Activity-Based Costing (ABC) software is a specialized type of financial management tool designed to implement and automate the activity-based costing methodology, which identifies and assigns costs to specific business activities such as production processes, order fulfillment, or customer support rather than relying on traditional volume-based metrics like labor hours or machine time. This software enables organizations to map activities to resources, drivers, and outputs; allocate indirect costs proportionally based on actual consumption; and generate detailed reports, dashboards, and insights for better understanding of true product or service profitability, resource optimization, and decision-making. It provides profitability analysis, precise cost allocation, and enterprise scalability, and is primarily used by finance teams, business analysts, and executives for strategic decision-making.
Cloud xP&A is a platform-centric enterprise planning strategy to extend financial planning and analysis (FP&A) with multidiscipline planning capabilities that are packaged, marketed and sold as an integrated operational planning solution. xP&A solutions must include a cohesive, composable, data-harmonized vendor platform that can accommodate emerging technologies, horizontal functional and vertical-specific solutions for their target market(s)
Gartner defines financial close and consolidation solutions (FCCS) as applications that enable CFOs and their teams to manage the organization’s group close, consolidation and reporting processes. The FCCS market equips organizations to (1) manage and drive financial control across their close cycles through configurable workflows and dashboards that support collaboration and provide a centralized auditable view; (2) execute financial consolidation across multiple legal entities (LEs) and geographies; (3) meet accounting standards for currency translation, intercompany elimination and top-side adjustments; and (4) generate reporting that adheres to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and regional compliance.
Gartner defines financial planning software (FPS) as the key tool that enables data-driven financial resource allocation, investment and spending decisions by supporting effective planning, budgeting and forecasting processes. FPS enables organizations to link their strategies to financial and operational plans through cloud-based software. It facilitates the creation and management of financial plans, budgets and forecasts by breaking down information silos and integrating operational KPIs. FPS analytics and reporting features offer a holistic performance view, connecting both operational (nonfinancial) and financial metrics, enabling stakeholders to make data-driven decisions.