The decision is not painful, it's Planful!
November 22, 2020
The decision is not painful, it's Planful!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Modeling
- Planning
- Reporting and Analytics
Overall Satisfaction with Planful (formerly Host Analytics)
Planful (formerly Host Analytics) is primarily [used] within the Financial Planning department for creating an annual plan, maintaining a current forecast, preliminary review of numbers with accounting and reporting of financial information for various internal and external constituents.
- Dynamic reporting is very intuitive and plug and play
- Structure planning makes for a quick implementation and a low level of administration going forward
- The admin back-end for user management and structured HR can be clunky and frustrating to remember how to do a simple task
- The process for transferring data between dynamic planning and structured planning is not very good
- Reduced monthly reporting timelines from 1 week to 1 day
- Turned Planning process from a burdensome consolidation process to live iteration and feedback
Time to consolidate financial reporting has greatly been reduced. We have an automated connection from our ERP to Planful (formerly Host Analytics) so we can have a frequently updated view during the financial close. Time has been significantly reduced during reporting process from creation of the reports, to now analyzing the reports.
Very easy. You can either use hierarchies to create columns / rows or customize row sets that can be used for multiple reports.
Ensuring correct access can be a challenge at times without the ability to "act as" the user to see what they are seeing. But once set up correctly, self serve reporting is a breeze.
Planful (formerly Host Analytics) can be quick to implement and does not require an army to administer. It's multi-dimensional technology also allows for a lot more flexibility in it's design and use. It's reporting suite is the most intuitive that I have seen in the industry. It also has the capability to do advanced modeling, however it has a steep learning curve and the interaction back with it's structured modeling is a bit clunky.