SHERIDAN, WYOMING - December 4, 2025 - Workday has secured its position as a four-time Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Financial Planning Software, underscoring how the company's AI-enabled platform is becoming a strategic hub for finance teams navigating volatility, pricing pressure and tighter capital markets. The recognition highlights Workday Adaptive Planning's role in helping financial planning and analysis (FP&A) organizations shift from static budgeting to always-on, scenario-based planning.
Four Years as a Gartner Leader in Financial Planning
Being named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for the fourth consecutive year cements Workday's standing in the financial planning software market at a time when CFOs are demanding more agility from their FP&A stacks. The company's Adaptive Planning offering is used by enterprise and midmarket customers across industries, including BlackBerry Limited, Boston Scientific Corporation, Guardian Life Insurance Company of America and Spotify USA Inc., to deliver rolling forecasts, multi-scenario modeling and driver-based plans.
For finance leaders, repeated Gartner recognition reinforces that the platform is not only mature but also evolving fast enough to keep pace with economic uncertainty, regulatory change and increasingly granular operational data.
AI at the Core: Putting Finance in the Driver's Seat
Workday continues to frame its strategy around the idea that planning must be owned by finance, not IT. "Today's finance teams need a smarter, faster way to plan, one that puts them in the driver's seat. With AI at the core, Workday empowers finance to truly own their planning process, allowing them to make quick changes and adapt with ease, without relying on IT or consultants," said Ben Pierce, general manager, Adaptive Planning, Workday.
This vision is reflected in the company's growing portfolio of "agentic" AI solutions, including the Planning Agent, which is designed to cut data exploration and analysis time by as much as 30%. Rather than embedding AI as an add-on, Workday is positioning it as foundational to how data is ingested, modeled and surfaced for decision-making across HR, finance and operational systems.
Bridging Financial and Operational Data for Faster Decisions
A key differentiator for Workday is the ability to integrate financial plans with operational data from ERP, CRM, marketing, HR and data warehouses. By unifying these inputs on a single platform, FP&A teams can:
- Adjust forecasts rapidly as demand, pricing or headcount assumptions change
- Run multi-scenario simulations on the fly for board, investor or lender discussions
- Maintain a single version of the truth across finance and business owners
This cross-functional integration is increasingly critical as organizations push planning responsibilities closer to line-of-business leaders, while still expecting finance to maintain governance and consistency.
Customer Feedback Highlights Time Savings and Self-Service
Gartner Peer Insights reviews provide additional context on how Workday performs in production environments. One VP of Finance in the manufacturing industry noted, "Workday Adaptive Planning has solved our budget process needs seamlessly. Since we implemented it over 6 years ago, we have gained back several hours per month on process steps, while enabling our analysts to spend more time on value-add."
From the transportation sector, a director of financial planning and analysis said, "We are extremely happy with all aspects of Adaptive Planning, including the user-friendly and easy to navigate interface, the expert implementation consultants, the ease of ongoing maintenance as well as the readily available post-implementation resources and support."
A finance manager in the software industry emphasized the platform's flexibility: "I feel like anything I have needed to do to improve my company's corporate financial model has been achievable directly because of Workday Adaptive Planning. The automation and scalable features, the ability to have custom integrations, and the speed at which any support tickets are resolved are all second to none."
Together, these user perspectives reinforce Workday's positioning around self-service modeling, low reliance on IT and faster iterations as finance teams adjust to changing market conditions.
Strategic Implications for the Enterprise AI Planning Market
As AI reshapes both core ERP and the FP&A layer, Workday is leveraging its single-platform approach-spanning people, money and AI agents-to compete not only with legacy planning tools but also with new wave specialist vendors. Being recognized as both a Magic Quadrant Leader and a Customers' Choice in Gartner's 2025 Voice of the Customer report helps validate the company's dual message to the market: AI-enabled planning that is enterprise-grade yet business-owned.
For finance leaders reviewing their planning stack for 2026 and beyond, the combination of Gartner recognition, customer references and integrated AI capabilities positions Workday Adaptive Planning as a central candidate for consolidating fragmented spreadsheet and point solutions.
Learn more about Workday Adaptive Planning and the broader Workday platform at https://www.workday.com.