Browser-based FP&A Replacing Excel
Siqi Chen, CEO of Runway, on building browser-based collaborative FP&A
Anaplan’s real ceiling is not forecasting accuracy, it is company wide adoption. It works best when a finance team pulls data from systems like CRM and ERP, updates a central model, and runs budgeting workflows, but the actual thinking about pipeline, hiring, product launches, and marketing still often happens in separate spreadsheets owned by each function. That makes Anaplan valuable as finance infrastructure, but weaker as the everyday workspace where non finance teams plan the business.
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In practice, enterprise planning tools are strongest on structured workflows like headcount plans, opex budgets, approvals, and consolidating submissions. For more custom revenue modeling, larger companies still keep side spreadsheets and paste outputs back into systems like Anaplan or Adaptive.
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The product design tradeoff is familiarity versus reach. Excel centric tools like Vena win with finance teams because users keep the spreadsheet interface and add workflows, permissions, and database connectivity. But that same design keeps the center of gravity with finance, not with heads of sales, product, or engineering.
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The modern challengers are trying to change the entry point. Runway, Pry, and Causal all frame the opportunity as replacing emailed templates and fragmented sheets with browser based models that are easier to share, safer to permission, and simple enough for each department to edit directly.
This market is heading toward planning tools that spread the way Figma spread in design, from specialist software to a shared operating surface across teams. The winners will still automate finance’s close and budget cycle, but the bigger prize is becoming the place where every department builds its own forecast and feeds one live company model.