Budgeting Software Journal

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 →]

Clarity Systems announced the launch of Clarity 6 Legal Edition 2.0, a newly enhanced budgeting, planning, and reporting software solution for professional services organizations. With new functionality and features, Clarity 6 Legal Edition 2.0 has sophisticated capabilities that extend beyond budgeting to include financial variance reporting and analysis. Variance analysis of data such as billings, expenses, compensation and hours at the timekeeper level are now easily accessed and compared in real time. This offers professionals the flexibility to conduct variance analysis and reporting across multiple scenarios or over periods of time. Clarity 6 Legal Edition 2.0 also allows users to drill down from a report to a single transaction and view invoice/expense details or attach user commentary to a specific field. [Read more →]

Clarity Systems and EDGARfilings announced a partnership to offer a seamlessly integrated financial reporting solution. This partnership is an exciting opportunity for public companies as they can now create SEC reports using Clarity Financial Statement Reporting (FSR) and electronically file these reports with the SEC using EDGARizer software. Clarity FSR, a software solution launched by Clarity Systems earlier this year, produces external financial documents, such as the 10K and 10Q, and other regulatory reports. EDGARizer software converts and transmits properly formatted and compliant documents to the SEC within tight filing deadlines while saving customers’ time, money and personnel resources. [Read more →]

Adaptive Planning announced that SourceForge has implemented its software to automate their financial planning and reporting. A leading online portal for the IT professional, software development, and open source communities, SourceForge has deployed Adaptive Planning and integrated it with their Oracle Financials system in order to accelerate their budgeting and forecasting processes and simplify reporting on both actual and plan information.

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. [Read more →]

PROPHIX Software announced the release of PROPHIX Express. PROPHIX Express is a complete financial performance management package with powerful budgeting and planning capabilities, specifically designed for organizations looking to implement a robust solution in as little as three business days without sacrificing flexibility.

PROPHIX Express complements PROPHIX Software’s existing suite of financial performance management solutions, including PROPHIX for SQL Serverâ„¢ 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. [Read more →]

Alight Planning announced today the industry’s most robust driver-based financial planning and analysis software with a multitude of innovative features including a units, rates and amounts architecture, automated sensitivity analysis, goal seek operations and intuitive modeling with object-based linking. Aimed at mid-sized businesses through Fortune 1,000 divisions, Alight Planning automates complex business planning so users can move beyond the limitations of Microsoft Excel for more accurate strategic plans, revenue projections, budgets and rolling forecasts.

“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.”

LUKOIL completed introduction of a global planning system based on SAP software solutions, including planning and budgeting modules on all planning horizons, as well as tools for assessment and coordination of investment projects and creation of the LUKOIL Group’s Investment Program.

The planning system encompasses over 70 LUKOIL Group’s Russian and foreign plants operating on four continents.

The elaborated system allows 2,000 employees from the Company’s subsidiaries and the Corporate Center to share a single information space on planning and budgeting using unified samples and algorithms, to assess investment projects feasibility in accordance with the corporate standards and with application of a unified methodology. [Read more →]

Centage Corporation has introduced the first complete BPM solution with Dashboards, specifically for the SMB market, that is affordable, easy to use, and compatible with virtually any existing Business Intelligence (BI) tool. The Budget Maestro Dashboard Kit gives Budget Maestro(R) users instant access to financial and operational key performance indicators (KPIs) on their desktops. Budget Maestro is the leading Business Performance Management (BPM) solution designed specifically to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) manage their budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting data.

“The popularity of dashboards is due to their ability to give CFOs and financial managers — not to mention CEOs — accurate and instant insight into the state of the business, which allows them to react faster to brewing issues. With this new dashboard capability, Budget Maestro now provides a complete Business Performance Management solution, allowing even the smallest companies to take advantage of this management trend,” said Centage Vice President of Sales and Marketing Jim Nauen. [Read more →]

More than 40 healthcare providers implemented applications from Lawson Software (Nasdaq: LWSN) in the company’s fiscal year 2007, which ended May 31. The Lawson applications are designed to help these customers simplify the business of healthcare via more accurate budgeting, enhanced reporting, and automated workforce management, supply chain and financial processes.

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. [Read more →]

Unitrin Direct has selected Adaptive Planning on-demand software to optimize their budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes. A leading direct auto insurance provider, Unitrin Direct is using Adaptive Planning to streamline its financial planning, resulting in lower operating costs, enhanced collaboration, and improved decision making.

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. [Read more →]