Browser-Based FP&A as Tool for Thought
Siqi Chen, CEO of Runway, on building browser-based collaborative FP&A
This complaint points to the real wedge in FP&A, which is not faster budgeting paperwork, but owning the place where operating teams actually think through the future. Incumbents are strong at pulling in actuals, routing approvals, and collecting budget inputs, but product, sales, and engineering leaders still keep separate spreadsheets for the real work of testing assumptions. The winning product is the one teams reach for first when they ask what happens if hiring slips, conversion rises, or a launch moves by one quarter.
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In practice, many large FP&A systems still act like systems of record after the thinking is done. Finance teams build or refine the real revenue logic in Excel or Google Sheets, then paste outputs back into Anaplan or Adaptive so budgets, approvals, and reporting stay centralized.
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Modern challengers are all trying to close that gap, but they take different paths. Runway pushes browser based collaborative planning tied to plans and scenarios. Equals keeps the spreadsheet familiar and adds live data and dashboards. Causal focuses on more flexible modeling primitives, especially for bespoke revenue models.
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The market split is clear. Vena wins teams that want to stay inside Excel and add controls and integrations. Newer tools try to replace the spreadsheet as the place where analysis happens. That is why the battle is really over user habit and cross functional seat expansion, not just finance automation.
The next phase of FP&A is moving from quarterly budget collection into daily operating software for every team that owns a forecast. As products connect live business data with easier modeling, the category shifts toward a shared planning layer for the company, and the vendors that make modeling feel natural will pull work, users, and budget away from both spreadsheets and legacy planning suites.