Planful Brings All of our Companies and Departments to the Same Table
November 29, 2020
Planful Brings All of our Companies and Departments to the Same Table
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Modeling
- Planning
- Consolidation
- Reporting and Analytics
Overall Satisfaction with Planful (formerly Host Analytics)
The corporate accounting group uses Planful [(formerly Host Analytics)] for consolidation of +/- 15 companies across 6 currencies and several ERP systems. All financial management and external public reporting requirements come from the data in Planful and a mix of standard reporting and "Spotlight" reporting. The FP&A group uses the Structured Planning module for annual expense budgeting in conjunction with CapEx and Workforce Planning pieces. Dynamic Planning is utilized for detailed sales budgets. Dynamic Planning is also used to model sales analytics.
- Consolidation is easily implemented as the business intelligence exists pre-built.
- Reports are easily built and manipulated
- The financial data blends seamlessly with budget, forecast, etc.
- Dynamic Planning is fantastic but does have a steep learning curve. Training covers the basics, but don't expect to build detailed models at the onset.
- Implementing the Consolidation supported our acquisitions on disparate ERP systems and allowed us to drill-down to the source data from their system we didn't have access to.
- We hadn't completed a budget cycle in 5 years due to the number of new acquisitions we brought on. Now we are in the midst of a fully realized consolidated budget plan.
- We utilized Dynamic Planning for our Sales Analytics and ended contracts with several other BI companies in other divisions. We now have visibility into all companies.
All of our planning was in Excel and all manual. That has been replaced with a combination of structured and dynamic planning. Reports were hard-coded in an old version of Crystal Reports and no one remained who could modify them. Accounts were shoved into existing buckets not to have to change the report. This has all been replaced with a combination of standard reporting and Spotlight in Planful.
Reports are simple once the overall layouts have been planned. Creating new reports from existing "row sets" and "column sets" allows for streamlined builds and endless combinations. An example is a row set of P&L lines once built can then be attached to any column set such as rolling 12 months, year over year, budget vs. actual, etc without any additional building.
Honestly, this varies by individual. We were sometimes surprised by who took off running, for example, a staff accountant who never really stepped outside her box took to Planful [(formerly Host Analytics)] immediately and re-created all of her financial reporting and footnotes in Spotlight, including EPS schedules, inventory disclosures, etc. and has them automatically update the day the close is complete. The FP&A group needs a bit more support in the Dynamic Planning area for detailed forecasts that roll up to higher level accounts in the financial area.
We decided on Planful because while all of these products had some of what we need, and maybe a bit more advanced, none had all of the items on our wish list except for Planful. We are very happy with our decision because the importance of having all of the company data available as finance, analytics, planning, etc proved invaluable once all the modules were active.