Budgeting Software Journal

New Web-Based Application Makes it Easier Than Ever for Companies to Move Beyond Excel-Based Budgeting

Adaptive Planning announced the availability of Adaptive Planning Express Edition On-Demand, a free entry-level addition to its suite of budgeting, forecasting, and reporting solutions. Designed to revolutionize the BPM market, Express Edition On-Demand removes the obstacles that have previously prevented small and midsized companies from adopting enterprise-class performance management solutions. With the addition of this new product to its suite, Adaptive Planning has changed the rules of the game, redefining how easy it can be for mid-market companies to move beyond Excel-based budgeting and dramatically improve their business results.

For decades, managing budgeting, forecasting and reporting has simply been too hard for too many companies. Most businesses use manual spreadsheets, which takes too much time, creates too many errors, and results in poorly informed decision making. A subset of companies has moved beyond spreadsheets and adopted BPM or business intelligence (BI) alternatives for automating these financial processes. However, these enterprise solutions create a new set of difficulties—they are costly to acquire, time consuming to implement, and complex to use. Given the problems with BPM and BI applications, over 80% of companies have elected to endure the pain of spreadsheets.

Now, Adaptive Planning Express Edition On-Demand provides a breakthrough new alternative to both Excel spreadsheets and enterprise BPM and BI tools. Adaptive Planning Express Edition On-Demand is a powerful, enterprise-class solution that is available for free and that can be instantaneously accessed around the world with only a web browser. With no software to install, no fees, no restrictions on the duration of use, and access for up to 50 users per company, Adaptive Planning has finally removed the key barriers that have historically prevented small and midsized businesses from moving beyond spreadsheets to automated BPM and BI software. [Read more →]

Longview Solutions and DataSynapse announced that they have entered into an agreement to optimize the Longview Performance Management Platform for operation with DataSynapse GridServer® software. The application is now configured to automatically draw upon underutilized processing power that exists within the IT environment of most organizations. This enables end users in large organizations to quickly and easily handle the large volumes of financial data required to do daily, and even intra-day, P&L reporting on a global basis, a common requirement for a growing number of organizations, especially in the financial services sector.

Using DataSynapse GridServer technology, organizations can create a cost-effective High-Performance Computing (HPC) environment by tapping into the unused processing and storage capacity of existing servers across the enterprise. Applications that are virtualized can be split into functional components, such as individual calculations, modeling and simulations, that can all be processed in parallel across a distributed computing infrastructure, significantly reducing the overall processing time. [Read more →]

Adaptive Planning announced that it achieved record growth in new customers and partners in 2006. This growth complements key corporate milestones for Adaptive Planning, which include the introduction of the first open source BPM solution, significant expansion of its product suite, completion of its executive team, and receipt of prestigious industry awards and recognition. These fiscal and corporate achievements come as Adaptive Planning closes a $7.5 million round of venture funding led by new investor Cardinal Venture Capital, creating strong momentum for the company in 2007.

In 2006, Adaptive Planning demonstrated exceptional momentum in the BPM market by signing a record number of new customers. Customer growth was strong across multiple industries, including the software, nonprofit, high technology, healthcare, and manufacturing segments. New customers ranged in size from less than $5 million to over $500 million in annual revenues, and included both privately- and publicly-held companies from across the globe. Notable new clients from select industries include Black Duck Software, StepStone, and SuccessFactors (software), DentalPlans.com, Gilsbar Inc., and Passport Health Communications (healthcare), Cortina Systems, Tennant Company, and Uponor (manufacturing), and numerous others including AAA, Jaguar Mining, and Med-Eng.

In addition to adding new customers, Adaptive Planning also deepened relationships with existing clients. As confirmation of its sterling customer satisfaction, over 90% of Adaptive Planning clients renewed their subscriptions. [Read more →]

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ) announced that Catholic Healthcare West, North Fork Bank, and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been named the winners of the 2007 EPM Customer Excellence Awards. The EPM Customer Excellence Awards recognize the outstanding achievements of these companies in using Business Objects enterprise performance management solutions to improve their organization’s performance. The awards were formally presented at Business Objects Insight for Performance Management, the company’s user conference for finance and business professionals taking place this week in Orlando, Florida.

“This year’s winners are representative of the leading organizations that are using our enterprise performance management solutions to address their most challenging organizational issues,” said Mark Doll, senior vice president and general manager of EPM and global services at Business Objects. “I am pleased to recognize these organizations, and congratulate them on their innovative use of planning, budgeting, forecasting, and profitability solutions to improve their organization’s performance.” [Read more →]

Microsoft’s subsidiary FRx Software Corp. today announced that Microsoft® Forecaster 7.0, the latest release of the company’s budgeting and planning software, will be released to manufacturing on March 28, 2007. This latest version of Microsoft Forecaster focuses on enhanced usability, adaptability and visibility, giving organizations confidence that their budgets are realistic and accurate, and enabling them to monitor business conditions and respond to new business opportunities and challenges to improve overall performance.

“Our customers and partners have told us they want an affordable application that will make budgeting and forecasting less cumbersome, faster to implement and easier to use and that will offer greater adaptability to changing business conditions, all of which are addressed in Microsoft Forecaster 7.0,” said Andy Kamlet, director of marketing and sales of Denver, Colo.-based FRx Software. “We seem to have struck a chord with customers as they have reviewed this release, with survey results from our customer preview program showing that 95 percent of them are ‘satisfied’ to ‘very satisfied’ with what they’ve seen.” [Read more →]

Enterprise software applications from Lawson Software (Nasdaq:LWSN) are now helping the city of Little Rock, Ark., speed data-sharing across departments, enhance reporting and consolidate key administrative information on a single database. The city completed implementation of the Lawson Enterprise Financial Management and Supply Chain Management application suites – and Lawson System Foundation 9.0, Lawson’s latest technology platform, in January 2007.

The city of Little Rock is the capital of Arkansas and the state’s largest city. Its 2,500 employees serve more than 183,000 citizens. Faced with disparate business systems that limited data access to a small group of employees, the city turned to Lawson to help it improve access to key financial and purchasing information and streamline business processes. [Read more →]

More than 1,000 organizations have tightened their control over financial closing, reporting, and regulatory compliance processes with help from Hyperion Financial Management software, the acclaimed application from Hyperion (Nasdaq Global Select: HYSL), the global leader in Business Performance Management (BPM) software.

Hyperion announced today that it had surpassed 1,000 Hyperion Financial Management customers, a milestone that confirms Hyperion’s market leadership in consolidation and reporting. The news also points to a growing trend among organizations worldwide to implement proven reporting and consolidation systems in the wake of regulatory requirements. [Read more →]

NYU Colleges and Business Units to Leverage Hyperion to Tie Financial Reporting and Budgeting to University Operations

To streamline its planning and budgeting processes throughout its academic, administrative and auxiliary units, New York University (NYU) announced plans to implement Hyperion System 9 from Hyperion (Nasdaq Global Select: HYSL), the global leader in Business Performance Management (BPM) software.

A longtime user of Hyperion Performance Suite software, NYU is migrating to Hyperion System 9 to extend its operational analysis to planning and budgeting functions. In doing so, NYU will gain more accurate insight into both its financial and operational data, enabling more reliable plans and forecasts, and more insightful analysis of ongoing operations. [Read more →]

Cartesis today announced support for HP Integrity Servers. Cartesis customers will benefit from having the availability and performance to support the demands of mission critical performance management applications and lower hardware costs.Businesses rely on performance management applications to speed financial reporting cycles, remain competitive and meet regulatory requirements. Cartesis support for HP Integrity servers helps meet increasing demands on executives to close books fast while addressing the complexity of integrating all performance management processes. Providing customers a seamless integration of their business and IT environments and fast, scalable hardware makes vast amounts of data accessible to numerous users to speed up reporting cycles. [Read more →]

Leading cosmetics manufacturer uses Cognos planning solution
to get closer to retail giants.

Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions,announced today that L’Oréal UK has implemented Cognos Planning to automate existing spreadsheet-based business processes and improve reporting efficiencies.

The world’s leading cosmetics manufacturer, working with Cognos partner BI Inform, chose Cognos Planning to drive the development of joint business plans for major retailers that sell its range of L’Oréal Paris, Garnier and Maybelline products.

L’Oréal UK’s national accounts team, which works with retailers including Tesco, Asda, Boots and Morrisons, is using Cognos to improve planning and forecasting visibility. By taking customers’ electronic point of sale (EPOS) data, the national accounts team can develop unit, sales and profit margin projections including built-in key performance indictors that are tailored to each customer’s requirements. In addition, scenario modeling can be used to forecast the success of customer promotions or L’Oréal-led promotions and track how seasonal variations may impact sales and profits. [Read more →]