On April 26, 2024, Anaplan, a leader in connected planning, announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Fluence Technologies, a cloud-native solution for financial close, consolidation, disclosure management, and reporting. The transaction, expected to close in early May, aims to integrate Fluence's capabilities into the Anaplan platform.

The acquisition will enable Anaplan to offer out-of-the-box software for financial consolidation, including features like intuitive workflow automation, account reconciliation, and cash flow management. Additionally, it will enhance disclosure management with easy document setup and publishing capabilities in Word and PowerPoint, as well as improved Excel reporting with over 30 built-in connectors for real-time metrics.

Anaplan's CFO, Hemant Kapadia, highlighted the value of merging financial consolidation with connected planning, emphasizing the acceleration of critical financial workstreams and improved fidelity in forecasting. CEO Charlie Gottdiener noted that the unification of financial consolidation and connected planning on a common platform would facilitate real-time decision-making and reduce automation costs, while improving compliance and optimizing finance capacity for higher-value tasks.

Post-acquisition, the integration will be led by Anaplan's Chief Product and Technology Officer, Adam Thier, and Fluence's Vice President of Product, Hervé Capo. Fluence's CEO, Michael Morrison, emphasized the importance of maintaining a simple yet powerful user interface, exemplified by their Excel add-in, FluenceXL, which will be incorporated into the Anaplan platform.