Budgeting Software Journal

Adaptive Planning announced the latest release of its award-winning software - Adaptive Planning 3.5. This release marks the next step in the company’s mission to provide unprecedented value to mid-market companies, with new features that further improve ease of use, reduce deployment times, and enhance reporting and analysis.

Adaptive Planning enables companies to move beyond Excel spreadsheets and improve decision making by automating their budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes. Optimized for the needs of midsized companies, Adaptive Planning is available in three different product editions. Express Edition is a free open source version for entry-level budgeting and forecasting. Corporate Edition and Enterprise Edition are commercially-licensed versions that provide enhanced features for company-wide performance management, as well as expanded support and indemnification. The software can either be accessed as an on-demand, web-based service, or deployed on-premises in a company’s datacenter. [Read more →]

Sage Hospitality Resources, LLC sets high standards for itself in every operational area and meeting its goals is driving company growth. The Denver, Colorado-based hotel company has 48 properties in its portfolio and delivers solid profitability to its owners, personalized service to guests, and professional support to its associates. An impressive list of deliverables and one that Sage is leveraging its extensive technology resources and hotel computer systems to achieve.

“Sage is unique because instead of choosing which of its stakeholders to satisfy first — owners, guests, or associates — it is successfully fulfilling the requirements of all three simultaneously,” said Courteney Parker, Senior Vice President — Financial Services for Sage Hospitality Resources. “We designed our entire corporate technology infrastructure, hospitality accounting software and hotel management software to accomplish this task.”

Until recently Sage used a number of separate systems that included accounting, guest services, and ADP reporting applications to generate information to be manually entered into a corporate macro-based version of Excel. The process was lengthy and labor intensive, and the output was not available to managers until month-end. This changed in mid 2005 when Sage upgraded its corporate information systems by consolidating all of its operating, accounting, and guest data in a single centralized business intelligence software database for instant management access to operating information. [Read more →]

BPM Partners named Adaptive Planning “Mid-Market Vendor of the Year.” In granting the award, BPM Partners cited Adaptive Planning’s leading-edge product offerings, which include on-demand, on-premises, and free open source solutions for budgeting, forecasting, and reporting, as well as the company’s outstanding customer satisfaction marks.

The “Mid-Market Vendor of the Year” award was presented during BPM Partners’ fifth-annual “Beyond the Hype” webcast. The event, produced in conjunction with Business Finance Magazine, reviewed industry trends and revealed the results of vendors’ customer satisfaction ratings collected in BPM Partners’ “BPM Pulse Survey.”

“Adaptive Planning stands out as a company that clearly understands the mid-market, delivering innovative new solutions optimized for the needs of midsized companies,” said Craig Schiff, chief executive officer, BPM Partners. “They recognize that mid-market companies have the same information needs as major corporations, but lack the resources—personnel, time, and capital—typically enjoyed by large enterprises. And by aggressively leveraging new ‘BPM 2.0’ technologies, such as software as a service and open source, Adaptive Planning provides midsize companies with exciting new alternatives to spreadsheets for managing their budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes.” [Read more →]

Cartesis announced a long list of accomplishments for the first half of its fiscal year 2007 – the time period from July 1, 2006 to December 31, 2006. These accomplishments include a record number of wins, an 81 percent increase of mid-market product license revenue, the delivery of two key products – Cartesis Analytics and Cartesis Intercompany – and the introduction of a new channel program.Cartesis closed a record number of wins in H1 FY07, up 33 percent from the same period last year. Important wins and completed deployments occurred at ABN Amro, Atari, Cargill, CH2M Hill, Delhaize, IXIS, Lehman Bros, LVMH, Meggitt, Nestle, Nomura, PepsiAmericas, PSA, Standard Life, Swiss RE, SYSCO, TD Securities, Tesco and Wachovia.

A notable trend in H1 FY07 was Cartesis’ success in the mid-market, or clients with annual revenues of $300 mill to $750 mill. Much of this growth can be linked to the development of the Cartesis 10 Standard Edition product line, which grew license revenue by 81 percent when compared to the previous year’s first six months. The company sees this as very positive as it indicates a broader market acceptance of sophisticated performance management products. Historically, larger companies were more likely to understand the return on investment that performance management solutions provide. [Read more →]

Workbrain announced today the launch of Budget Creation and Management, the second generation of its Workforce Planning application. Built for leading retailers, the solution is designed to optimize the allocation of labor expenses by uniting fiscal and operational budget planning processes. The solution provides a unique top-down and bottom-up approach to labor budgeting to help align store execution with corporate goals. The solution is being showcased at the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) 96th Annual Convention & Expo being held in New York from January 15-17. Workbrain is exhibiting in booth #1901.

“The ability for retailers to accurately forecast labor and effectively deploy the workforce is critical to successfully manage the intricate balance of workforce supply and customer demand,” said Tony Marzulli, Senior Vice President of Products and Marketing at Workbrain. “But even the most efficient execution of these day-of-operation processes can be wasted if upstream activities such as labor budgeting are inadequate. For the first time in the industry, clients can consider each location’s needs and provide stores with an accurate labor budget from which to forecast, deploy and manage their workforce. We are proud that a number of leading retailers have endorsed our vision of total workforce management by implementing Budget Creation and Management.” [Read more →]

Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN) announced today that an independent research report by Ventana Research has ranked Cognos as a top vendor in performance management.In the newly updated Ventana Research 2007 Performance Management Scorecard TM (Ventana Research Scorecard), Cognos scored 94% overall for Cognos 8 BI, the company’s flagship business intelligence platform which includes capabilities for query, reporting, analysis, scorecarding and dashboarding, and event management.

Cognos’ overall score increased by 4.3% over last year’s study, with Cognos 8 BI scoring highest for its ability to “align the business, and coordinate and drive individual actions based on information and performance targets.”

The Ventana Research Scorecard covers more than 11 vendors and is representative of independent analysis conducted over the past five years. Each participating company’s products were scored for functional requirements and capabilities to determine the level of compliance against Ventana Research’s PerformanceCycleâ„¢ across three categories – Align, Optimize and Understand. [Read more →]

Cartesis, the world’s leading specialist in finance and performance management software, today announced the launch of a partner program aimed at expanding the reach of its highly respected Cartesis 10 performance management suite. This new and enticing channel program will enable partners to provide robust, complete performance management solutions in clearly defined vertical or regional markets. Cartesis also provides partners with access to best practice implementation methodology and unparalleled competitive discounts of up to 60 percent.”The BPM market is growing rapidly and enlisting partners is an excellent way to maintain the momentum we’ve established in the U.S. thus far,” says Crispin Read, CMO, Cartesis. “By combining Cartesis solutions with their specific domain expertise and market reach, our VARs will enable significantly more companies to enjoy the benefits of the world’s most powerful performance management solution. We expect to sign a dozen partners in the first six months.” [Read more →]

Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced that B&H Photo Video (B&H), one of the world’s leading retailers of imaging products, has selected Cognos as its enterprise-wide performance management system standard.B&H has been using Cognos to complete sales reporting, product movement management and inventory analysis for their on-line and retail operations. B&H wanted to better understand and service its customers by analyzing shopping patterns and purchasing trends.

By standardizing on a single BI platform and upgrading to Cognos 8 BI, decision-makers throughout the organization – from executives to finance, supply chain and operations managers – will be able to capitalize on the complete range of reporting, analysis, dashboarding and scorecarding functionality to optimize inventory, increase customer loyalty and improve the overall customer shopping experience, regardless of channel. [Read more →]

Longview Solutions, a leading provider of corporate performance management software, announced today that Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS, Inc.), a Time Warner company and a leading provider of programming for the cable industry, has chosen to implement the Tax Provision & Data Collection functionality of the Longview Performance Management Platform.

Longview Solutions announced today that Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS, Inc.), a Time Warner company and a leading provider of programming for the cable industry, has chosen to implement the Tax Provision & Data Collection functionality of the Longview Performance Management Platform. Longview Tax which is expected to be implemented and fully operational by end of Q1/07, will be used by TBS, Inc. to collect tax data from subsidiaries around the world, calculate its consolidated tax provision and produce its tax footnote immediately upon close. [Read more →]

Host Analytics announced that Genlyte Group, Inc. is using Host Consolidator to simplify the financial consolidation process and improve financial reporting accuracy.

Host Analytics, the leader in on-demand Business Performance Management software solutions, today announced that Genlyte Group, Inc., a leading manufacturer of lighting fixtures, controls, and related products for the commercial, industrial and residential markets, is using Host Consolidator to simplify the financial consolidation process and improve financial reporting accuracy.

Genlyte Group is a publicly traded, fast-growing, $1.6 billion dollar manufacturing company with over 17 decentralized divisions. Over the past few years, the company has grown through acquisitions and required a way to consolidate financials from their 17 disparate divisions and report their numbers to their shareholders and Wall Street. The company turned to Host Analytics and implemented Host Consolidator to ease the financial consolidation process. Each division now sends their month-end closing numbers to corporate where all of the data is consolidated into Host Consolidator. [Read more →]