How AI-Driven Platforms Are Reshaping Enterprise Business Planning
A fundamental shift is underway in how corporations plan for the future. Moving beyond the static, finance-centric budgets of the past, enterprises are increasingly adopting unified software platforms designed to integrate planning activities across the entire organization. According to new research from Information Services Group (ISG), this transition is being accelerated by the integration of artificial intelligence, enabling companies to anticipate change and coordinate decision-making with unprecedented agility.
The study, encapsulated in the ISG Buyers Guide™ for Business Planning, evaluates 17 major software providers, highlighting a clear industry trend: dedicated planning platforms are becoming central to strategic execution. These tools are not merely replacing spreadsheets; they are fostering a new culture of connected, continuous planning that aligns operational tactics with overarching corporate objectives.
The Limitations of Siloed Planning
For decades, enterprise planning has often been hampered by fragmentation. Traditional budgeting processes, while providing necessary financial control, typically operate in isolated departmental silos. Sales, operations, human resources, and finance would often develop their forecasts and plans using disparate tools and data sets. This lack of integration creates a lag between strategic vision and operational reality, leaving companies reactive rather than proactive.
“Companies need continuous planning with input from all departments to anticipate change, manage resources and pursue growth,” noted Robert Kugel, executive director of Business Research at ISG Software Research. “Enterprises adopting business planning tools are using technology to overcome the limitations of siloed planning.”
This siloed approach struggles with the multidimensional nature of modern business, which operates across products, customers, regions, currencies, and business units. Traditional financial planning, often confined to two or three dimensions, cannot dynamically model the complex interdependencies that drive performance.
The Evolution to Unified, Multidimensional Platforms
Modern business planning software addresses this complexity head-on. At its core, these platforms provide a unified data model and a single source of truth. This allows for multidimensional modeling, where a change to an assumption—such as a raw material cost or a regional sales target—can be instantly calculated across the entire corporate plan.
The impact on decision-making is profound. Executives and managers can explore scenarios interactively during meetings, understanding the ripple effects of a potential decision in real-time. This refines forecasting, sharpens analysis, and shortens planning cycles, ultimately improving the performance of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) teams and business leaders alike.
The Critical Role of Data Integration
A key enabler of this unified view is advanced data management. The most effective platforms seamlessly connect to source systems—including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and supply chain applications. Through mature application programming interfaces (APIs), they automate the extraction, transformation, and loading of data. This automation reduces manual, error-prone effort and allows planners to shift their focus from data wrangling to strategic analysis and modeling.
The AI and Automation Inflection Point
The capabilities of these platforms are undergoing a step-change with the integration of AI, particularly generative AI and agentic AI. ISG predicts that by 2028, one-fourth of FP&A organizations will implement this form of AI-enhanced, integrated business planning.
The applications are transformative. AI can automate analytics, identify anomalies, and generate decision recommendations. It can produce narrative commentaries for financial reports, translating complex data into digestible insights. Natural language processing (NLP) enables self-service reporting, allowing non-technical managers to query the system using plain language. Furthermore, AI can help reduce cognitive bias in forecasts and simplify the budgeting process by learning from historical patterns and outcomes.
“Rapid advances in software, especially with AI, are turning business planning from an operational burden into an asset for decision-making and action,” said Mark Smith, partner and chief software analyst at ISG Software Research. “This lets executives and managers anticipate change rather than react to it.”
Evaluating the Vendor Landscape
ISG’s research provides a detailed assessment of the competitive field, evaluating providers across four specific platform categories: Business Planning, Financial Planning, Revenue Planning, and Workforce Planning. Providers are rated in five categories: Overall, Product Capability, Platform, and Customer Experience.
Leaders in Integrated Business Planning
For the 2025 guide, OneStream emerged as the top Overall Leader across all four platform categories, followed by Anaplan and Oracle. These three providers were consistently rated as Exemplary, a designation also given to Board, Prophix, SAP, and Workday in various categories. The recognition of Leaders highlights vendors that provide both robust technological capability and strong customer satisfaction.
Spotlight on Emerging Innovators
Separately, ISG examined the market for Financial Planning Emerging Providers, evaluating 10 innovative vendors that often focus on reducing complexity for midsize enterprises or specific use cases. In this 2025 Buyers Guide, Sage was named the top Overall Leader, followed by Abacum and insightsoftware. These providers were noted for bringing agility and modern features to the traditional financial management space.
The comprehensive nature of ISG’s research, which is not sponsored by vendors, offers enterprises a framework to assess which platforms best align with their specific operational needs and strategic goals. As the pace of business accelerates, the choice of a planning platform is increasingly a decision about competitive resilience.
The trajectory is clear. Business planning is evolving from an annual financial exercise into a continuous, collaborative, and intelligence-driven process. By unifying data, leveraging multidimensional models, and harnessing AI, enterprises are building a critical capability: the power to plan with foresight and execute with alignment.
About ISG Software Research
ISG Software Research provides authoritative coverage and analysis of the business and IT software industry. It distributes research and insights daily through its user community, and provides a portfolio of consulting, advisory, research and education services for enterprises, software and service providers, and investment firms. Its ISG Buyers Guides™ help enterprises evaluate and select software providers through tailored assessments powered by ISG’s proprietary methodology. Visit http://research.isg-one.com/ for more information and to sign up for free community membership.
About ISG
ISG (Nasdaq: III) is a global AI-centered technology research and advisory firm. A trusted partner to more than 900 clients, including 75 of the world’s top 100 enterprises, ISG is a long-time leader in technology and business services that is now at the forefront of leveraging AI to help organizations achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm, founded in 2006, is known for its proprietary market data, in-depth knowledge of provider ecosystems, and the expertise of its 1,600 professionals worldwide working together to help clients maximize the value of their technology investments.
