Runway's Browser FP&A Replaces Spreadsheets

This reveals that FP&A breaks when finance owns the forecast but line leaders own the operating logic. The sales leader has the spreadsheet for pipeline and conversion, marketing has the sheet for spend and lead flow, and engineering has the headcount and roadmap plan. If those working models live outside the planning system, the company forecast is just a cleaned up summary of stale inputs rather than a live model of how the business actually runs.

• Incumbents like Anaplan solved data collection and workflow, not the underlying habit of department heads doing the real thinking in their own sheets. That is why teams still model in spreadsheets first, then copy results into the official system.
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• Runway is trying to replace those side spreadsheets by giving non finance teams their own native planning surface. A sales or product leader can start with live Salesforce, HubSpot, Amplitude, or warehouse data, shape a forecast, and submit it back into the company plan.
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• This is the key split in modern FP&A. Causal has emphasized flexible modeling and custom views layered on top of a finance model, while Vena leans into Excel for teams that want planning inside the spreadsheet they already use. Runway is pushing hardest on browser native collaboration across functions.
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The category is moving toward planning tools that become the place where department leaders do day to day business thinking, not just quarterly budget intake. The winners will be the products that can absorb those scattered operating spreadsheets, connect them to live systems, and turn the company forecast into something that updates with the business itself.