“Today’s challenging economy requires an agile solution for more immediate and responsive planning than the annual budgeting process with spreadsheets has traditionally afforded,” said Rand Heer, CEO and founder of Alight. “Being able to quickly roll over budgets and forecasts to new forecast versions gives companies the edge they need to keep abreast of competitive challenges and changing economic conditions.”

Alight Enterprise 5 goes beyond traditional budgeting and reporting to provide a fully integrated, dynamic and event-driven continuous planning solution that enables real-time forecasting, consensus and collaboration. With easy to update forecasts and plans, companies can make more insightful and educated decisions faster to capitalize on opportunities or mitigate risks. Robust Scenario Analysis for Dynamic “What If” Forecasting Unlike traditional budgeting software that focuses on version control, Alight Enterprise 5 permits true “what if” scenario analysis. The full scenario analysis toolkit in Alight Enterprise 5 includes:

• The ability to create multiple scenarios in real time by copying any existing scenario;
• Side-by-side comparisons of scenarios with variance columns for underlying units and rates, as well as financial amounts;
• Side-by-side comparisons of scenarios that identify underlying volume and rate financial impacts;
• Maintenance of structures, such as adding line items, across scenarios in a single operation;
• Updating input assumptions across multiple scenarios in a single operation;
• Incorporating go/no go decisions and event timing into scenarios using triggers;
• Sensitivity analysis to identify the most important and actionable assumptions in a plan; and
• Goal seek operations to analyze the financial impact of achieving defined milestones.

“Virtually everyone is wanting to do rolling forecasts, whether they have systems in place or not. Underlying this demand is confirmation that last year’s budgets are useless now and businesses need dynamic forecasting to keep up with rapid changes in the economy and in their own organization,” Heer said. “If you can’t predict the future – and none of us are doing a very good job of that – then thinking through alternative scenarios becomes critical. Alight Enterprise 5 incorporates the most robust feature set of any planning package for doing such ‘what if’ scenario analysis.”

In addition, Alight Enterprise 5 allows for unprecedented collaboration, transforming the planning tool into a powerful presentation tool for real-time Q&A and scenario planning in board rooms and among senior managers during operations reviews. “With user-friendly dashboards that allow changing input assumptions on-the-fly, Alight puts all the relevant data right at your fingertips,” Heer said. “CFOs and planning managers are in a much better position to answer questions on the spot instead of saying ‘I’ll get back to you on that.’ With Alight’s scenario analysis, you’ll make better decisions faster.”

“With Alight, we are able to perform true forecasting,” said Judith Van Norman, Chief Financial Officer of Down East Enterprise, a multi-media publishing company for regional lifestyle and special interests. “We incorporate actuals trends into our projections and evaluate alternate scenarios in near real time. Most importantly, we have visibility into the numbers and analyses that let us change things before it is too late. You might say that we can see the future!”

“Alight’s well structured scenario tools and built in driver-based planning architectures make it a great tool for doing rolling forecasts,” said Steve Player, Director of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table for North America and co-founder of Beyond EPS Advisors. “Finance is transforming itself to respond to this volatile economy. It’s more important than ever for finance executives to think outside the box and make their organizations more adaptable to market conditions. Alight Enterprise 5 enables organizations to become more agile and adopt a more continuous planning process.”

Alight Enterprise 5 is sold as a perpetual license based on number of users. A fifteen-user system is priced at $25,000. Alight Desktop 5, a standalone single-user system is priced at $7,200. The Alight Support Package, which is included in the initial purchase price, includes technical support, product updates and access to the Alight KnowledgeBase. Alight Online Bootcamp Training for finance staff, planning managers and analysts is $1,000 for an unlimited number of users. Customers typically request 30 to 50 hours of modeling and implementation support from the Alight Services staff. The average implementation timeframe is two to six weeks.

For a live demo of Alight Enterprise 5, or for more information about Alight’s suite of full-spectrum planning solutions, visit www.AlightPlanning.com.

Alight LCC, named “Best New Vendor of 2008” by BPM Partners for its Alight Planning product, has raised the bar in financial planning software with the debut of Alight Planning 4.5. Using Microsoft Excel® as an upload/mapping tool, Alight Planning 4.5 can import actuals data at any level of detail, and from any operational or financial database, into plan files for true apples-to-apples comparisons of actuals and plan information. Its advanced features deliver unparalleled insights into business forecasts and strategies.

“Typically, integrating actuals and comparing to plan is a zoo,” said Rand Heer, president of Alight LLC. “Financial and operating results are spread across multiple databases and are difficult to normalize. Drivers are rarely visible, and if available, they’re not accessible for both actuals and plan on an apples-to-apples basis. Moreover, actuals data usually have levels of detail that don’t match up with the planning side. Alight Planning automatically resolves these issues, strengthening the planning process and generating results that stand up in the real world of board meetings and operating reviews.”

Variance Analysis

With Alight Planning 4.5, analysts can leverage the unit/rate/amount structure to instantly gain valuable insights into both financial and operational performance. By identifying the variance in units and rates between actual and plan data, for example, Alight Planning allows finance to understand unexpected changes in underlying headcount and operational factors such as production volumes that drive variable costs.

Alight Planning’s integrated actuals capabilities can also help mid-market companies perform causal analysis, one of the most powerful of variance analysis functions and a discipline common in Fortune 500 companies. With causal analysis, sometime called volume/rate analysis, finance can identify at the line item level how much of a dollar variance amount is due to a variance in the underlying unit volumes versus the underlying cost or price rate. Such analysis is invaluable for understanding the true operational drivers of a business that affect profitability and cash flow. No other planning product provides this capability out-of-box.

Rolling Forecasts

Alight Planning 4.5’s integrated actuals capability also facilitates rolling forecasts, which combine actuals and forecasts data for an updated view of the business. For example, planners can use any of seven different algorithms for “spreading” actuals data into plan time periods. As well, finance staff can create forecast line items that “look back” on actuals as an activity driver—for example, referencing actual open orders as a driver for forecast future sales, or referencing actual booked sales commissions to forecast future quarterly commission payments.

Performance Improved

In addition to its actuals integration capability, Alight Planning 4.5 also features a number of upgrades that make daily use faster and more convenient, from better calculation performance to an improved user interface. For a live demo of Alight Planning 4.5 that explains the features and strategic approach of the product, or for more information about Alight LLC, visit www.alightplanning.com.

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 for SQL Server is designed to engage the entire organization with a complete and integrated approach that both saves time and improves accuracy while enhancing data intelligence. The sophisticated Delta Analysis tools allow users to compare and contrast data for any time period at the click of a button,” notes Bally Boodram, Vice President of Marketing for PROPHIX Software. “By automating cumbersome, time-consuming manual tasks, such as importing and exporting data or distributing reports, PROPHIX for SQL Server helps companies organize, automate and analyze results to drive business performance.”

Leveraging Microsoft .NET technologies, PROPHIX for SQL Server supports hundreds of users and allows them to connect remotely over the Internet. PROPHIX for SQL Server also offers interoperability with other applications, such as Microsoft Reporting Services or other business intelligence applications.

“We’re very proud of the new features built into PROPHIX for SQL Server, adds Massimo Galati, Director of Product Management for PROPHIX Software. “The spreadsheet interface eliminates the learning curve by using Excel-like functionality without the problems typically associated with Excel. Tools such as Delta Analysis and InfoFlex have been developed that empower users to monitor, analyze and take action on their data more effectively and efficiently. PROPHIX for SQL Server is the culmination of over twenty years experience servicing finance and business decision makers throughout the world.”

PROPHIX for SQL Server, specifically designed for medium to large organizations and powered by Microsoft’s SQL Server, complements PROPHIX Software’s suite of financial performance management solutions, including PROPHIX Enterprise for small to medium-sized organizations and PROPHIX Express for smaller organizations. Further information on PROPHIX for SQL Server can be found at http://www.prophix.com/solutions/products/prophix_sql/.

Within a five year span that began in 2002, SourceForge has transformed itself from a hardware company to the global technology community’s hub for information exchange, goods for geeks, and open source software distribution and services. The company’s network of web sites serves more than 32 million unique visitors each month and includes SourceForge.net, Slashdot.org, ThinkGeek.com, Linux.com, and ITManagersJournal.

“SourceForge and our network of sites bring the global technology community together, but internally we found that certain financial processes were still very manual,” said Jeffrey Chalmers, corporate controller, SourceForge. “Since standardizing on Adaptive Planning, we’ve been able to streamline our budgeting and forecasting processes. By integrating Adaptive Planning with our general ledger system, Oracle Financials, we have made it easier for business users throughout the company to receive more accurate information on a more timely basis, and to better analyze both historical and forward-looking information.”

Prior to implementing Adaptive Planning, SourceForge’s financial planning system revolved around 17 interconnected Excel spreadsheets. The process of reporting to department heads involved another eight spreadsheets.

“Department heads had little say in the planning process because they lacked visibility into the information,” said Chalmers. “The situation came to a head when we were faced with presenting our annual plan to our board of directors. With our deadline fast approaching, we knew we needed a more efficient and reliable system.”

After implementing Adaptive Planning, the SourceForge team was able to create an annual plan, review it with senior management, and revise it in a brief two-day period. As a result of the application’s intuitive, spreadsheet-like interface and browser-based access, business unit owners and department heads from across the company were able to login and begin collaborating on the planning process.

Using Adaptive Planning, the company now revises its forecasts on a monthly basis, enabling key stakeholders to work with the most current actual and plan information in a single, easily-accessible online application.

“People who had never participated in the planning process are now creating their own budgets and managing monthly forecasts, which increases their financial accountability and gives department heads greater visibility for better decision-making,” added Chalmers.

SourceForge chose to deploy Adaptive Planning’s on-demand, software as a service option, allowing them to implement the solution quickly and easily, without placing any burden on IT resources. Another benefit of the on-demand model is that they receive automatic upgrades to new versions of the application, such as the recently-released Adaptive Planning 4.0.

SourceForge has integrated Adaptive Planning with their Oracle Financials system, enabling the company to more easily create reports and perform analyses that compare actuals to plan or forecast data. This integration will also help streamline month-end closing and SEC reporting.

“Automating our integration with Oracle eliminates manual uploading and report generation tasks during the month-end close process, when time is very valuable,” added Chalmers. “With Adaptive Planning’s latest 4.0 release, our department managers now have an extremely easy-to-use drag and drop reporting tool that incorporates actual data, allowing them to view their performance against plans and up-to-the-month forecasts.”

PROPHIX Express complements PROPHIX Software’s existing suite of financial performance management solutions, including PROPHIX for SQL Server™ and PROPHIX Enterprise. Providing budgeting, planning, analysis and reporting capabilities integrated in a single solution, PROPHIX Express also includes a pre-built dashboard and scorecards, financial reports and statements such as cash flow, balance sheet, headcount and profit and loss statements, as well as a personnel planning module and unique Delta Analysis tool, without forgoing ease of use.

“There’s a large segment of the market still relying on Excel for their budgeting and financial planning,” notes Bally Boodram, Director of Marketing for PROPHIX Software. “When it comes to financial performance management, Excel is insufficient, vulnerable to errors and significantly lacking. PROPHIX Express allows us to offer such businesses an affordable yet comprehensive solution quickly, enabling them to perform virtually any financial tasks in minimal time.”

Further information on PROPHIX Express, including a free demonstration, can be found at http://www.prophix.com/express.

“Financial staff spends too much time struggling with the limitations of spreadsheets and not enough time doing real planning and analysis,” said Rand Heer, president of Alight Planning. “Alight Planning gives finance and line manager’s insights into the cause-and-effect relationships of the drivers of the business. This empowers them with better information to more quickly and accurately react to the market.”

Alight Planning offers a complete set of collaborative budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting capabilities with a unique architecture created from the ground up. Alight Planning’s flexible modeling interfaces with object-based linking lets finance staff build more accurate and auditable driver-based financial plans than with today’s spreadsheets. Automated algorithms help finance staff and line managers analyze data with on-the-spot insights into the important factors driving business results. Alight Planning also allows for easy importing and modeling of actuals data from outside financial and operational databases. This enables planners to quickly identify trends and incorporate them into rolling forecasts for more enhanced real-time decision making.

“Driver-based planning is now widely accepted as a best practice for developing any type of plan with financial projections such as strategic plans, budgets and forecasts,” said Robert Kugel, senior vice president and research director at Ventana Research. “By more closely relating planning processes and performance analysis to underlying operations, line managers and the finance organization can gain significantly more actionable insights into the business, which result in better decisions and allocation of resources. Alight Planning’s robust planning capabilities distinguish it from the pack and will help companies cut costs, shorten decision cycles and increase their ability to adapt to changing conditions.”

Alight Planning’s innovative architectures provide a host of differentiating features
including:
• Intuitive modeling tools with object-based linking that cut modeling time by as much as 50 percent compared to spreadsheets or other planning software packages.
• Easy importing and modeling of actuals data from any database at any level of detail for constructing variance reports and rolling forecasts.
• Automated causal analysis that identifies underlying unit volume and rate impacts that cause variances in financial plans.
• System-generated audit trails for tracing of complex activity driver relationships.
• Automated tools, such as sensitivity analysis and goal seek, that let finance staff instantly identify the most important assumptions that drive financial performance.
• Up to 100 unique scenarios within a single plan file for tracking and manipulating budget versions, rolling forecasts and alternate strategies.

Alight Planning customers are building more complex driver-based financial plans in a fraction of the time it would take in spreadsheets.
“We needed a multi-user solution that could be tailored to our needs with quick and easy deployment – spreadsheets just weren’t working for us,” said Larry Van Kuran, senior consultant, Pharmacy Strategy and Operations for Kaiser Permanente. “We are now using Alight Planning software to plan and monitor a large capital investment. Not only did Alight Planning significantly reduce the amount of time to get a model up and
running, but we were able to do complex driver-based operations and scenario analyses that we simply couldn’t do in spreadsheets.”

Healthcare organizations completing Lawson deployments in the past year include Altoona Regional Health System, Baptist Health, Bassett Healthcare, Bethesda Lutheran Homes and Services, Inc., Carle Clinic, Carle Foundation Hospital, Catholic Health Initiatives, Catholic Healthcare West, Coffee Health Group, Gwinnett Hospital System, McLeod Health, Norton Healthcare, Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, Presbyterian Homes and Services, Providence Health & Services, Sherman Health, Sisters of Mercy Health System, Torrance Memorial Medical Center, UCLA Health System and University Medical Center at Princeton among others.

Elgin, Ill.-based Sherman Health, for example, went live on the Lawson S3 Human Capital Management, Enterprise Financial Management and Supply Chain Management Suites in October 2006. “Lawson is helping us reduce administrative costs and streamline regulatory compliance by supporting timely reporting and standardized business processes,” said Bill Kelty, director of Information Services, Sherman Health.

Bassett Healthcare, a Lawson customer since 1997, implemented the Lawson Budgeting & Planning 9 application last fall as a beta site. “Our long-term partnership with Lawson is based on Lawson’s ability to support our evolving technical and strategic business needs,” said Sue Andrews, senior director of Corporate Finance, for New York’s Bassett Healthcare. “We’re currently deploying additional Lawson applications to support automated report distribution, employee absence management and mobile supply chain management.”

Last July, a 20-year-old legacy mainframe system was replaced at Carle Clinic and Carle Foundation Hospital in central Illinois when the two separate organizations both implemented the Lawson S3 Human Capital Management and Enterprise Financial Management Suites. Today, more than 5,000 Carle employees use the software, which interfaces directly with Carle’s Kronos Time and Attendance system.

“We chose Lawson based on its proven business applications, extensive healthcare customer base and reputation for successful implementations,” said Rick Rinehart, interim vice president IT and CIO, Carle Clinic and Carle Foundation Hospital.

Lawson works with each customer to conduct a comprehensive business process assessment before implementation begins. This enables healthcare providers to standardize processes across their organization, create automated workflows and incorporate industry best practices into their implementation plans.

“Deep expertise gained during hundreds of healthcare implementations enables us to help customers speed system deployment so they can achieve their business objectives faster,” said Rob Jorgenson, senior vice president, Lawson Professional Services. “Our success in helping these providers streamline system rollout reinforces our deep industry knowledge and commitment to healthcare implementation excellence.”

Lawson serves more than 500 healthcare industry customers representing more than 4,500 facilities, including eight of the top 10 integrated delivery networks. The company also serves managed care systems, academic medical centers, hospitals, clinics, physician group practices, home healthcare, long-term care and other health services enterprises. Lawson solutions help healthcare organizations manage their business so they can focus on their patients, automate and streamline materials management for a better bottom line, and overcome the challenges of the labor shortage.

Offering auto insurance to customers in 25 states, Unitrin Direct is a rapidly-growing group of companies that sells directly to consumers through the Web and its call center. As its business continued to expand, Unitrin Direct found that it needed a comprehensive budgeting, forecasting, and reporting solution that could be quickly and easily deployed. The company’s spreadsheet-based processes took too long, lacked flexibility, and were challenging to maintain. Executives and managers needed a better foundation for managing a dynamic, collaborative planning process.

“Unitrin Direct is a customer-driven family of companies that is committed to providing outstanding auto coverage at a great value, so we’re constantly seeking ways to improve our operations, reduce costs and pass those savings along to the consumer,” said Bryan Rogers, Vice President of Finance, Unitrin Direct. “Adaptive Planning provides the tools for us to better understand our business, optimize our operations and improve our budgeting and planning processes.”

After evaluating a number of solutions, Unitrin Direct selected Adaptive Planning because the company’s on-demand service was affordable, easy to use, and could be deployed in weeks.

“Because we are focused on providing extraordinary value to policyholders, we are extremely disciplined in how we invest our resources, including personnel, time, and capital,” said Rogers. “Adaptive Planning’s subscription-based, on-demand service allowed us to get up and running quickly, without requiring purchases of new hardware or software, or any involvement from our IT personnel.”

Adaptive Planning provides businesses worldwide with an attractive new alternative to spreadsheets for managing their budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes. Designed for companies that have outgrown Excel, the solution combines the flexibility of spreadsheets with the structure and process of enterprise applications. Adaptive Planning delivers a single, integrated solution with capabilities for budgeting and forecasting, reporting and analysis, graphical dashboards, collaborative modeling, and administration. To meet a wide range of client needs, Adaptive Planning is offered in three editions, all of which are available both on-demand and on-premise.

Your business budget should not be something you fear or dread. It’s merely a set of guidelines for your saving and spending habits. Below, are some typical issues that arise with many established budgets, along with some solutions that will assist you in staying within your budgetary guidelines.

Learn from your experiences. You will be educated when trying to live within your budget. Cutting back on expenses, determining how long your paycheck will last and/or how much of a cash reserve is good to keep around are all situations that may take time to master. However, you will learn how to alter a budget over time, and what was ‘finding a needle in haystack’ will become a more unsurprising and functional practice.

Be ready to deal with the consequences of missing budget estimates. When utilizing a new budget, you will likely miss your estimates. The trick is to miss them intelligently and in ways in which you can correct.

For example, suppose you budgeted $300 a month for your local phone service but the bill is constantly more than $375. Alter your phone allotment up $75. On the contrary, if the bill is only costing you an average of $200, you can reduce your phone expense portion. When making these adjustments, try to keep things uniform by reallocating another area of your overall budget to make-up for the changes. Learn more about handling business debts.

Work flexibly. When developing a small-business budget, staying on track often comes down to the ability of being flexible. For example, if the amount of revenue you generate does not match what you anticipated, reduce your expenses to compensate. On the other hand, if you are earning more than you expected, it may be a good time to invest in anything that can make your business more profitable. You can generate a large amount of capital quick by applying for a small business loan and using the surplus earnings as payments for your financing premiums. We recommend checking out Choice Personal Loans, an online personal loan lender, offering a variety of loan products for all business sizes.

Keep a close eye on your cash flow. Cash flow problems are the number one reason why businesses fail! Therefore, one of the most important aspects of budgeting is making sure that your inflow more than compensates for your outflow. Scrutinize your income closely to make sure that you have more than enough funds to pay bills.

Be conservative. When developing your budget, it is smart to overemphasize your expenses and lowball your expected revenue. This approach will also work when determining if your cash flow is going to be enough. Its OK to want the best computer. However, its not OK to spend money that you do not earn. You can reduce the burden of your income by shopping for a cheap telephone service, inexpensive furniture, etc..

Foster a cash cushion. The doubt of budgeting – in terms of income and as expenses – is one of the largest threats to the survival and success of any small business. While cutting back expenses to the bare minimum is always a good idea, it’s also important to set aside income when it is ever possible. If doable, allocate a piece of every paycheck you get and put those funds away in a money market account. That money can come in very handy for unexpected expenses.

On the contrary, if you are in the beginning stages of developing a business, begin saving now! The money you set aside can eventually bail you out in ways you can barely imagine.

Review your budget every month. Examine your cash flow to make sure that your available funds are adequate to meet your responsibilities. If you’re following the advice above by adjusting your budget as your go, you should have some sort of emergency fund to satisfy monthly overruns. Utilize it when things are more expensive than expected and place money into the contingency fund if you come in under your anticipated numbers.

Think of your budget as a form of control, not restriction! Developing and abiding to a strong budget is one of the most efficient teachers of financial discipline there is. However, don’t hesitate to go over your budget if you truly need to! It’s often impossible to budget for a worthy last-minute trip to a trade show or seminar. Don’t refuse to spend when you really should!