Stressed out about budgeting?

We use Planful [(formerly Host Analytics)] for Budgeting, Forecasts, Reporting, Demand Planning, and Dashboards. We utilize common Expense and Workforce planning templates. Built customized revenue templates for each line of business. Some Revenue templates are built with structured environment, others are combination of data that resides outside of planful and the structured environment, and some feed directly from Dynamic Planning.

There are multiple ways that data can be collected and disbursed to business units. The ability for users who are in different areas of the company to run the same report simultaneously helps eliminate unnecessary requests and speeds us the process to get data to employees when the need it.

While we do not use all the tools, the ability to have budget /actuals / forecast in one platform increases productivity and allows for more analysis rather than time spent on data gathering. Similar to most systems, the more standardized a company's reports can be designed, the more effiecient it will be for all those involved.

Utilize report collectors (automatic report distribution) to any employee in organization (user or non-user), easily roll monthly forecasts to next financial period, create various reports for all levels of organization. Create a common platform for those responsible with budgets and forecast to submit financial information. Planful has the ability to track user changes by scenario and by account for each budget entity.

Once fully trained, simple reports can be created in minutes… other complex reports may take hours, but overall easy to use for those interested in report design / creation.

Self serve reporting, analysis and planning is easily accommodating using the platform. If properly implemented, interface can be designed to restrict end users only what they need to use.

We use planful to update ERP information several times a day. We can then use that data in multiple platforms such as structured reporting, dashboards, and modeling information.

We use planful to update ERP information several times a day. We can then use that data in multiple platforms such as structured reporting, dashboards, and modeling. Requires less manual intervention to update and reduces the chances of keying errors. Has built-in security to ensure users have access to templates that are needed.

We initially went live using group currency. Years later decided that we wanted to convert to local currency. Customer Success Manager and IT support suggested multiple ideas to how we could make this happen. Eventually tested this out in a sandbox environment and moved to production environment.

No change required

We did not purchase premier support as the included support pacakge are sufficent for our needs. The support tools and training materials are well written which allow us to rely on these materials instead of requiring us to maintain extensive internal documentation for new users. The built-in search capabilities work as expected but can sometimes return overwhelming results.