Budgeting Software Journal

Alight LLC, developers of the industry-leading Alight Planning financial planning and reporting software, today announced that Rand Heer, Alight CEO and founder and architect of the original Pillar software, will present a pre-conference workshop to address the challenges and application solutions for implementing rolling forecasts at 1:00 pm, Wednesday February 24th as part of the Financial Forecasting & Planning Summit set for February 24-26 at the Doubletree Mission Valley in San Diego. [Read more →]

Alight LLC was ranked #2 in overall customer satisfaction in the Vendor Landscape Matrix for Business Performance Management recently published by BPM Partners, a leading independent authority on business performance management (BPM) solutions. Scoring 4.71 on a 5.00 scale, Alight outranked all but one of the traditional competitors in the performance management and business intelligence market including many well known mid-sized and enterprise software vendors. A detailed list of the vendors rated is available in the research report. [Read more →]

New Horizon Technologies announced the release of PlanGuru Version 11. PlanGuru is a flexible, sophisticated and easy to use budgeting, forecasting and planning software for small and medium sized businesses. Users can build a seamlessly integrated balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flow without creating a single formula. A wide range of business analytic tools will help you extract valuable information to enable more informed business decisions. PlanGuru is designed for the budgeting, forecasting and planning needs of both business owners and professional accounting firms providing advisory services. [Read more →]

Alight LLC announced the immediate availability of Alight Enterprise 5 featuring the industry’s most flexible continuous planning solution that enables companies to develop dynamic rolling forecasts to maintain competitiveness in the face of economic turmoil. With robust scenario analysis, full actuals integration, and multi-user collaboration, Alight Enterprise 5 provides unprecedented visibility and granularity in a driver-based modeling solution for a full spectrum of planning activities including budgets, forecasts, long-range plans, and project plans. [Read more →]

Alight LLC announced that Rand Heer, Alight CEO and founder and architect of the original Pillar software, will present a pre-conference workshop to address the challenges and application solutions for implementing rolling forecasts at 9:00 am, Wednesday May 13th as part of the 8th Annual Beyond Budgeting Round Table Conference set for May 13-15 at the Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. [Read more →]

PROPHIX Software is set to release an updated version of its SQL Server based solution, which offers integration with SharePoint customers by leveraging Microsoft Reporting Services and its unique Smart Client interface. SharePoint access is available directly within the PROPHIX user interface – giving PROPHIX users the ability to fully access all SharePoint applications including Microsoft’s Business Intelligence offerings. In addition, PROPHIX’s Offline Excel capabilities and its Advanced Data Visualization components provide yet another alternative to collaborate with users within SharePoint as opposed to PROPHIX’s user interface. [Read more →]

Adaptive Planning announced the release of Adaptive Planning Version 5.5. The latest release of the budgeting, forecasting, and reporting software delivers powerful new collaboration and analysis features, increases openness to other applications, and broadens accessibility to additional users throughout the world. With this release, Adaptive Planning continues to set the standard as the most powerful, easy to use, and collaborative planning and reporting solution for companies of all sizes.

Adaptive Planning Version 5.5 further extends the solution’s leading collaboration capabilities through the addition of two features – Cell Notes and Audit Trail – that allow end users to access key information about their financial model and the underlying planning process. The release delivers increased openness, enhancing data integration with the availability of new connectors, a secure web services API, and new mapping capabilities. And it broadens accessibility by supporting local languages as well as the Firefox browser. [Read more →]

Alight LLC, maker of Alight Planning software, today announced the immediate availability of Alight Planning Version 4.5 featuring expanded support for importing and integrating actuals. Version 4.5’s new features for combining actuals data into plan files further enhance its groundbreaking driver-based planning architecture, giving finance staff the ability to automatically perform variance and causal analysis between actuals and plan, spread actuals data into rolling forecasts, and model actuals data using Alight’s unique units/rate/amount architecture. [Read more →]

Alight LLC, maker of Alight Planning financial planning and analysis software, today announced that BPM Partners, the leading independent authority on business performance management (BPM) solutions, has named Alight as its “Best New Vendor of 2008” in its annual “Beyond the Hype 2008” Webcast. In awarding the honor, BPM Partners cited the unique driverbased planning architecture of Alight Planning, as well as the product’s deep-seated modeling capabilities.

An Excel replacement, Alight Planning has already gained a solid user base for its driver-based planning approach which employs a unit-rate-amount architecture and object-based linking for line items which are the building blocks for financial plans. The result is better insight into the underlying activity drivers of a business, giving planners a better handle on forward-looking plans and backward-looking analysis of actuals.

“Alight Planning is very focused on what its name implies—budgeting and planning,” said Craig Schiff, CEO of BPM Partners, as part of the company’s annual Beyond the Hype 2008: Unbiased Vendor Review presentation. Schiff also noted that Alight Planning has “a very deep set of functionality that enables collaborative budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting, targeted at midsized and larger companies. In addition, Alight Planning automates sensitivity analysis and goal seek—both essential operations for analyzing complex financial data.”

BPM Partners’ annual “Beyond the Hype” report is the product of a yearly survey of BPM customers, vendors and trends conducted by the firm. Results were presented via a Webcast cosponsored by Business Finance magazine on January 15, 2008.

“BPM Partners is well-known by Business Performance Software users as well as throughout the BPM software industry. Its opinions carry tremendous weight, which makes this honor hugely gratifying,” said Rand Heer, president of Alight LLC. “The strong reception we’ve received to Alight Planning from customers, as well as from industry experts like BPM Partners, gives us terrific momentum as we move into 2008.”

In addition to its positive view of Alight Planning’s strategic approach, as well as the extensive experience of individuals behind the product’s creation, BPM Partners lauded the software’s sophisticated approach to budgeting.

“….it isn’t often you see someone new jump into the budgeting software category, which requires extensive domain expertise,” Schiff said. “Usually we see new vendors focusing on dashboards, databases, visualization and the like, but to focus on something as deep as budgeting and forecasting is fairly rare. It is interesting to note that modeling is built throughout the entire product. It’s not an afterthought; it’s the whole structure of the product.”

PROPHIX Software launched their most powerful performance management solution to date. PROPHIX for SQL Server is an integrated performance management application that empowers organizations with budgeting, planning, forecasting, reporting, consolidations, and personnel planning capabilities. By enabling organizations to create measurable targets against their business strategies, PROPHIX for SQL Server ensures corporate objectives are met or exceeded. [Read more →]