities that allow organizations to set goals and objectives and monitor performance against those objectives, as well as satisfy many regulatory and statutory reporting requirements

EPM systems can vary significantly in complexity and automation capabilities, from relatively straightforward spreadsheet replacements to sophisticated multi-user systems that support collaborative planning and provide a wide range of analytics and reporting capabilities.”

Naturally, Unit4 FP&A fits this definition, while EPM and FP&A systems are slightly different – the former being an umbrella term for all kinds of performance analysis, while the latter focuses solely on financial performance analysis.

The EPM Market – Dresner’s key findings

There has been a notable increase in the usage of enterprise performance management solutions, up to 71% in 2024, from 62% in 2023 and 54% in 2022 – this shows that the organizations using these systems to optimize performance are creating a precedent for those looking to keep up with the competition.

Particularly, we can observe much higher usage across small-sized organizations (62% in 2024 compared to 34% in 2023) to mid-sized organizations (63% in 2024 compared to 59% in 2023). It’s clear that these systems help smaller organizations optimize their performance and gain competitive ground against the growth of large enterprises.

Performance-based analysis and planning is clearly a growth-defining process as evidenced by Dresner in the report. 71% of the organizations using EPM/FP&A systems rate as ‘extremely successful’ or ‘very successful’ with Dresner, and 78% of these organizations see EPM/FP&A as ‘critical’, ‘very important’, or ‘important’, to success.

2024 marks yet another chapter in the EPM/FP&A market, as Cloud now dominates the preferred deployment of EPM systems, increasing to 59% in 2024 from 44% in 2023.

Dresner notes: “The data is clear evidence that Cloud-based EPM solutions are proven and mature and are also evidence that as the EPM market matures, activity will shift away from greenfield deployments to replacement of older generation solutions with newer, cloud-based solutions.”