3 FP&A Software Solutions Making Big Moves on the Market
DataRails has taken the FP&A world by storm over the past few years and the numbers back it up. In early March, the company raised an additional $50 million from a host of top venture capitalist firms and backers. This comes less than a year after the previous round of $43.5 million that was raised in June, 2021. In the small time period between the two funding rounds, the company’s valuation went up three-fold, while in the past year DataRails’ revenue grew 5 times.
The young company is making big strides, and its growing customer base has very positive feedback. Its compatibility with Excel means that companies of all sizes can integrate their SaaS software very quickly and see its benefits almost immediately.
Sivan Shamri Dahan, managing partner at Qumra Capital, one of the biggest investors in the most recent funding round said in a statement: “DataRails is leading the transformation of financial teams’ operations, empowering teams in every organization with deep business intelligence (BI) capabilities. DataRails has become one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies we have seen and we look forward to partnering with the company as it continues its outstanding market expansion.”
Anaplan has had a lot of ups and downs and big changes recently. After successfully going public in 2018, the stock price fell 22% over the past 6 months. But the big news came even more recently. In late February, hedge fund Sachem Head Capital Management announced that it has taken a stake in Anaplan and there were reports that they may decide to press the company to make changes. That was followed up by Anaplan saying that they were looking to install 4 people on the company board.
Then in mid March came the biggest news of all: Private equity firm Thoma Bravo announced that it was acquiring Anaplan for $10.7 billion and turning the public company private.
2021 was one of the biggest years for IPOs in recent memories, but many are wondering if 2022 will produce more caution from companies going public after the recent downward shift in software market trends. The Anaplan deal was the biggest SaaS deal so far in 2022, and the latest in a series of many software firms taking the go-private route, which could be seen as a way for businesses to grow in the midst of model transformation.
Anaplan was established in 2006 and is also a cloud based business planning software company with over 1,900 customers. Frank Calderoni, CEO of Anaplan, said that the takeover marks the start of a new beginning for the company. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2022 and would give shareholders $66 per share.
Pigment, one of the newest FP&A software solution companies, also made a big splash when they raised $73 million in Series B funding. The Paris-based startup focuses on its business planning platform in upgrading accurate reporting, planning, and forecasting. Its mission is both to make it simpler for companies to use big data sets in more strategic ways as well as “to take on the behemoth of Excel”.
This round of funding was led by venture capital firm Greenoaks and comes on the heels of a successful $26 million Series A funding in December, 2020. While DataRails focuses on any type of Small and Medium sized business, Pigment tends to concentrate on technology based companies, as this is the background and strength of the co-founders. Pigment was founded in 2019 and is still relatively new and small in comparison to other FP&A solutions, but with its recent success and fast growth it has plenty of potential in the near future.