Unit4 is the ‘Overall Leader’ for ‘Flexibility’ in The BARC Planning Survey 2024, ranking in the top 3 for the past 5 years
The BARC Planning Survey is an important guide for those looking to compare different providers of financial planning solutions based on real user feedback.
The survey is the largest of its kind, and in 2024 gathered responses from 1272 respondents across 21 credible providers.
In The BARC Planning Survey 2024, Unit4 FP&A was ranked as the ‘Overall Leader’ in the ‘Flexibility’ KPI and rated as “consistently outstanding” based on responses from real users of our solution.
While this was only one of 16 leading positions we achieved across 4 different peer groups, in this blog we will focus on Unit4’s superlative ranking as the #1 ‘Overall Leader’ in 2024 for ‘Flexibility’, after 5 years of ranking in the top 3.
Keep reading to learn how BARC forms this KPI, why it’s important, and learn more about Unit4’s ranking in this category.
Why is a flexible FP&A solution important?
Flexibility is one of the main KPIs that BARC asks users to rate a provider on, and the ranking is based on the degree to which respondents consider the planning software in question to be ‘flexible’.
The root ‘Flexibility’ KPI is also important as it contributes to the aggregated KPI of Customer Experience which combines flexibility with the KPIs of ease of use, self-service, and performance.
BARC reports that this Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is based on two factors:
- “The frequency with which ‘flexibility of the software’ was cited as a reason for purchasing the planning product.”
- “The frequency of complaints about flexibility post-implementation.”
In The BARC Planning Survey, they also divulge the importance of ‘Flexibility’ and its inclusion as a KPI, suggesting that:
“With the current vogue for agility and self-service capabilities and the increasing need for users to be able to access a variety of planning use cases (top-down, bottom-up, centralized, decentralized, strategic, operational, etc.), flexibility is an important consideration for many organizations”
Performance often falls back on systems, and here BARC highlights that in a modern operating environment where change occurs often, financial planning must be adaptable and offer flexible capabilities so that organizations have the tools to meet any situation.
Moreover, without flexible software an organization’s financial planning capabilities will not match an organization's growth. Organizations need flexible and adaptable systems to ensure that performance and growth aren’t capped by the boundaries that inflexible software will impose.
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Unit4 FP&A’s ranking for ‘Flexibility’
Unit4 FP&A was rated as the ‘Overall Leader’ for ‘Flexibility’ by users, achieving a perfect 10.0 top rank across four peer groups, much higher than the average of all products, which was 6.0.
It should remain of note that 10% of Excel users report that the software is not flexible enough, identifying the struggle they have with using Excel for financial planning, while no Unit4 FP&A users suggested this was an issue for them.
Importantly, BARC’s survey found that 71% of surveyed users chose Unit4 FP&A because of its flexibility. With 78% of Unit4 FP&A users overall saying they would ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ recommend the product to other organizations.
Perhaps the best demonstration of Unit4 FP&A’s flexibility is achieving the top rank for this KPI among 4 different peer groups: ‘Integrated products for planning and financial consolidation’ and ‘Midsize implementations’, ‘Planning, budgeting and forecasting’ and ‘worldwide implementations.’
This good standing is the result of long-term improvements to the Unit4 FP&A platform, having ranked in the top 3 for ‘Flexibility’ and rated as "consistently outstanding" for the last 5 years in a row.
Partner with Unit4 FP&A for flexible planning capabilities
With a need to regularly forecast and plan finances, many teams may find the workload this creates to be unmanageable without capabilities to match demand.
At Unit4 we understand that as your organization grows and reacts to external factors different capabilities are needed, whether that’s creating more time for strategic tasks with automation, needing greater visibility of how finance affects other key functions, or simply more practical capabilities to budget on the fly or adapt to changing compliance.
You can read the full BARC 2024 Planning Survey to see how we fared against other credible vendors and the other top ranks we achieved. To learn how you can use Unit4’s Flexible Financial Planning and Analysis solution, consult our dedicated webpage, or talk to sales directly, today.
