The best FP&A platforms for life sciences plan runway week by week, show what each program costs and model trial and financing scenarios on the live plan. Abacum is the AI-native business planning platform for scaling enterprises. It brings all your data, business logic and business context into one governed place. This guide compares Abacum, Jirav, Anaplan, Pigment, Workday Adaptive Planning, Planful, Cube and Vena on runway, program cost and trial budgets. 33% of public US and EU biotechs had under 12 months of runway at the end of 2025 (EY, via BioSpace, 2025), which is why planning cadence matters.
Three planning jobs in life sciences
Job | The question | What to confirm |
|---|---|---|
Runway | How long does cash last under the current plan? | A rolling cash forecast planned week by week |
Program cost | What does each program and phase really cost? | Spend by program and phase without a data team |
Trial and financing scenarios | What happens if a readout slips or a raise closes late? | Scenarios on the live plan |
Platforms compared
Platform | Approach | Confirm in a demo |
|---|---|---|
Abacum | AI-native business planning platform on one governed layer of data, logic and context | Weekly runway, program cost and scenarios on one model |
Jirav | Dashboards and planning connected to accounting systems, with a life sciences solution page | Program and phase detail |
Anaplan | Multi-dimensional planning for large, complex models | Who builds and maintains the models |
Pigment | Flexible modeling platform for teams willing to build and maintain their own planning models | Who owns the model after go-live |
Workday Adaptive Planning | Planning connected to the Workday suite | Fit with your current systems |
Planful | Planning and reporting with pre-built templates | R&D budget templates |
Cube | Planning that runs on Excel or Google Sheets | Version control across program leads |
Vena | Excel-native planning | Model governance |
Pigment is a flexible modeling platform for teams willing to build and maintain their own planning models. Your team or an implementation partner designs it and keeps it running, so confirm who will own the model after go-live.
Trial budgets: what to model
Phase-based spend. Budget by program and phase so a delay shows up in cash.
Milestone timing. Move a readout and watch runway change.
Financing events. Add the next raise and see the effect on runway.
Ledger match. Build the budget on the same accounts as your actuals so budget versus actuals reconciles without mapping Excel to the ledger by hand.
How Abacum approaches life sciences planning
Runway you re-forecast as often as the science changes, planned week by week and board-ready.
Know what each program really costs, without a data team.
Scenarios around milestones and financing events on the live plan.
A budget that matches the GL.
AI Modeler. Describe the model you need in plain language, or bring the spreadsheet you already built, and get a working model in minutes. Ask what drives any model, line by line, before the board meeting. Nothing saves until you approve.
Governance. Agents propose, the planning engine calculates, and finance approves every change to reported figures.
Included, not metered. No credits, no meter, no hidden fees.
We position Abacum on the finance layer, above your ledger. Abacum holds a 4.7 rating on G2 (as of October 2026). Implementation runs six to nine weeks depending on data complexity, entity count and workflows.
