The financial planning and analysis (FP&A) software market just hit a major checkpoint. Gartner has published its 2025 Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software, and within hours a wave of vendors — including Workday, OneStream and Board — announced fresh leadership positions, all leaning heavily into AI, agents and unified enterprise planning. [1]
For CFOs and FP&A leaders, these announcements on and around December 4–5, 2025, are more than marketing. They provide a snapshot of who Gartner sees as shaping the next era of planning, forecasting and performance management across 14 evaluated vendors. [2]
What the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software Shows
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is a comparative market study that positions vendors on two axes: Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision, grouping them into Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries and Niche Players. [3]
In the 2025 Financial Planning Software report, Gartner evaluates 14 platforms, including:
- Workday, OneStream, Anaplan, Oracle, SAP
- Board, Wolters Kluwer CCH Tagetik, Jedox, Planful, Pigment
- IBM, Vena, insightsoftware, Prophix [4]
Each vendor’s announcement emphasizes the same underlying market reality: FP&A is moving away from static, spreadsheet-heavy processes toward cloud-native, AI-augmented platforms that unify financial and operational data, support continuous planning, and scale across the enterprise. [5]
Workday: Four Straight Years as a Leader and a Big Bet on Agentic AI
Workday says it has been recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software for the fourth consecutive year, underscoring both its execution and strategic vision. [6]
The company positions itself not just as a planning tool, but as an enterprise AI platform for “people, money and agents,” with Workday Adaptive Planning at the core of its FP&A story. [7]
Key themes from Workday’s announcement and blog
Workday’s press release and companion blog, “Four for Four: Workday Named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning for the Fourth Year in a Row,” highlight several strategic pillars: [8]
- Continuous, connected planning
- Workday stresses that volatility is the norm rather than the exception, and that organizations can no longer rely on quarterly, disconnected planning cycles.
- Adaptive Planning is positioned as data-source agnostic, connecting to any ERP or transactional system, while unifying finance, HR and operational planning in a single environment.
- AI-first, human-in-the-loop planning
- Workday emphasizes an AI-first platform with human governance, where machine learning accelerates forecasting, variance analysis and data preparation, but human experts retain final oversight. [9]
- The company cites its agentic AI solutions, including a new Planning Agent that lets planners ask natural-language questions of their planning data and automates tasks like data wrangling and variance analysis. [10]
- Real-world traction and customer validation
- Workday reports more than 11,000 organizations using its platform globally and over 7,000 Adaptive Planning customers, including companies such as BlackBerry, Boston Scientific, Guardian Life and Spotify for planning. [11]
- The vendor also highlights being named a Gartner Peer Insights™ Customers’ Choice for Financial Planning Software in 2025, marking three straight years of this customer-driven recognition. [12]
Takeaway: Workday’s 2025 messaging is all about being the AI-driven, connected enterprise planning backbone, with agentic AI embedded directly into FP&A workflows rather than bolted on.
OneStream: A 5× Leader and Unified Finance Platform for the Office of the CFO
OneStream announced that it has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software and that this marks its fifth time in a Leader position for this market. [13]
The company positions itself as a unified enterprise finance management platform designed to “modernize the Office of the CFO” by consolidating financial close, consolidation, reporting, planning and forecasting on a single cloud platform. [14]
What OneStream is highlighting in 2025
- Unified financial and operational planning
- OneStream stresses that it unifies financial and operational data in a single model, avoiding the patchwork of separate modules and tools.
- Gartner’s evaluation, according to OneStream’s release, rated 14 providers on ability to execute and completeness of vision, with OneStream placed in the Leaders quadrant. [15]
- Embedded, purpose-built AI and ESG planning
- OneStream draws a clear link between its Leader position and recent platform enhancements, especially AI.
- In October 2025, the company introduced AI capabilities within its ESG Planning & Reporting solution, powered by SensibleAI Forecast and SensibleAI Agents. These are aimed at forecasting consumptive activities, modelling Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, and tying ESG initiatives directly to financial performance. [16]
- CFO as strategist, not historian
- CEO Tom Shea argues that finance leaders “need a unified, AI-powered platform built for the way finance works — not a patchwork of modules,” and that unifying data and AI gives finance a strategic advantage. [17]
- OneStream’s broader narrative is that its Digital Finance Cloud is evolving into an “operating system for modern finance,” used by over 1,700 customers, including roughly 18% of the Fortune 500. [18]
Takeaway: OneStream is leaning hard into the idea that a single, AI-infused platform — spanning close, consolidation and planning — is the antidote to fragmented FP&A stacks and a prerequisite for high-frequency, ESG-aware decision-making.
Board: Fourth Consecutive Recognition and a Roadmap of Role-Based AI Agents
Board announced that it has been recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software for the fourth consecutive year, with its Enterprise Planning Platform cited as unifying strategic, financial and operational planning. [19]
Board is particularly focused on bridging the gap between finance and line-of-business planning in sectors such as manufacturing, consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail.
What’s new in Board’s platform narrative
- End-to-end enterprise planning with Flex Grid
- Board highlights its Flex Grid, a modern, Excel-like planning interface built into the platform.
- Flex Grid offers self-service planning, reimagined dashboarding, and intuitive formulas, enabling bottom-up and top-down planning at scale on large data volumes. [20]
- AI-powered, persona-based agents on the roadmap
- Looking ahead, Board outlines plans for persona-based intelligent agents that act as collaborative digital teammates for roles like FP&A, Controllership, Merchandising and Supply Chain Planning. [21]
- Unlike a single generic chatbot, Board envisions a network of role-specific agents operating natively within the platform’s unified data model and business hierarchies.
- Continuous planning and real-time analysis
- Board emphasizes continuous planning — not annual budget cycles — powered by near-real-time data and AI-augmented analysis.
- The vendor points to a customer base that includes global brands such as H&M, BASF, Burberry, Toyota, Coca-Cola and HSBC, which use the platform to unify finance and operations around a single version of truth. [22]
Takeaway: Board is framing its strategy around AI-augmented, persona-driven planning experiences and an Excel-familiar but cloud-native interface to bring business users deeper into FP&A processes.
Beyond the Big Three: Other 2025 Announcements You Should Know
While Workday, OneStream and Board were central to the recent news cycles, several other vendors also tied their own announcements to the 2025 Magic Quadrant:
Anaplan: Nine-Time Leader and Focus on Scenario Planning
- Anaplan says it has been named a Leader in the 2025 Magic Quadrant, marking nine such recognitions over time. [23]
- The company’s published alt-text description of the 2025 Magic Quadrant image shows:
- Leaders quadrant: Oracle, Anaplan, OneStream, SAP and Workday
- Challengers: IBM, Vena
- Visionaries: Planful, Pigment, Board, Wolters Kluwer, Jedox
- Niche Players: insightsoftware, Prophix [24]
- Anaplan is positioning its Anaplan Intelligence and Data Orchestrator as core capabilities for automated scenario modelling and compressed planning cycles.
Wolters Kluwer CCH Tagetik: Five-Time Leader with Predictive, ESG-Aware Planning
- Wolters Kluwer reports that its CCH Tagetik Intelligent Platform has been recognized as a Leader for the fifth time in this Magic Quadrant. [25]
- The platform is promoted as an AI-powered predictive budgeting and planning solution with anomaly detection, driver-based analysis and forecasting, plus strong support for consolidation, ESG and regulatory reporting.
Jedox: Third Consecutive Leadership Position and JedoxAI
- Jedox says it has again been named a Leader for the third year in a row, highlighting its JedoxAI capabilities. [26]
- Jedox positions JedoxAI as a digital business partner that uses generative AI to summarize complex data, draft commentary and make predictive, explainable forecasts, often starting from the Excel environment that finance teams already know. [27]
Pigment and Others: Visionaries and Challengers
- Pigment has announced that it is a Visionary for the second consecutive year, emphasising its “AI-first” strategy and positioning itself as a modern alternative to legacy FP&A tools. [28]
- Planful, IBM, Vena, insightsoftware and Prophix also feature in the 2025 Magic Quadrant, covering a spectrum of cloud FP&A, consolidation and reporting use cases across the four quadrants. [29]
Important note: Vendors’ own press releases (for example from Board, Wolters Kluwer and Jedox) describe them as Leaders, while Anaplan’s accessible description of the Gartner graphic lists them in the Visionaries quadrant. Because the full Gartner report is licensed content, organizations should review the original document directly to confirm vendors’ exact positions. [30]
What the 2025 Magic Quadrant Signals for FP&A Leaders
Across these announcements, several themes consistently emerge:
1. AI Is Table Stakes — But “Agentic” AI Is the New Differentiator
- Vendors are moving beyond simple machine-learning forecasts to agentic AI — AI agents that can converse in natural language, automate workflows and act as role-specific copilots.
- Workday has Planning Agent and a broader portfolio of agentic AI offerings tied to planning. [31]
- OneStream is embedding SensibleAI Forecast and Agents into ESG and financial planning. [32]
- Board’s roadmap centers on persona-based agents for finance, merchandising and supply chain planning. [33]
- Anaplan’s Anaplan Intelligence and role-based AI agents similarly aim to automate scenario evaluation and decision support. [34]
For buyers, the question shifts from “Does this platform have AI?” to “How deeply is AI integrated into planning workflows, and how governable is it?”
2. Unified Data Models Beat Siloed Tools
Most vendors now frame their advantage around a unified data and planning model:
- OneStream’s “Digital Finance Cloud” and unified finance platform
- Workday’s single platform spanning HR, finance and planning, while remaining data-source agnostic
- Board’s integrated enterprise planning platform connecting strategy, finance and operations
- Jedox and Pigment emphasizing connected financial and operational data with real-time integration [35]
This matters because CFOs increasingly need connected scenarios — where a change in headcount or supply chain assumptions instantly flows through margin, cash and P&L projections.
3. Continuous Planning and Faster Cycles Are the New Normal
Gartner’s own description of the market highlights “ongoing FP&A transformation” and the need to optimize planning across complex, decentralized ERP and operational systems, with high user concurrency and on-demand insight. [36]
In response:
- Vendors push monthly or even weekly reforecasting as realistic, not aspirational.
- Scenario modelling, versioning and rolling forecasts are treated as default capabilities.
- Many platforms emphasise self-service access for non-finance stakeholders, reducing bottlenecks in FP&A teams.
4. ESG, Risk and Regulatory Use Cases Are Moving Inside FP&A Platforms
ESG is no longer just a specialist reporting layer; it is increasingly embedded within the planning platforms themselves:
- OneStream’s ESG Planning & Reporting solution combines AI-based forecasting of emissions with financial planning. [37]
- Wolters Kluwer connects CCH Tagetik across consolidation, planning, ESG and regulatory reporting in one platform. [38]
- Jedox and Pigment both emphasize ESG and extra-financial planning as key use cases. [39]
For finance leaders, this blurs the boundaries between performance management, sustainability and compliance — and raises the bar for data governance.
How CFOs and FP&A Teams Should Respond
If you’re evaluating or re-evaluating your financial planning software stack in light of the 2025 Magic Quadrant and this week’s announcements, here are practical steps:
- Read the Gartner report — ideally from more than one vendor.
- Multiple vendors (Workday, OneStream, Board, Wolters Kluwer, Jedox, Anaplan, Pigment and others) are offering complimentary access. Comparing how each frames the same report can be insightful. [40]
- Map the 14 evaluated vendors to your specific use cases.
- Do you need deep support for complex multi-entity consolidation, or is your priority fast xP&A across functions like HR, sales and supply chain?
- Shortlist vendors whose strengths align directly with those priorities rather than chasing the broadest feature set.
- Assess AI maturity — not just features.
- Ask how each platform handles governance, data lineage and explainability for AI-generated forecasts and insights.
- Understand whether AI capabilities are natively embedded or rely heavily on external tools and manual integrations.
- Test for true “connected planning,” not just integrations.
- During demos, push for live examples:
- Change a demand forecast and see how quickly it flows through to margin, cash and workforce plans.
- Test how easily non-finance users can adjust assumptions without IT intervention.
- During demos, push for live examples:
- Factor in user experience and change management.
- Tools like Board’s Flex Grid and Jedox’s Excel-centric experience underline how important it is to meet users where they already work. [41]
- A platform that’s slightly less feature-rich but adopted widely can deliver more value than a powerful system that only a few analysts are willing to use.
Bottom Line
The 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software cements a clear trend: financial planning is becoming AI-driven, continuously updated and deeply connected across the enterprise.
- Workday is doubling down on an AI-first, agentic approach embedded across people, money and planning.
- OneStream is making the case for a unified finance platform that fuses consolidation, ESG and planning with purpose-built AI.
- Board is betting on persona-based agents and a reimagined planner experience to bring continuous, cross-functional planning to life.
At the same time, Anaplan, Wolters Kluwer CCH Tagetik, Jedox, Pigment and others are sharpening their own AI stories and vertical specializations, giving CFOs more choice — and more homework — than ever.
For organizations navigating 2026 budget cycles and beyond, the message is clear: the winners won’t just be those who buy modern planning software, but those who turn it into a living, AI-augmented planning discipline that keeps up with the pace of their business.
References
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