Planful is a cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM) suite. It includes financial applications for modeling, planning, consolidation, reporting and analytics.
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Prophix
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Prophix One, a Financial Performance Platform, is used to improve the speed and accuracy of decision-making within a harmonized user experience. To reduce complexity and uncertainty, the software offers automated insights and planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and consolidation functionalities.
Host user interface was more "user friendly" so we felt it would be easier to train our users and they would actually use the system, especially as compared to SAP business Objects.
Host Analytics was more robust than Adaptive Planning. Since it is built around Excel, our users did not have to learn a new "language" as they would have with Prophix and it is more nimble and easier to support than SAP.
I used Prophix at a previous company, although more as a user than an administrator. Budget expense templates in Host Analytics can mirror what we used in Prophix. Better than that, though, we use "drivers" to move expenses based on revenue, headcount, etc., which I don't know …
Planful seems to have the best price to performance option against the tools listed. Some of the more premium options on the market have outdated UIs and dont get updated as frequently and other in the same price category dont seem to have the same level of options and "ease" …
Before Prophix we used on premise Budget Maestro, we did not have good results from their software, it was buggy and its processes were antiquated. We chose Prophix for its consolidated reporting capabilities and to get all of our companies that are on 3 different ERP systems …
We chose Prophix based on the desire to make a paradigm shift away from Excel and towards a more fully-featured web-based SaaS solution that would still allow for the utilization of Excel where it made sense. Prophix does this through an Excel add-on, while more comprehensive …
Budget Maestro was too basic, Anaplan was too complex and Host Analytics didn't understand our industry or our ERP. Prophix is a partner with Viewpoint which meant there was much more knowledge on how our structure worked.
Compared to Host Analytics and Adaptive, Prophix provides more value for the dollar, especially when we deploy multiple models. Solution set is also comparably built out, so we are not missing any critical functionality. Self-maintenance by finance is also comparable to Host …
For our specific use and purpose, most of the packages we reviewed would meet practically all of our needs. Therefore, it came down to the ease/timing of implementation, the availability of support personnel, and the ability to customize for our specific needs. Prophix met …
The main reasons of why we selected Prophix are cost, value, ease of use, speed of implementation to take this into production, and demonstration of the product to us. We covered all the competitors out there in terms of reviewing on-site or conference call - Host Analytics, …
Planful works great with Intacct, our GL system. Not sure how well it brings in data from other GL systems, but I assume it's seamless there as well. It's incredibly important to find a good implementation partner to ensure proper setup on the front-end. Your team needs to have someone who is dedicated to maintaining Planful (depending on complexity from 0.25 to 1.0 FTE).
Prophix does a great job with financial reporting and budgeting. It is easy to build the reports and their product is quite capable of delivering any kind of financial report you would want. They can also handle WIP reporting as well as personnel planning and have solid solutions to improve the internal processes you have in place. End users seem to easily be able to navigate the software after just a brief introduction. The dashboards are good, but they could use some refinement to offer more flexibility.
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! 😅
ONU has benefitted by moving away from a centralized, Excel-based budget process by implementing Prophix to a decentralized process that engages budget managers in the development of the University's budget.
Prophix offers tremendous flexibility in reporting that is not available through our ERP system.
Prophix is very adaptable to many different types of industries. Its flexibility and adaptability is one of its biggest strengths.
The ability to set up workflows for a variety of tasks within Prophix is very beneficial for tracking purposes.
Multiple currency calculations/ consolidations support IFRS accounting
Ability to inactivate old data dimensions
Reporting - Need ability to expand all/collapse all lines easily
Reporting - Formula exceptions added to a report do not update when information is revised.
Automatic Sandbox refreshes initiated by Planful - When Planful does an automatic refresh of the sandbox environment, it copies any Boomi/integration connections.
Limited to 8 data dimensions in core application
Add more API connectors to make data integration easier
ability to transfer sandbox tests to production environment
Version control; there are issues using the same budget version in multiple years if adding detail (line item detail). What Prophix has explained as a benefit is a huge detriment for us and we've been working with them for 6 months on a fix and it's yet to get resolved
There are certain aspects that a messy; within our budgeting and forecasting detail, we have "unexplained balance" lines that show up that are distracting and add no value.
Lack of a centralized location for content outside of tool; for example, training, help, support, intranet, etc are all separate websites and not easy to get to. I'm not sure why all of this isn't linked to the same account and accessible through the tool. Why should we need separate passwords for everything Prophix?!
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.
The system works well for us, and meets all of our needs. All of our future plans can and will be achieved within Prophix, so there is no need to pursue another product. Prophix has continuously proven to improve their product over the years, which provides an even higher level of confidence in this tool, and future developments
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.
I have used other reporting software over the years and so far this has been the simplest to set up, the most flexible to use and we have not yet used Prophix to its full capacity. Over the next year or so I can see us extending our use of Prophix to include any number of other functions.
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.
Prophix's CS is one of the best that we communicate with. Response time is reasonable, and they can communicate via email or phone or Teams. Multiple ways to communicate and if any additional questions that they cannot answer, i am redirected to the correct individual to assist
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.
Prophix has always performed consistently. We are using on-premise so many factors can contribute to slower than desired performance, most having nothing to do with Prophix itself. If we move to the web-client cloud based solution I believe performance will even be better.
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
The Prophix staff is very helpful and quick to respond. I like that they teach me instead of doing it for me when possible, so I don't have to contact them as often! Never talked to anyone at Prophix that I didn't respect or think highly of! Very professional, great customer service!
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.
The initial integration consultant was very helpful in making sure we were set up with all the essential uses we required: reporting/budgeting/forecasting. There was a learning curve but our consultant made it very easy to understand and helped me be comfortable in my Global Admin role in the system. Even after integration, we were given support whenever I came up with an idea I would get in touch and I would be trained on how I can implement it.
This training is much more robust now than it was when we first implemented our Planful environment. Many times we can do a little research in the "help" portal and do not even need to reach out to support. They are continuously improving the training and information available to users.
We used our system and created a test cube to work with our own data. We ran through the different functions of Prophix and covered alot of material. We did two sessions a week, with homework tasks assigned. We were able to ask questions and cover any questions during the followup sessions.
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.
Prophix Consulting should bring, in house, chargeable expertise in Oracle EBS table access for Drill Across and provide reasonable limits on dimension member combinations so there are no unreasonable expectations about the application of multi dimensional cubes to detail, such as revenue by product and customer.
Workforce Planning in Planful is a plus compared to Adaptive Insights. Reporting in Planful is a plus compared to Adaptive Insights. Similarity to Excel is a plus compared to Adaptive Insights. Adaptive Insights can budget/forecast weekly or daily rather easily, which is a huge undertaking in Planful. Adaptive Insights has a larger user base and can more easily find talents in Consulting or general users.
We found Prophix to be more flexible than the other solutions. It proved to have less of an implementation timeframe, and we felt more comfortable supporting the system ourselves post-implementation. We were also surprised to find that Prophix's pricing was more competitive than its rivals, which made the decision process quite easy.
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.
We are a medium sized company, but the structure of Prophix would seemingly adapt to whatever sized organization you have. It also can be applied in any area of an enterprise that needs performance management, whether it involves financial data or not. The potential for application within the enterprise is really only limited by you imagination.
The greatest impact Prophix has had is provided useful data for business decisions, especially with variance analysis and real time production data.
Prophix has saved our company a considerable amount of time during our budgeting/forecast process as well as reporting actuals and variance to managers.
