Why We Built a Free AI Scenario Planner (And Why Anaplan Users Should Care)

Published: 19 March 2026

Here is something nobody in enterprise software wants to admit: most strategic decisions are made in meetings, not in planning platforms.

A CEO is weighing whether to enter a new market. A CFO needs to evaluate the downstream impact of a major acquisition. A CTO is debating a platform migration that will affect every product team. These decisions involve uncertainty, trade-offs, and multiple perspectives — and they happen in conference rooms, on whiteboards, and over coffee. Not in Anaplan.

That is not a criticism of Anaplan, Workday Adaptive Planning, or IBM Planning Analytics. Those are exceptional tools for what they do: enterprise-wide financial modelling, connected planning, and quantitative scenario analysis at scale. If your organisation runs on them, you should keep running on them.

But there is a gap in the market that none of these tools fill. And we built CXO Scenario Planner to fill it.

The Gap: From Strategic Question to Formal Model

Enterprise planning tools answer the question: "Given these assumptions, what do the numbers look like?" That is incredibly valuable. But there is a prior question that often goes unanswered: "What assumptions should we even be testing?"

Before a finance team builds a three-scenario model in Workday, someone needs to decide what those three scenarios are. Before an Anaplan model is configured with new variables, someone needs to identify which variables matter most. Before IBM Planning Analytics runs optimisation algorithms, someone needs to define the strategic objective.

This "exploration phase" is where CXO Scenario Planner lives.

    We do not model numbers. We model perspectives. And that is not competition with enterprise tools — it is completion.
  

How It Works: A Virtual Boardroom, Not a Spreadsheet

CXO Scenario Planner is an AI-powered boardroom simulator. You describe a strategic challenge — "We are considering expanding into Southeast Asia while our core market is slowing" — and the platform assembles a virtual panel of executive personas to debate it.

We have 29 specialised personas across five categories: core C-suite (CEO, CFO, CTO, CISO, and more), extended leadership, VP-level specialists, system integrator roles, and external advisors like board members and strategy consultants. Each persona argues from their functional perspective across three rounds of debate. A built-in devil's advocate challenges every assumption.

The output is not a financial model. It is a structured strategic synthesis with risk/reward assessments, confidence scores, dependencies, and action horizons. Think of it as the briefing document that tells your FP&A team what to model next.

Why "Extension" Not "Alternative"

We are deliberately positioning CXO Scenario Planner as a complement to enterprise tools, not a replacement. Here is why that matters:

Enterprise planning tools excel at quantitative financial modelling, connected planning across departments, governance and audit trails, driver-based scenario recalculation, and historical data integration.
CXO Scenario Planner excels at qualitative multi-perspective analysis, rapid strategic exploration in minutes, cross-functional debate simulation, assumption discovery and validation, and accessibility for non-financial users.

These are different tools for different moments in the decision lifecycle. Enterprise platforms formalise and quantify. We explore and challenge. The best strategic decisions use both.

Who This Is For

If you already use Anaplan or Workday: Use CXO Scenario Planner to rapidly explore strategic options before committing your FP&A team's time to building formal models. Export insights as PDF reports that can inform which scenarios are worth modelling in detail.

If you are evaluating enterprise planning tools: Start here, for free. Understand what scenario planning feels like in your organisation before committing to a six-figure implementation. When you are ready to scale, you will know exactly what capabilities you need.

If you are a consultant or system integrator: Use our 7 dedicated SI personas to accelerate client strategy workshops. Bring AI-generated multi-perspective analysis to your engagements without adding to your tech stack costs.

If you teach or study business strategy: Give students a hands-on tool that simulates real boardroom dynamics. No licences, no setup, no IT approval required.

The Real Opportunity

Most organisations struggle with scenario planning adoption — not because the tools are bad, but because the discipline requires skills that many teams have not developed. The biggest barrier is not software. It is knowing how to think in scenarios.

CXO Scenario Planner lowers that barrier to zero. By making strategic exploration free, instant, and AI-guided, we help more teams develop scenario thinking as a core competency. And when they are ready for enterprise-grade planning, they arrive as more sophisticated buyers who know exactly what they need.

That is good for them. And, frankly, it is good for the entire planning software ecosystem.

    Enterprise tools model numbers. We model perspectives. That is not competition. That is completion.
  

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