Scenario planning tool for utilization forecasting

If your specific question is “If we land three large deals next month, what happens to utilization, staffing, and delivery capacity?”, I’d narrow the field to Mosaic vs. Anaplan, with Mosaic as my first choice for a services/project-based organization.

My pick: Mosaic

Mosaic is purpose-built around resource planning, utilization, capacity, and project workload. It can incorporate schedules, demand, budgets, and pipeline data to forecast workload and show whether you’ll be overbooked or underutilized.www.mosaicapp.com

For your scenario, I'd want to model:

Baseline: current booked work + current team
Scenario: + Deal A + Deal B + Deal C starting next month
Outputs: utilization by person/role/team, capacity shortfall, bench, hiring needs, and when the bottleneck occurs.

Mosaic specifically supports looking at pipeline and future workload against capacity and identifying when additional resources are needed and which roles need them.www.mosaicapp.com

When I'd choose Anaplan instead

Anaplan is the more powerful choice if this isn't just a utilization exercise and you want a company-wide planning model connecting sales, workforce, finance, costs, and operational capacity.

Its Project Resource Planning application explicitly combines project demand, resource capacity, skills, availability, and costs, and supports real-time “what-if” scenarios.www.anaplan.com

The tradeoff is that Anaplan is an enterprise planning platform, so it's generally a heavier implementation than a focused resource-capacity product.

Bottom line: If you mainly need to answer “Can we actually deliver these three deals with our current people, and what happens to utilization if we win them?”, I'd start with Mosaic. If you need a broader corporate planning system that ties those deals all the way into revenue, costs, headcount, and financial planning, I'd evaluate Anaplan.

If you tell me (1) your approximate team size, (2) whether you're a consulting/professional-services/software/services business, and (3) what you currently use for project/time tracking, I can narrow this to the best 3 tools and show exactly how I'd model the three-deal scenario in each.

For your use case, I’d recommend a resource capacity planning tool with what-if scenario modeling, rather than a standard project management dashboard. You want to understand what happens to team utilization if three major deals close, before you commit to delivery dates, staffing plans, or new hires.

The key is to model each deal as potential work first, then compare your current baseline against the combined impact of all three deals.

My top recommendations

1. Smartsheet

(Best for comparing scenarios)

Best if leadership needs to compare multiple deal outcomes side by side without changing the live operating plan.

• Model different project timelines and resource allocations.
• Compare scenarios before committing to them.
• Review workload and capacity across projects.

Smartsheet explicitly offers what-if scenario planning on its Enterprise plan.www.smartsheet.com

Explore Smartsheet resource planning

2. Kantata

(Best for services organizations)

Best if your deals involve client delivery, billable consultants, or specialized skills across multiple projects.

• Forecast demand against available capacity.
• Plan staffing for prospective, unsigned work.
• Assess internal versus external staffing and utilization implications.

Its staffing optimizer is specifically designed to evaluate staffing scenarios across projects.www.kantata.com+1

Explore Kantata forecasting

3. Runn

A strong candidate if you want forward-looking utilization forecasts and a visual view of resource demand, without starting with a larger enterprise platform.

Evaluate how well its scenario workflow handles your specific deal pipeline, role-level demand, and utilization reporting.

Explore Runn

4. Float

Worth considering if you mainly need straightforward scheduling, availability, and utilization visibility. I'd validate its scenario comparison workflow before choosing it for a deal-driven planning exercise.sourceforge.net+1

Explore Float

How I would model your three deals

Whichever tool you choose, I would build these four scenarios:

For each scenario, track:

• Utilization % by person, role, and team.
• Capacity gap — available hours versus required hours.
• Peak overload — who exceeds your target and when.
• Hiring or contractor needs — additional capacity required by role.
• Revenue and margin impact — particularly if delivery resources are billable.

A useful starting formula is:

\text{Utilization}=
\frac{\text{Allocated work hours}}{\text{Available work hours}}\times100

For example, if a team has 800 available hours per week and the three deals add 240 hours of weekly demand, utilization increases by 30 percentage points, assuming that capacity was previously fully unallocated. If some capacity is already committed, the actual result depends on the existing workload.

My recommendation

• Choose Smartsheet if you need accessible, side-by-side scenario comparisons for leadership.
• Choose Kantata if your business runs on client projects, billable utilization, and resource-level staffing decisions.
• Shortlist Runn if you want a more focused capacity forecasting workflow.

Before buying, test whether each product can represent unsigned deals, assign demand by role and start date, and compare the resulting utilization without overwriting your baseline.

One question that would help me narrow this down: What kind of team are you planning for — a professional services/consulting team, a software/product team, or another type of organization? That will make a significant difference to which tool I’d choose.