Host Analytics EPM in the Cloud
September 10, 2015
Host Analytics EPM in the Cloud

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Consolidation
- Budget
- Reports
Overall Satisfaction with Planful (formerly Host Analytics)
Host Analytics Cloud EPM Suite is being used as a planning tool to build activity based budgets for 26 distribution centers and 2 corporate offices in North America. We are currently implementing a rolling forecast concept in the US. It is also being used as a global consolidation and reporting tool to generate monthly management reporting packages, including financial and operational (statistical) data for each country and area of the world.
Pros
- Integration with Microsoft suite of tools, very easy to extract data from the application into formats non-system users can easily interact with. Excel look and feel is comfortable to finance.
- Reporting flexibility, able to build dynamic reports and just update variables to run the same report in different views. Often look at schedules and reports that have historically been managed & maintained in Excel and when faced with updating, I resort to building a more automated reporting solution in Host.
- User friendliness, Finance can own and manage 95% of the application, truly are the masters of our own destiny. No reliance on IT to build budget templates, reports, etc.
Cons
- Full consolidation functionality; ability to book eliminations, dynamic and recurring/standard JE's for more than just the actual results. In the Excel world, we apply the same consolidation process for a forecast or a budget as we do for actual. System should be able to do this as well.
- Cash flow functionality in a multi-currency environment is lacking. We have been on a very slow journey to improve. While making some small strides, we still have a long way to go.
- Increased efficiency and more timely access to information
- More responsive to ad-hoc requests from senior leadership
- More visibility to data and impacts throughout the planning/forecasting process
- Host Analytics Cloud EPM was the most complete cloud based EPM solution we reviewed.
- Also seemed the most user friendly and intuitive to navigate.
- Seamless integration with Microsoft as well as a familiar Excel like look and feel we felt would increase user acceptance and adoption.
- Quicker implementation cycle and finance owned and managed.
Planful Feature Ratings
Using Planful (formerly Host Analytics)
30 - Finance
2 - Sr. Financial Systems Analyst
Director of Global Reporting
Director of Global Reporting
- Automate manual processes and reporting
- Create an audit trail around month-end consolidation processes
- Expand knowledge across the organization
- Global visibility through a common chart of accounts
- Statistical accounts to store operational data points and create calculated KPI measures
- Ability to integrate financial and non-financial data into the same reports
- Ability to create alternate views of account hierarchies using attributes to drive customer vs. internal reporting
- Adopting an activity based rolling forecast process
- User dashboards
- Business Analytics charts for visualization
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