Planful Allows You to Fully Plan.
November 29, 2020
Planful Allows You to Fully Plan.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Planning
- Consolidation
- Reporting and Analytics
Overall Satisfaction with Planful (formerly Host Analytics)
We use [Planful (formerly Host Analytics)] to do our quarterly forecasting, budgeting and financial reporting. It is used across the whole organization. It has eliminated much of the time we previously spent consolidating Excel spreadsheets. It has saved our plant controllers, corporate controller and myself hours of time each month.
- Many different fields to use for complex reporting - location, market, product line (in our case). Able to handle complex reporting
- Budget/forecast templates are flexible and relatively easy to set up, easy to use. Our plant controllers have varying levels of technical acumen and Planful is very easy to use for all of them, particularly since it is based in Excel.
- I recently became familiar with the Spotlight add-in. This has been a revelation for us. It makes reporting so much more easier due to it's flexibility. Our reporting can be quite complex and it is so much easier to do in an Excel environment.
- On the capital expenditure templates, when i bring over information from a previous forecast, I wish it would not for these templates. Once those months are done, you really no longer need those capital expenditures in there. My controllers always forget that they are in there and they get calculated again.
- On the payroll templates, I wish you could do a combination of salary increases by employee type or individually. It is currently one or the other for the entire organization.
- As previously stated, it has saved our plant controllers, corporate controller and myself time and is also more accurate than the Excel spreadsheets we previously used.
- Our PE owners have wanted us to minimize our month-end close time and Planful has helped us do this as well since reporting has been automated.
- We are able to get data easier and quicker which allows us to be more proactive rather than reactive.
We are currently working on doing our monthly operations review report (100+ pages each month) in Planful Spotlight Excel. This would save our corporate controller probably a couple of days each month and would also save our plant controllers a day each month. Previously this was all done in Excel and they will no longer be doing their Excel reports.
New reports are much easier to do in Spotlight Excel than in the Planful software itself. Once you get the hang of it, it is no problem at all. I was able to set up every financial report from our 100+ page ops review report in Planful Spotlight Excel and some of this reporting is quite complex. We just purchased dashboards and I have not had a chance to use it yet.
I can basically get anything that I need out of Planful [(formerly Host Analytics)]. We previously used an outside consultant to provide support hours for us, but I've gotten so good with Planful that we barely use them anymore and will have them focus more on implementing the dynamic planning and dashboard modules.
I have evaluated many other CPM systems, although it has been several years. The ones I looked at back then were Anaplan, Adaptive Insight, Longview, Prophix and Tagetik. My personal opinion was that Planful [(formerly Host Analytics)] was the best due to it's user interface and ease of use. It also checked all of the boxes as far as security, etc.