ARGUS Intelligence vs. Envestnet Platform vs. Planful

[Argus is] the best property valuation tool on the market but you also can't really do any advanced property valuations without Argus. It's an industry standard and while there are competitors, they do not approach the same feature set or institutional usage the Argus has.

Incentivized

It is very well suited for reviewing client proposals, model portfolios and analyzing underlying holdings within various funds and portfolios. Envestnet also creates very clean client reports that are easy to read and understand. We also like Envestnet's proposal tool and have used the various proposal functions and reports when pitching new business.

Incentivized

I think it is a useful tool from a reporting standpoint. It does a good job of data aggregation from different sources, even if slow at times. I think the tools for building forecasting and budgeting templates are straight forward but allow for a level of complexity that make it both easy to use but also allow for complex builds so that our models can take into account many different variables that drive our daily performance.

Incentivized

• Valuation tools are advanced and complete
• we can share among multiple employees
• it has many options to model out our leases correctly

Incentivized

• Fund analytics.
• Portfolio construction.
• Sales and trading.

Incentivized

• Creating forecasts for the month, quarter, and year
• Creating new variables by using variables pre-defined and that are new in the system
• Having a very simple setup in the reports section - not straying away from the old Excel model which most people are used to. I can speak for a lot of people when I say that tools that look new can easily be frightening! 😅

Incentivized

• Price
• Only game in town

Incentivized

• Online interface.
• Slow load up times.
• Clunky process of searching for funds.

Incentivized

• Dashboarding could be more flexible and easier to use.
• Dynamic Reporting has room for flexibility with nesting, dimension names showing up instead of “All,” and overall flexibility.
• Make Analyze view in Spotlight more intuitive.
• A high-level onboarding guide to understanding the different components of Planful, data flows, and tips & tricks.

Incentivized

Our new Comptroller understands the value of Planful, and we plan to utilize it further in the organization to enhance external reporting. Strangely enough, Planful had not previously been embraced by the former CFO, who argued that we were running two sets of books (of course, we were not). Fortunately, the before mentioned reconciliation of EBITDA to Net Income demonstrated that to the banks.

Incentivized

Argus is a very good real estate valuation tool. By being able to run different scenarios at different capital rates we can discuss and decide for each pf our investments the best way to proceed to maximize our lease investments. Argus is a robust tool that can handle a high volume of investments and options.

Incentivized

The tool is extremely adaptable, and it enables very quick querying to give us opportunity to gain live insights into the business. Given its adaptability, we are also able to create scenario analyses very quickly in rapidly changing environments. The formatting also enables us to provide this information in a very consumable manner.

Incentivized

I only give a 9 rating rather than a 10 rating because it seems that every day around 2pm we see a slowdown in the use of Planful. I have requested our internal IT department verify that it is not an internal issue and have been assured it is the tool. We have not yet reached out to Planful to do extensive research to solve this issue.

Again, the system is very reliable and, for the most part, runs very quick and smooth. When running larger queries, it does take some time, and during budgeting season our users experienced slower loading times, but nothing that raises concerns outside of normal network issues. Occasionally, as with any software we use, it will crash and you have to restart, but that does not happen very often.

Support is pretty good. The techs are pretty knowledgeable about the product and confident. You don't feel like they are just going through the knowledgebase and they are easy to understand. I have also never been stuck on hold for a long period of time to speak to someone.

Incentivized

Sometimes we get great help when using Planful's support team and other times we don't. In particular, there is one person that often responds to our support tickets who is less than helpful, hence the reason for the 5 out of 10 rating. As a result, most of the time we reach out to our Planful consulting group as they provide faster and better support

My team has attended training offered several times before/during the Planful Perform conference. This training has been extremely useful and we always learn something we didn't know prior to the training. The trainers are always very knowledgeable and more than willing to help each and every user after the training with specific questions regarding their environment.

Incentivized

Planful provides a lot of online training support. There's so many options for training. Admin Learning Courses, User Learning Courses. Plus they have several webinars devoted to the tool and the new features they release. New Releases can be practiced in a Sandbox Environment prior to going live in Production

Incentivized

After going through the initial implementation with Host Analytics and a re-implementation with Cervello (due to an ERP change, not due to a poor initial implementation), I've learned that you really must rely on your internal staff to bear most of the implementation burden. Use the vendor or partners for ideas and best-practice suggestions, and some of the easy-but-time-consuming work. Since you will ultimately be using and maintaining the application, you should be able to do most of it yourself.

Incentivized

Envestnet’s platform is very clean and user friendly. They have continued to provide software and platform updates and are open to client feedback and critiques. The portfolio analysis tool is a lot cleaner and more professional compared to other tools like Morningstar Direct and assetmark. Their fund universe is very extensive and with the additions of CITs we’ve been able to leverage the tool more effectively

Incentivized

Prior to joining the company, we tried to implement Vena but were unsuccessful. There we're a few reasons it didn't work out, but a lot of it related to the implementation team they provided. In just the first week with Planful, we achieved more progress than we did in several months with Vena.

Incentivized

From our experience, Planful is only used in 2 overhead departments in our organization. We easily added another overhead department, but they decided against using Planful for their workforce and financial planning. Removing them from our environment was extremely easy.

Incentivized

• Our investments are better managed and maximizes our return on investment
• Our analysts can discuss as a group in one location
• initial investment in Argus takes time to recoup.

Incentivized

• Increased revenue.
• Increased client service metrics.
• Better fund analysis approach.

Incentivized

• Has allowed users to view a real-time P&L in a way they weren't able to do with Qlik.
• Budget to Actual analysis has become much more streamlined and actionable
• Long-range plan process has been significantly streamlined and a lot of time has been cut out of the process.

Incentivized