Budgeting Software Journal

The finance team at SightLife, one of the premiere eye banks in the world, is expanding the use of Alight Planning to move across the Planning Maturity Curve and make the move to Agile Planning.

Working with surgeons in over 30 countries, SightLife restores sight to more than 20 men, women, and children each day. This is accomplished through eye banking, which is the recovery and placement of eye tissue used in cornea transplants. As a nonprofit organization, SightLife needed a planning system that could handle sophisticated driver-based modeling. Jeanette Wilcox, Director of Finance at SightLife, remarked, “Donors and tissue have a shelf life measured in days, so we have to capture timing assumptions. The key driver for us begins with the number of donors, but then we adjust the volume via a transplant rate as not all corneas are transplantable. Then we have to break the model into four different areas to analyze a percentage of transplantable corneas that are shipped to a surgeon while breaking out the shipments into domestic and International since each has unique pricing models. We had already looked at several other budgeting software solutions that just didn’t seem to have the unit-rate-amount structure we needed to model out the revenue model which is highly driver-based. Alight took the time to really understand our planning objectives and confirm success even before we made the purchase.” [Read more →]

Centage Corporation announced a new product in the Maestro line of financial software: Analytics Maestro. Analytics Maestro extends the current Planning Maestro and Budget Maestro reporting capabilities by bringing the power and flexibility of enterprise-class OLAP (online analytical processing) multi-dimensional reporting to the smaller organization.  “Organizations with smaller finance teams – sometimes even a finance team of one – are often faced with a trade-off: power and features or affordability,” said Kamran Sassoon, President and CEO of Centage. “Analytics Maestro takes the technology used by the largest and most sophisticated finance teams and makes it easy to use and own by companies with less resources but just as vital a need of accurate and timely financial information.” [Read more →]

Adaptive Planning announced its Spring 2011 Release, a major product release that supports complex, multi-organization planning and reporting requirements, increases options for integrating with other cloud-based systems, enables “white label” distribution by channel partners, and delivers numerous enhancements designed for both end-users and administrators.  The new release takes full advantage of the revolutionary software as a service (SaaS) model to introduce breakthrough new capabilities for transforming complex, multi-division planning, reporting and analysis in organizations ranging from midsized companies and nonprofits to the largest corporate enterprises. [Read more →]

The finance team at Audio Research, one of the oldest continually operating manufacturers in American audio, is expanding the use of Alight Planning to the Alight Enterprise edition. Audio Research is one of the oldest continually operating manufacturers in American audio. The company was founded in 1970 with one goal in mind: to advance the state-of-the-art in music reproduction. Today, Audio Research remains a performance-oriented company by philosophy and design. While the company has grown steadily over the last quarter-century, the company recently began evaluating opportunities for strategic growth initiatives. In 2008, David Onan was selected to head up finance as Chief Financial Officer. [Read more →]

Alight LLC announced a strategic partnership to deliver an integrated budgeting, reporting, and planning solution customized for banks. As a thought-leader in driver-based planning across many industries, Don Koenes, Alight VP Services, developed the original best-practice planning model in Alight after working directly with banks to understand their planning challenges. [Read more →]

Alight LLC, developers of Alight Planning financial planning and reporting software, today announced that Rand Heer, Alight CEO and founder and architect of the original Pillar software, is introducing a new training session entitled: The Planning Maturity Curve: Where Are You? Where Do You Want to Be? Alight is set to present at The American Strategic Management Institute (ASMI) Trainings in six major cities in 2011 including San Diego, Orlando, Dallas, San Jose, Atlanta, and Boston.

Alight’s presentation analyzes the five levels of planning maturity—no planning, seat of the pants, budgeting, forecasting and Agile Planning—based on an adaptation of the Capability Maturity Model first developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Not surprisingly, the goals, processes and requirements for each type of planning vary substantially including effectiveness in resource management and impact on decision making. [Read more →]

Alight LLC, developers of the industry-leading Alight Planning financial planning and reporting software, announced that 2010 was the strongest year in the company’s history. The company posted record revenues, significantly growing its customer base. Alight also released Alight Planning Version 6, a major product release, and received numerous industry awards.

In 2010, Alight’s Enterprise software sales grew over 40% compared to 2009. In cases where customer objectives included forecasting in addition to budgeting, Alight’s win rate was 75%, helping Alight increase its customer base to over 200 clients. New Alight Planning customers range from small companies to Fortune 1000 organizations representing virtually all industries. Notable new customers in 2010 included British Telecommunications, Indiana Wesleyan University, University of California Education Abroad Program, and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. [Read more →]

PROPHIX Software will host its annual User Conference in Boston, Massachusetts at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf from Sunday, May 15th to Thursday, May 19th. The 2011 PROPHIX annual User Conference is a collaborative forum that is committed to customers, combining inspiring keynote presentations, workshop sessions that highlight tools such as outlining how to rethink traditional costing allocation methods, educational training sessions, empowered user experiences, and valuable networking opportunities that allow attendees to discover how other organizations are using PROPHIX and particularly how they are extending their use beyond budgeting and reporting. [Read more →]

Adaptive Planning announced that 2010 was the strongest year in the company’s history. Adaptive Planning posted record bookings and revenue, significantly grew its customer base, successfully broadened and deepened distribution partnerships, introduced new product releases, and garnered substantial industry recognition. In 2010, Adaptive Planning grew bookings and revenue by over 50 percent, while increasing its overall customer base to over 900 clients. [Read more →]

Alight Planning customer Pittsburgh Mercy Health Systems received the top Ventana Research 2010 Leadership Award for Business Analytics and Performance Management. The award recognizes Pittsburgh Mercy, which operates mental health care facilities across Southwestern Pennsylvania, for its accomplishments in moving from spreadsheets to a dedicated planning and reporting application for two hundred and fifty revenue and cost centers. [Read more →]