“The survey asked customers to rate their vendor in twelve areas including, amongst others, product functionality and quality, ease of use, support, training and customer communications,” said Rand Heer, Alight’s CEO. “I’m pleased to report that Alight ranked either #1 or #2 in ten of the areas measured. This substantiates the tremendous progress we’ve made in developing the Alight Planning software package and responding to our customers’ true requirements.”

In the 2008 Vendor Landscape Matrix, BPM Partners honored Alight as “Best New Vendor of 2008” citing Alight’s unique driver-based planning architecture and deep-seated modeling capabilities. In the 2009 Vendor Landscape Matrix, Alight was rated #2 overall in customer satisfaction. “Alight is a notable player in the BPM space, especially with their focus on rolling forecasts and scenario analysis which are so critical in today’s economic climate.” said Craig Schiff, CEO of BPM Partners. “From more than one hundred performance management vendors we track on a regular basis, we’ve chosen to include Alight on the US Vendor Landscape Matrix which identifies companies successfully delivering BPM Solutions in the US.”

“I participated in the BPM Partners survey and gave Alight high ratings because they’ve earned them,” said Gary Kinman, Vice-President, Finance of SoftLayer Technologies, an Alight customer. “I’m especially impressed by Alight’s attention to after sale customer matters such as product documentation, support, and implementation. In terms of functionality of the Alight software, the proof is in the performance. I can now do analyses in a couple of hours that would literally take days with my former budgeting software package.”

For information about the Vendor Landscape Matrix published by BPM Partners, see research details. For more information about Alight Planning including product demos and trial software, go to the Alight Planning website.

“Reflecting the continuation of difficult economic times, recent surveys by analyst firms confirm that a top priority of best-of-class firms is to implement processes for re-forecasting, especially incorporating ‘what if’ scenarios and business drivers,” observes Heer.

“Budgeting software is designed to save time and reduce errors, which are worthy goals, but the action and excitement right now is in the forecasting and planning space,” says Lamorte. “Building off a successful IE Group event in San Diego, Alight is pleased to be a global sponsor for the Boston event.”

Heer and Lamorte will employ their experience with customers along with current forecasting theory and best practices to highlight three critical requirements for continuous planning and rolling forecasts:

• Scenario analysis for establishing “what if” scenarios and exploring alternative decisions or actions in real time to understand possible outcomes.
• Driver-based planning where financial forecasts are driven by operational assumptions about the business and analyzed as metrics rather than simple dollar amounts.
• Integrated actuals where imported actuals data are modeled to provide visibility into operational metrics and financial trends for forecasting purposes.

To request a free pass for the workshop (limited availability) or to learn more about Alight Enterprise 6, please contact Ben Lamorte, BLamorte@AlightPlanning.com, or visit www.alightplanning.com.

For more information about the I.E. Group’s conference series including the upcoming Financial Planning Summit in Boston, visit www.theiegroup.com

“Reflecting the continuation of difficult economic times, recent surveys by analyst firms confirm that a top priority of best-of-class firms is to implement processes for re-forecasting, especially incorporating “what if” scenarios and business drivers,” Heer said. “In the session, we will examine the critical processes involved in generating rolling forecasts, including scenario analysis and driver-based planning, and how better forecasting can improve decision making and profitability.”

This will be Alight’s first presentation at an AICPA Workshop and the Controllers Workshop looks to be an excellent venue. “Budgeting software is designed to save time and reduce errors, but the action and excitement right now is in the forecasting and planning piece,” Lamorte said. “This presentation will be a highly educational session focusing on core processes involved in generating rolling forecasts, including:

• Scenario analysis for establishing “what if” scenarios and exploring alternative decisions or actions in real time to understand possible outcomes.
• Driver-based planning where financial forecasts are driven by operational assumptions about the business.
• Integrated actuals where imported actuals data are modeled to provide visibility into operational and financial trends for forecasting purposes.

For a live demo of Alight Enterprise 6, or for more information about Alight’s budgeting, reporting, and forecasting solutions, visit www.alightplanning.com.

For more information about the AICPA including the upcoming Controllers Workshop West, visit AICPA Controllers Workshop West.

“Budgeting software is designed to save time and reduce errors, but the action and excitement right now is in the forecasting and planning piece,” Lamorte said. “This presentation will be a highly educational session focusing on core processes involved in generating rolling forecasts, including scenario analysis and driver-based planning. Most importantly, we will distinguish between budgeting and forecasting and how better forecasting can improve decision making and profitability.”

“Building off a very successful ASMI event in San Diego, we are pleased to be the lead sponsor for the Boston event”, says Lamorte, who has previously co-presented at an ASMI event with Larry Van Kuran of Kaiser Permanente on the topic of driver-based planning. Lamorte will employ his experience with customers and prospects along with current forecasting theory and best practices, to highlight two critical requirements for effective rolling forecasts:

• Scenario analysis for establishing “what if” scenarios and exploring alternative decisions or actions in real time to understand possible outcomes.
• Driver-based planning where financial forecasts are driven by operational assumptions about the business.

For a live demo of Alight Enterprise, or for more information about Alight’s budgeting, reporting and forecasting solutions, visit www.alightplanning.com.

For more information about the ASMI conference visit www.ASMIweb.com/Forecast or contact Paul Rogers at (858) 737-4122.

In announcing the release, Rand Heer, Alight’s CEO, said: “The focus of this release is twofold: first, to enhance the planning administrator’s control over the end user’s experience by streamlining file check-out and check-in procedures and allowing customization of the user’s budgeting and forecasting interface; and second, by providing power users improved tools for developing and replicating large scale driver models which are the foundation of flexible rolling forecasts.”

Commenting on the release of Alight Enterprise 6, Michael Kerr, CFO of Wimba, a collaborative learning solutions and services company, said: “I’ve tracked Alight Planning through two companies and three major releases. There’s no question the Alight team knows what’s it’s doing in the planning space. Version 6 with custom end user interfaces and auto-replication is another big step forward in the continuing evolution of a great product.”

Focus on End Users

The Alight Enterprise 6 release further enhances the tools available to plan administrators for customizing the end user experience and workflow processes. The toolkit now includes:

• Customization of report interfaces allowing user control over show/hide functionality for unit/rate/amount activity driver columns, intelligent operator columns and other analytics.
• Customization of report interfaces for manipulation of dimension filters and showing/hiding of
  dimension tags.
• Setting user security at the dimension member level as well as traditional rollup structures such
  as product and department.
• Specifying the level of interaction each user can have with data sets—for example: read only,
  change values, add line items, and create models.

“With the latest feature additions, we believe Alight Planning now has the most comprehensive set administrator tools for managing the overall end user environment for budgets and forecasting,” said Heer. “Alight Planning’s controls let the administrator manage every aspect of the planning process with a special focus on making the end user’s job of inputting and analyzing data easy and training free.”

Focus on Modeler Developers

Alight’s reputation as the most flexible and intuitive software for building driver-based models for budgets and rolling forecasts is further enhanced in the Alight Enterprise 6 release by improved formula building interfaces and automated model replication methodologies. The software’s feature set for building complex driver models includes:

• Built in unit/rate/amount architecture for integrating operational metrics into driver models.
• Point and click interfaces with object based linking for fast model building and maintenance.
• Auto-replication for exploding driver models across multiple dimensions and rollup structures.
• Automated system notes for tracking relationships between modeled elements.
• Key Measures interface for presenting sub-set driver models and testing input assumptions.

For a live demo of Alight Enterprise 6 or to order trial software, visit www.AlightPlanning.com.

“Applied Analytix is a very sharp group of consultants with extensive experience in performance management software ,” said Rand Heer, Alight’s CEO. “Their special focus on budgeting and planning, financial forecasting and advanced analytics makes them a valuable partner for us because these are the very strengths of the Alight Planning software package, especially for mid-market companies and divisions of the Fortune 500 who can’t afford or support higher-end packages.”

“The Alight solution leverages Rand’s deep experience and success with planning applications. Alight Planning provides companies with a solid platform that goes well beyond just the basic planning and budgeting capabilities,” said Dan Mannisto, CEO and founder of Applied Analytix. “Our decision to partner with Alight compliments Applied’s focus on mid-market firms that need advanced forecasting and modeling at an affordable price. We are very excited at the prospect of working with Rand and the Alight team.”

Alight LLC’s Alight Planning is a true driver-based financial planning and reporting software package that automates complex business modeling for more accurate strategic plans, revenue projections, budgets and rolling forecasts. Its unique architectures and easy-to-use interfaces provide finance staff the power they need to build complex driver-based planning models, while delivering traditional budgeting and planning structures such as line item detail, integrated financial statements and multiple-user security. Cost-effective and IT-independent, Alight Planning is affordable and easily deployed by Fortune 1,000 business units, as well as midmarket companies with limited IT resources. Alight has over 175 customers including Kaiser Permanente, Down East Enterprises, Pittsburgh Mercy and the Swan and Dolphin Resort at Disney World. For more information about Alight Planning, visit www.AlightPlanning.com.

“Reflecting the continuation of difficult economic times, recent surveys by analyst firms confirm that a top priority of best-of-class firms is to implement processes for re-forecasting, especially incorporating “what if” scenarios and business drivers,” Heer said. “In the presentations, we will start by first providing an overview of budgeting systems which are generally designed to save time and reduce errors. We will then contrast budgeting systems to forecasting systems which are primarily aimed at helping finance managers communicate to management on action items that can improve profitability and cash flow. We will dive into the critical processes involved in generating rolling forecasts and going beyond traditional budgeting and planning processes which is really where the action lies right now.”

True to the Forum’s theme, “Leadership in Financial Management,” Alight’s presentations will examine planning application requirements to enable companies to stay ahead of the curve in the current economy. In this fast-paced presentation, Alight will employ customer case studies, along with current forecasting theory and best practices, to highlight three critical requirements for effective rolling forecasts, including:

• Scenario analysis for establishing “what if” scenarios and exploring alternative decisions or actions in real time to understand possible outcomes.
• Driver-based planning where financial forecasts are driven by operational assumptions about the business.
• Integrated actuals where imported actuals data are modeled to provide visibility into operational and financial trends for forecasting purposes.

For a live demo of Alight Enterprise 5, or for more information about Alight’s budgeting, reporting, and forecasting solutions, visit www.alightplanning.com.

For more information about the conference, contact Josh Powell at 510-984-3629 or visit
Financial Intelligence Forum 2010.

“Budgeting software is designed to save time and reduce errors, but the action and excitement right now is in the forecasting and planning piece,” Lamorte said. “This presentation will be a highly educational session focusing on core processes involved in generating rolling forecasts, including scenario analysis and driver-based planning. Most importantly, we will distinguish between budgeting and forecasting and how better forecasting can improve decision making and profitability.”

“We are pleased to be lead sponsor at the ASMI conference”, says Lamorte, who previously co-presented at the ASMI event with Larry Van Kuran, of Kaiser Permanente on the topic of driver-based planning. Lamorte will employ customer case studies, along with current forecasting theory and best practices, to highlight two critical requirements for effective rolling forecasts:

• Scenario analysis for establishing “what if” scenarios and exploring alternative decisions or actions in real time to understand possible outcomes.
• Driver-based planning where financial forecasts are driven by operational assumptions about the business.

For a live demo of Alight Enterprise, or for more information about Alight’s budgeting, reporting and forecasting solutions, visit www.alightplanning.com.

For more information about the ASMI conference visit www.ASMIweb.com/Forecast or contact Paul Rogers at (858) 737-4122.

“Reflecting the continuation of difficult economic times, recent surveys by analyst firms confirm that a top priority of best-of-class firms is to implement processes for re-forecasting, especially incorporating “what if” scenarios and business drivers,” Heer said. “In the workshop, we will examine the critical processes involved in generating rolling forecasts, including scenario analysis and driver-based planning, and how better forecasting can improve decision making and profitability.”

True to the FP&A Summit’s theme, “Successful Planning Through Strategic Finance Initiatives: Effective Decision Making In Financial Planning & Analysis,” Heer’s workshop will examine planning application requirements to enable companies to stay ahead of the curve in the current economy. In this fast-paced workshop, Heer will employ customer case studies, along with current forecasting theory and best practices, to highlight the three critical requirements for effective rolling forecasts, including:

• Scenario analysis for establishing “what if” scenarios and exploring alternative decisions or actions in real time to understand possible outcomes.
• Driver-based planning where financial forecasts are driven by operational assumptions about the business.
• Integrated actuals where imported actuals data are modeled to provide visibility into operational and financial trends for forecasting purposes.

For a live demo of Alight Enterprise 5, or for more information about Alight’s budgeting, reporting, and forecasting solutions, visit www.alightplanning.com.

For more information about the I.E. Group’s conference series including the upcoming Financial Planning Summit in San Diego, visit www.theiegroup.com

“Alight was especially strong in individual rankings for customer related processes.” said Rand Heer, Alight’s CEO. “We scored an average of 4.79 in the categories of sales process, training, technical support and consulting, reinforcing again our focus on the customer starting from the first sales call through the final implementation.”

“Alight is a notable player in the BPM space, especially with their focus on rolling forecasts and scenario analysis which are so critical in today’s economic climate.” said Craig Schiff, CEO of BPM Partners. “From more than one hundred performance management vendors we track on a regular basis, we’ve chosen to include Alight on the US Vendor Landscape Matrix which identifies companies successfully delivering BPM Solutions in the US.” In the 2008 Vendor Landscape Matrix published a year ago, BPM Partners honored Alight as “Best New Vendor of 2008” citing Alight’s unique driver-based planning architecture and deep-seated modeling capabilities.

Underscoring Alight’s focus on customer service, Ray Wolfe, CFO of Pittsburgh Mercy, said: “The Alight services group guided us through a very complex implementation involving profitability analysis by location. They helped me put in place a totally new culture for planning and analysis.” Pittsburgh Mercy is an Alight customer with sixty community mental health locations serving Southwestern Pennsylvania. Read the full story of Pittsburgh Mercy’s implementation of Alight.