Financial planning and analysis (FP&A)

Build and execute insightful plans with AI, ERP, and external data—to weather uncertainty today and set up growth for tomorrow.
A woman looking at financial planning and analysis date in her SAP software

Unlock the true potential of financial planning based on AI-powered insights

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See how SAP unifies insights, planning, and execution

SAP enables agile, AI-powered planning across financial and non-financial data—from high-level strategy to granular control and execution.

Unify planning and execution

Align planning seamlessly across departments and gain deep insights from ERP and external data. Confidently execute plans and monitor controls in real time with integrated business apps.

Transform FP&A with AI agents

Use AI-powered automation for workflows, forecasts, and scalable personalised content, all based on a conversational UI.

Create flexible, adaptable models

Enable top-down and bottom-up planning for a dynamic economy. Use built-in alignment and driver-based models to handle enterprise-level stress testing for billions of records.

Jumpstart FP&A with modular content

Enhance value with SAP Best Practices content that adapts to your process. It’s modular, customisable, and ready for any stage of your FP&A journey.

Explore financial planning and analysis capabilities

Combine financial and non-financial (like carbon) data in agile plans that are stress tested for profitable and sustainable growth, and ready for execution.

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Flexible modelling

Use no-code, freeform modelling to combine top-down and bottom-up planning, and adapt easily to evolving needs.

Accelerators

Speed up extended planning and project delivery with modularly built FP&A accelerators based on the universal journal.

Generative AI

Use AI-driven agents to gain insights from harmonised data models and create guided, predictive plans.

Extended data models

Access harmonised data, including SAP applications and external sources, as data products in SAP Business Data Cloud.

Explore SAP Analytics Cloud 

See how customers are succeeding with SAP

Driving collaboration through unified financial planning

See how transportation and logistics provider Watco enables business-wide collaboration with streamlined financial planning, forecasting, and reporting.

Read the customer story 

Enterprise forecasting for volatile markets

Discover how Freudenberg uses SAP Analytics Cloud to adjust enterprise-wide forecasts and keep up with fast-moving market demands.

Read the customer story 

A single source of truth for finance planning

Learn how manufacturer STIHL makes data-driven decisions based on a single source of truth to manage extended planning and analysis.

Read the customer story 

See what analysts are saying about SAP

SAP recognised as a Leader by Gartner®

Learn why Gartner named SAP as a Leader in its 2024 Magic Quadrant™ report for financial planning software.

Read the report 

Resources

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Frequently asked questions

SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP S/4HANA Cloud are fully integrated as a single financial platform. Due to this unique integration, finance users can work with greater ease within a combined ERP and planning and analytics solution, smoothly navigating between actuals and plans.

 

As actuals are recorded within SAP S/4HANA Cloud, finance and FP&A professionals can perform variance analysis in real time without requiring batch processes and delays. Common master data elements – such as accounts, legal entities, and segments– from SAP S/4HANA Cloud are available to planners within SAP Analytics Cloud to perform analysis in an automated manner, without manual intervention or updates.

Modern financial analytics software, such as SAP Analytics Cloud, is embedded with analytics capabilities. Built-in analytics help planners and FP&A teams interpret the results of forecasts, budgets, and plans better than spreadsheets and through comprehensible visualisation. The analytics capabilities of these solutions are also interactive, allowing users to drill into more granular details and directly into source systems such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors solutions, and the SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solution for better insight to action.

Budgets, forecasts, and plans are often static and based on being scheduled. In addition, scenario planning has become a lot more prevalent because of its immediate need.

 

Due to the uncertain nature of the macroeconomic environment, geopolitical situations, and other potential disruptions, FP&A departments receive significant pressure to create a scenario plan or establish scenario management to address a specific situation. As a result, scenario planning capabilities within planning and analysis solutions are a necessity to guide and respond to business constituents.

 

With a few clicks, solutions such SAP Analytics Cloud allow users to create a private version and run unlimited simulations to measure upside, downside, and other potential opportunities and costs with accessible data.

As they complete their finance transformation and integrate their financial platform with SAP Analytics Cloud, many SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers gain additional benefits in FP&A. One such advantage is the ability to perform real-time liquidity planning along with traditional income statement and balance sheet planning activities. With SAP Analytics Cloud, planners can instantly access their cash flow and cash positions, enabling better decision-making.

 

Furthermore, SAP Analytics Cloud offers built-in predictive analytics capabilities that allow users to forecast future cash balances based on multiple scenarios. An unlimited number of drivers can be updated to influence various cash inflows and outflows, providing flexibility and adaptability in their planning.

 

To streamline the implementation process, SAP offers pre-built business accelerators that enable customers to quickly deploy a liquidity planning model. This model complements existing finance and treasury activities within SAP S/4HANA Cloud, resulting in a comprehensive and efficient financial planning solution.

Watch this video to see liquidity planning in action 

Yes, SAP Analytics Cloud offers real-time capabilities for its users.

 

Customers can smoothly view and compare their plans against actual data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud without requiring a batch process. The live connectivity feature enables planners to swiftly identify trends, anomalies, and deviations from their plans, allowing them to detect potential risks and issues.

 

By providing access to reliable data, SAP Analytics Cloud encourages the practice of continuous improvement within FP&A departments. This approach empowers organisations to proactively implement preventive measures and minimise the impact of potential problems to optimise overall business performance.

SAP Datasphere enables a business data fabric that governs and harmonises data from multiple sources, whether from SAP or other vendors. In return, planning workstreams are facilitated by moving and transforming data structures into a single source for reliable analysis.

 

By preserving critical business context and relationships in the data, SAP Datasphere saves planners' time and simplifies integration and harmonisation across different planning granularities. This solution increases flexibility, despite the growing complexity in the enterprise landscape, to help ensure a comprehensive planning process without sacrificing accuracy or detail.

 

Furthermore, SAP Datasphere empowers decision-making by supplying holistic and trusted data. It supports the integration and harmonisation of SAP and third-party data sources, breaking down silos between systems and departments.

Learn more about SAP Datasphere 

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software, Regina Crowder, Vaughan Archer, Matthew Mowrey, Michelle Carlsen, 18 November 2024.

 

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organisation and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

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