IBM Named a Leader in the 2026 IDC MarketScape for Enterprise Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting Applications
IBM recognized as Leader in IDC MarketScape for enterprise planning applications. The platform addresses growing demand for continuous, integrated planning that replaces static budgets with real-time forecasting across finance and operations.
Every planning cycle can start to feel familiar: disconnected spreadsheets, too many assumptions, and not nearly enough time to produce a forecast the business can trust. As volatility rises and leaders demand faster answers, the gaps in legacy planning tools become impossible to ignore.
That’s why we’re excited to share that IBM has been named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting Applications 2026 Vendor Assessment.
We believe this recognition reflects a broader shift in the market. Planning is no longer a periodic finance exercise—it’s becoming a continuous, enterprise-wide capability that demands performance, flexibility, and intelligence at scale.
IBM Planning Analytics supports organizations as they move beyond static budgeting cycles toward continuous, integrated planning. The platform brings together financial and operational planning across the enterprise, helping teams respond faster to change while maintaining governance and control.
A key differentiator is choice of experience. Planners can work in a modern, web-based environment or continue using Excel as a first-class interface—without sacrificing auditability, performance, or data integrity. This combination helps drive adoption across finance and the wider business while supporting integrated planning at scale.
AI capabilities in Planning Analytics are embedded directly into planning workflows. Built on watsonx foundations, the platform supports predictive forecasting, anomaly detection, and driver-based analysis to help teams surface patterns, understand drivers, and assess scenarios more effectively. The Planning Analytics Assistant adds a natural-language interface that enables users to ask questions, explore insights, and explain results in context. Together, these capabilities are designed to help organizations improve forecast confidence, identify risks and outliers earlier in the planning cycle, and reduce the time between analysis and decision—without requiring deep data science expertise.
Importantly, these capabilities are available in production today and designed to enhance day-to-day planning, not sit outside the process.
As AI becomes more central to planning, trust in the data and the process becomes critical. Planning Analytics provides systemwide auditability, tracking user actions and enabling rollback to historical points. This foundation allows organizations to adopt AI-driven planning while meeting governance and compliance requirements.
The enterprise planning market is evolving rapidly. Organizations are looking for platforms that combine ease of use with deep flexibility, support multiple planning approaches, and scale across regions and functions. IBM Planning Analytics addresses these needs with flexible deployment options, configurable workflows, and a proven enterprise performance management foundation.
We believe being named a Leader reinforces IBM’s commitment to helping finance teams and business planners operate with greater speed, confidence, and resilience. As uncertainty becomes the norm, planning platforms must do more than calculate—they must connect data, people, and decisions in real time.
To learn more about IBM Planning Analytics and how it can support modern planning, budgeting, and forecasting, access the IDC MarketScape or request a demo today.
This announcement is based on the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting Applications 2026 Vendor Assessment (IDC #US52978625e, January 2026).