Struggling to align staffing with demand?
Trying to forecast needs with spreadsheets often leaves you overstaffed or understaffed, directly impacting your budget and operational efficiency.
The real challenge is justifying new software investments when you can’t accurately predict the return on investment or guarantee a smooth implementation process.
It’s a widespread issue. In fact, a recent report shows that 22% of HR leaders consider workforce planning a high priority, highlighting current gaps in management.
But what if you could find a tool that helps you achieve scalable automation and provides clear analytics to prove its value?
In this article, I’m going to guide you through the best manpower planning software. I’ll focus on solutions that solve these exact challenges.
You’ll discover how to streamline staffing, cut labor costs, and finally align your workforce with fluctuating business demands without implementation headaches.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anaplan → | Mid to large enterprises | |
| 2 | Visier → | HR Directors & Operations | |
| 3 | Workday → | Mid to large enterprises | |
| 4 | Agentnoon → | Mid to large enterprises | |
| 5 | ChartHop → | Organizations of all sizes |
1. Anaplan
Struggling with workforce forecasting and cost control?
Anaplan’s HR & Workforce solution delivers capabilities specifically designed for your manpower planning needs. This means you can future-proof your workforce by aligning talent to demand.
The platform ensures you have the right talent in the right place, at the right time and cost. This directly tackles challenges like staffing resource alignment with fluctuating business demands.
Achieve scalable automation and reduced labor costs.
Anaplan solves complex planning by breaking down silos across finance, sales, supply chain, and HR functions. You can connect and integrate planning data from any source, offering flexible modeling and analysis across your business.
This includes dedicated applications like Operational Workforce Planning and Capacity Planning & Optimization. Additionally, Anaplan Intelligence, with its predictive and generative AI, helps you uncover hidden trends and accelerate time to insights. Plus, the intuitive planning experience with robust security ensures optimized decision-making and control over your critical data.
The result is strategic scenario modeling, supporting real-time collaboration.
Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of best accounts payable software helpful for managing your financial operations.
Key features:
- Operational Workforce Planning: Purpose-built applications for comprehensive workforce planning, ensuring the right talent is available when and where needed.
- Capacity Planning & Optimization: Solutions to effectively plan and optimize your team’s capacity, directly impacting efficiency and resource allocation.
- AI-infused Scenario Planning: Utilize predictive and generative AI to quickly gain precise insights, explore patterns, and make informed decisions on staffing strategies.
Learn more about Anaplan features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Anaplan stands out as the best manpower planning software for mid to large enterprises seeking to break down internal silos and achieve scalable automation. Its AI-infused platform and dedicated HR & Workforce solutions, including capacity and operational planning, empower you to align staffing with fluctuating demands, cut labor costs, and drive a 14% improvement in total shareholder return.
2. Visier
Struggling with complex workforce planning and labor costs?
Visier helps you adapt to change faster with AI-driven insights. It delivers insights that truly move the needle on urgent business challenges.
This means you can know your people and make the right decisions for headcount, retention, and talent acquisition. You can achieve scalable automation of workforce forecasting.
Here’s how.
Visier helps you unify all your HR and business data to unlock insights you can’t get elsewhere. It focuses on strategic analysis, not data manipulation, to align staffing with demands.
You get a rich library of pre-built metrics, questions, and dashboards, giving you value out of the box, so you can deliver insights and impact fast. Additionally, its AI-powered tools automate routine analytics and reporting, freeing your team for strategic projects.
Plus, Vee, their trustworthy AI digital assistant, provides instant, secure answers to workforce questions, freeing your team to focus on strategic projects. You can ask any question, explore the issue, and make informed decisions effortlessly.
The result is optimized labor costs and operational efficiency.
While we’re discussing how to gain actionable insights, exploring the best data visualization tools can further enhance your analytical capabilities.
Key features:
- AI-Driven Insights: Visier uses AI to provide actionable insights and guidance for faster adaptation to workforce changes, enhancing overall performance.
- Unified Data Platform: It brings together all HR and business data into one comprehensive model, eliminating manual data manipulation and enabling deeper strategic analysis.
- Automated Analytics & Reporting: The platform automates routine analytics, basic reporting, and ad-hoc requests, freeing your team to focus on high-impact strategic initiatives.
Learn more about Visier features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Visier stands out as a strong contender for the best manpower planning software, especially for HR Directors and Operations Managers. Its AI-driven insights and unified data model help streamline workforce forecasting, reduce labor costs, and achieve a 7.5-month payback on investment, making it ideal for optimizing staffing and operational efficiency.
3. Workday
Struggling with workforce forecasting and escalating labor costs?
Workday offers dedicated Workforce Planning, Human Capital Management, and Workforce Management tools. This means you can align staffing resources precisely with business demands, helping you optimize your labor costs.
Workday’s AI platform helps you elevate human potential and supercharge work, allowing your team to focus on meaningful tasks while automating routine operations. You can finally gain clear visibility into your entire workforce.
Here’s how you can streamline operations.
Workday helps you empower your people and adapt your workforce through its Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions. This allows you to unify your human and AI agent workforce, driving productivity.
With Workday, you can leverage AI-generated insights to streamline payroll, HR, and time management with a unified solution. Its workforce planning and analytics capabilities are key for proactive staffing.
Additionally, Workday offers an Employee Experience platform to deliver personalized experiences that keep your people performing at their best. This, coupled with its analytics and reporting features, gives you the data needed for informed decisions and to reduce staff turnover.
Optimize your staffing and cut labor costs.
While we’re discussing optimizing operations with software, understanding patient engagement software is equally important for specific industries like healthcare.
Key features:
- Workforce Planning and Management: Align staffing resources with business demands and optimize labor costs through comprehensive workforce planning and management tools.
- Human Capital Management (HCM): Empower your people, adapt your workforce with AI, and unify human and agent workforces to boost productivity and efficiency.
- AI-Driven Insights and Analytics: Utilize AI-generated insights and robust analytics and reporting capabilities to make informed decisions and streamline HR, payroll, and time management.
Learn more about Workday features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Workday is the best manpower planning software for mid-to-large enterprises seeking to optimize staffing and reduce labor costs. Its integrated HR, workforce planning, and AI capabilities, including Workday Illuminate, allow you to streamline processes, improve forecasting, and manage your workforce with data-driven confidence, as shown by customers who have reduced finance systems to one and automated sales planning.
4. Agentnoon
Struggling with complex manpower planning and organizational design?
You’re likely facing inefficient planning, slow tools, and a lack of accountability, costing your organization significant resources. This means manual data cleansing and inaccurate reports often tenfold complexity.
A lack of alignment truly hinders execution.
How do you get everyone on the same page?
Agentnoon streamlines organizational design and workforce planning, powered by AI. It helps you democratize organizational transformation, allowing every level to design and model in one unified canvas. You can easily understand the real-time financial and structural impacts of every decision.
Additionally, it drives organizational performance by continuously tracking and monitoring execution. This allows your team to hit targets consistently. Plus, you can ingest and map financial and operational data from any source, creating scenarios to model various business situations. The result is continuous tracking, reduced errors, and faster movement towards your goals.
Key features:
- Intelligent Design™ and Scenario Generation empower you to create and compare multiple “what-if” scenarios, ensuring optimal staffing and cost forecasting.
- Real-time Workforce Analytics provides comprehensive insights into spans and layers, organizational health, and workforce costs to make informed decisions.
- Seamless Data Management and Integrations allow you to import, harmonize, and diagnose data from various sources like Workday, Oracle, and SAP for accurate planning.
Learn more about Agentnoon features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Agentnoon’s AI-native platform, with its robust scenario modeling, real-time workforce analytics, and seamless data integrations, makes it a top contender for the best manpower planning software, particularly for mid-sized to large enterprises aiming to reduce errors and accelerate organizational transformation.
5. ChartHop
Struggling with workforce planning and rising labor costs?
ChartHop offers a unified People Ops Platform, helping you connect and visualize your people data. This means you can gain a single source of truth for all your HR data.
This comprehensive platform enables collaborative, data-driven workforce modeling, forecasting, and workflows, tackling challenges like headcount management and budget allocation. The result?
You can lead with business data and empower your team with AI.
ChartHop solves the common problem of disparate HR systems by integrating your existing HR tech. Here’s how you can make data-driven decisions that are both actionable and impactful with AI-powered dashboards. You can also understand management relationships and company structure with clear Org Charts featuring data visualizations. Additionally, explore employee profiles, filterable geographic maps, and a unified company calendar to stay informed about important dates like work anniversaries.
This empowers your organization through insights, alignment, and action.
Key features:
- Headcount Planning: Facilitates collaborative and data-driven workforce modeling, forecasting, and workflows, helping you manage staffing needs and budget impacts efficiently.
- People Data Visualization: Connects and visualizes all your people data through flexible Data Sheets, AI-powered Dashboards, and Org Charts for comprehensive insights.
- Integrated HR Modules: Offers a unified platform for HRIS, compensation reviews, performance management, and employee engagement, streamlining your entire People Ops strategy.
Learn more about ChartHop features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: ChartHop excels as the best manpower planning software for organizations seeking to streamline staffing and cut labor costs. Its unified platform, offering data visualization and AI-powered insights, empowers managers and executives to make informed decisions and improve overall efficiency, as seen in client successes like Altruist and Remy Cointreau.
6. OrgVue
Struggling with workforce planning and rising labor costs?
OrgVue helps you analyze and design your workforce by connecting your [people, financial, and business data]. This means you can create better business outcomes.
You can take control of workforce planning by exploring multiple scenarios and understanding their impact. This directly helps you reduce operational expenses.
Here’s how to gain control.
OrgVue empowers you to link your business strategy to your workforce and easily see where you’re overstaffed or understaffed. This helps you develop robust plans.
You can quickly identify areas for improvement and opportunity, ensuring optimal resource allocation. This leads to efficient staffing models.
This powerful software lets you model your workforce data, forecast future needs, and plan for various scenarios, giving you clarity on staffing levels across your entire organization and empowering you to make [data-driven decisions] that align with your strategic goals.
Achieve your optimal workforce.
Key features:
- Workforce modeling: Connects people, financial, and business data to analyze and design your workforce, ensuring better business outcomes and cost control.
- Scenario planning: Allows you to explore multiple workforce scenarios to understand their impact, helping you optimize staffing and reduce operational expenses.
- Strategic alignment: Links business strategy to workforce plans, identifying overstaffing or understaffing and supporting robust, data-driven decision-making.
Learn more about OrgVue features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: OrgVue is the best manpower planning software for HR directors and operations managers aiming to streamline staffing and cut labor costs. Its capabilities in workforce modeling, scenario planning, and strategic alignment empower you to make data-driven decisions, reduce operational expenses, and ensure optimal resource allocation.
7. Rippling
Struggling to align staffing with fluctuating demands?
Rippling’s robust Headcount Planning and Scheduling features address this by helping you align on headcount quickly and build smarter schedules.
This means you can efficiently manage your workforce, ensuring you always have the right people in the right place, significantly cutting labor costs.
What if you could automate complex HR tasks?
Rippling introduces its all-in-one platform to supercharge your workforce, enabling you to manage payroll, HR, IT, and spend in one centralized location.
The platform offers a Workflow Studio to trigger advanced workflows using any data, complemented by powerful Analytics to report on anything across your apps.
Additionally, Rippling provides HRIS for managing employee data, Time & Attendance to automate time tracking, and tools to enforce company policies automatically, ensuring compliance and operational efficiency. The result is increased savings and automated busywork, allowing your team to get more done.
If you’re also involved in large-scale event coordination, my guide on Best Festival Management Software might provide valuable insights.
Key features:
- Headcount Planning: Align on headcount quickly and prevent out-of-band compensation to ensure optimal staffing levels and cost control.
- Scheduling & Time Tracking: Build smarter schedules and automate time tracking, giving you precise control over labor costs and operational efficiency.
- Workflow Automation & Analytics: Trigger advanced workflows and report on anything across your apps, turning data into actionable insights for strategic planning.
Learn more about Rippling features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Rippling stands out as a strong contender for best manpower planning software, particularly for mid-sized to large enterprises. Its comprehensive HCM, Payroll, IT, and Spend suites, unified in one platform, deliver scalable automation and granular control over workforce management. This helps you reduce labor costs and maintain operational efficiency.
8. HiBob
Struggling with workforce forecasting and efficiency?
HiBob provides comprehensive workforce planning features, including position planning and change management.
This means you can align your staffing resources with fluctuating business demands and ensure you’re always prepared.
Here’s how HiBob helps.
HiBob offers a unified platform to manage time, talent, performance, and culture, streamlining your HR processes.
It covers onboarding, time and attendance, compensation, and hiring, allowing you to automate manual tasks and reduce administrative time. This holistic approach helps you maintain operational efficiency and control labor costs.
Additionally, HiBob’s advanced People Analytics gives you the data to track important KPIs and prove HR’s impact on business goals, leading to stronger insights and better decision-making for your organization. This empowers you to adapt to ever-changing needs.
Manage time, talent, and culture effectively.
Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of best prototyping software helpful for understanding product development workflows.
Key features:
- Workforce Planning: Supports position planning and change management, enabling you to proactively align staffing with your business needs and easily scale operations.
- People Analytics: Provides advanced data insights to track key HR metrics, allowing you to make data-driven decisions that impact business objectives and prove ROI.
- HR Automation: Automates core HR processes like onboarding, time off, and payroll, significantly reducing administrative burden and freeing up your team’s valuable time.
Learn more about HiBob features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: HiBob is an excellent choice as the best manpower planning software for mid-sized to large enterprises, offering robust workforce planning and people analytics capabilities. Its ability to automate processes and integrate with existing systems, as highlighted by a Director of Talent Acquisition doubling company size with Bob, proves its scalability and efficiency.
9. ClickUp
Are you struggling with fragmented workforce management?
ClickUp offers a single app to align, collaborate, and work, integrating tasks, chat, and docs. This means your team can save a day every week by boosting productivity and eliminating app-switching.
You can streamline operations, launch campaigns, and triage issues all in one place, which converges over 50+ different apps for unified control.
So, how can you fix it?
ClickUp provides an all-in-one workspace designed to do your most important work faster. This helps you overcome decision paralysis and achieve scalable automation.
It includes crucial features like Time Tracking, Gantt Charts, Dashboards, and Workload Tools, which allow you to align staffing resources with fluctuating business demands. Additionally, features like Custom Status, Priorities, and Time Estimates ensure meticulous control over individual and team capacities.
Plus, with Automations, AI-powered tools like AI Writer and AI Notetaker, and integrated Calendars, your team can accelerate content creation and maintain flawless operations. You can also integrate with existing HR systems, making data flow effortless. The result is reduced labor costs and maintained operational efficiency.
Key features:
- Time Tracking & Workload Tools: Effectively track effort, manage resources, and optimize staffing levels across your teams to align with business demands.
- Gantt Charts & Dashboards: Visualize project timelines, monitor progress, and gain actionable insights into workforce performance and resource allocation.
- Automations & AI: Streamline repetitive tasks, accelerate workflows, and leverage AI for smarter decision-making in manpower forecasting and planning.
Learn more about ClickUp features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: ClickUp’s comprehensive features like Time Tracking, Workload Tools, and AI capabilities make it a strong contender for the best manpower planning software. It empowers HR Directors and Operations Managers to automate forecasting, streamline scheduling, and maintain operational efficiency, helping to reduce project delays by over 70% as reported by some users.
Conclusion
Still struggling with workforce planning?
I know choosing the right tool feels overwhelming, especially for a large enterprise. Justifying the investment is tough when you can’t predict the return.
But the right platform makes a huge impact. Research shows organizations see an average of 7% on labor costs saved with these systems. That’s a significant return that directly justifies the software’s adoption.
So, what’s my top recommendation?
After evaluating all nine options, Anaplan truly stands out from the rest. It excels at breaking down silos to connect your workforce planning data.
I was especially impressed with its powerful AI-infused scenario modeling. This is why I consider it the best manpower planning software for aligning talent to demand.
For additional insights into powerful tools, my analysis of best image recognition software provides valuable perspectives for your projects.
I highly recommend you book a free demo of Anaplan to see how it can future-proof your company’s staffing strategy.
Your operational efficiency will skyrocket.
