Budgeting Software Journal

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 →]

Clarity Systems announced the launch of Clarity 6.1 Legal Edition, a solution designed to help professional services organizations better perform and manage their budgeting and forecasting activities.

As part of the highly functional Clarity 6.1 software solution, the Legal Edition includes sophisticated capabilities such as predefined data models, advanced acquisition forecasting and modeling functionality, business intelligence dashboards, and a complete financial reporting package. These enhancements are specifically designed to meet the complex performance management needs of law and other professional services firms. [Read more →]

If you have developed a budget for your business, the only way to make it work is to follow it!

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. [Read more →]

Centerline Capital Group (NYSE: CHC), one of the nation’s leading full-service real estate finance companies, has selected Cartesis 10, the integrated platform for financial planning, consolidation and analytics. The Cartesis 10 solution will support Centerline’s strategic business objectives in addition to tackling enterprise-wide performance management challenges.

With more than 500 employees in 10 offices throughout the United States, Centerline needed a fully integrated solution in order to keep the company’s various internal teams strategically aligned. Cartesis 10 will alleviate Centerline’s current reliance on spreadsheets for data collection and manipulation. Switching from a manual, labor-intensive spreadsheet process is necessary to meet the company’s increasing budgeting and reporting needs. [Read more →]

Adaptive Planning announced that its on-demand application has been selected by DentalPlans.com. Adaptive Planning’s easy-to-use solution has enabled the fast-growing discount dental plans provider to formalize their budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes, increase managers’ accountability for financial results, and significantly improve decision making.

Less than a decade after its founding, DentalPlans.com has emerged as a leader in delivering comprehensive discount dental plans to individuals, families and groups. To continue its profitable growth, DentalPlans.com realized it would have to increase the scrutiny and accuracy of its internal controls, accounting and collections. “We had gained enough momentum and resources to start preparing for the future, rather than just reacting to what was happening,” said Buddy Johnson, chief financial officer of DentalPlans.com. “Our new solution had to meet two key criteria: one, help us build a formal budget process that would hold people accountable; and two, enable us to run forecasts that would appeal to potential investors.” [Read more →]

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has selected Clarity 6 software to enhance its corporate performance management initiative. Harvard Pilgrim is one of New England ’s largest full-service health benefits organizations providing a variety of insurance plan options and self-funding arrangements to more than one million members.

Driving Harvard Pilgrim’s decision to purchase and implement Clarity 6 was the company’s need for a single web-based suite of integrated solutions to manage, plan and forecast their budget effectively across the organization while leveraging their existing investment in both Oracle and Microsoft Analysis Services (MSAS) databases. [Read more →]