Dresner 2025 EPM Market Study: Key Takeaways for Finance Leaders

Every year, Dresner Advisory Services publishes some of the most closely watched research in the enterprise performance management (EPM) space. Unlike analyst firms that rely heavily on vendor briefings, Dresner's Wisdom of Crowds methodology gathers data directly from end users — the finance leaders, FP&A professionals, and CFOs who live inside these platforms every day. That makes their findings credible, and uniquely useful for any organization currently evaluating or re-evaluating its EPM strategy.

The 2025 EPM Market Study arrives at a pivotal moment. Finance teams are under mounting pressure to do more with less, close faster, plan more dynamically, and deliver forward-looking insights to the business in real time. Against that backdrop, here's what the research signals — and what it means for your organization.

Market Trends: What Finance Leaders Are Prioritizing Right Now

The 2025 study reflects a finance function in transition. CFOs and FP&A leaders are no longer just looking for tools that automate existing workflows — they're looking for platforms that can fundamentally change how planning and reporting get done.

A few themes stand out. First, AI and automation have moved from "nice to have" to a core evaluation criterion. Finance teams want intelligent forecasting, anomaly detection, and narrative generation built into the platform, not bolted on as an afterthought. Second, integration continues to be a top pain point. Organizations are tired of managing fragmented ecosystems where data has to be manually reconciled across ERP, planning, consolidation, and reporting layers. Consolidation of the EPM toolset onto fewer, more connected platforms is a clear priority. Third, trust in data remains foundational. No matter how sophisticated the analytics layer, finance leaders need confidence that the numbers underlying any model or report are accurate, governed, and auditable.

These aren't surprising themes — but the degree to which they've accelerated in 2025 is notable.

insightsoftware's Recognition: What It Means in Practice

insightsoftware earned the Dresner Technology Innovation Award for Financial Consolidation, Close Management, and Reporting for the second consecutive year — a distinction that reflects sustained investment in the capabilities finance teams care most about, not a one-time snapshot.

The company also holds Technology & Trust Leader positioning in Dresner's research, a designation that carries real weight. In Dresner's methodology, "trust" is derived directly from customer feedback across dimensions like reliability, support, and vendor relationship quality. Earning that designation means customers — not just analysts — are validating the experience of working with insightsoftware day to day.

For finance leaders evaluating EPM vendors, back-to-back innovation recognition combined with trust-based positioning is a meaningful signal. It suggests a vendor that is both advancing its technology and delivering on its commitments to existing customers. Those two things don't always go together.

Key Findings for Planning and Budgeting Modernization

One of the most actionable areas of the Dresner study for finance leaders involves planning and budgeting. The research consistently highlights the gap between how organizations currently plan and how they want to plan — and the tools they need to close that gap.

Static annual budgets are increasingly seen as a liability. In volatile operating environments, organizations that can only update their plans once a year are flying blind for most of it. The move toward continuous, driver-based planning — sometimes called Always-On Budgeting — is gaining traction as a response. Dresner's findings reinforce this shift, with respondents placing high value on scenario modeling, rolling forecasts, and the ability to replanning quickly when conditions change.

This is precisely the space where JustPerform, insightsoftware's cloud-native planning platform, is purpose-built to deliver. JustPerform enables finance teams to move away from spreadsheet-driven planning cycles toward collaborative, model-based processes that can flex with the business — without requiring IT involvement every time assumptions need to change.

How to Use This Research in Your Vendor Evaluation

Analyst research is most valuable when it sharpens the questions you ask, not just validates decisions you've already made. Based on the themes in the Dresner 2025 EPM Market Study, here are a few questions worth putting to any EPM vendor you're evaluating:

• How does your platform support continuous planning, not just annual budgeting cycles?

• How is AI integrated into the core product — and how is it governed?

• What does your customer retention and satisfaction data look like over the past two years?

• How do you handle integration with our existing ERP and data infrastructure?

Vendors that struggle to answer these clearly — or that redirect to roadmap promises rather than current capabilities — are worth scrutinizing.

insightsoftware: A Recognized Leader Built for Finance

The Dresner 2025 EPM Market Study reinforces what insightsoftware customers already know: that sustained recognition in both innovation and trust doesn't happen by accident. It reflects a consistent focus on the problems finance teams actually face.

If you want to know more about how insightsoftware's capabilities map to your specific planning and reporting needs, request a demo to see JustPerform in action.