Manager FP&A
July 27, 2021
Manager FP&A
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Modeling
- Planning
Overall Satisfaction with Planful (formerly Host Analytics)
We use it as a budgeting, planning and forecasting tool as well as a reporting tool. It is used across the organization. Department managers budget in it and can see their results on a monthly basis. The accounting and FP&A team use it for reporting financial results monthly as well as investigating variances to budget and/or forecast. We also use it for Headcount planning.
- Flexible- it always [has] various ways to summarize data/results
- Seeding - allows you to pre-populate budget data with historical data if you want
- Excel like - the templates for budget planning mimic Excel, so training and ease of use are much faster and easier for managers
- Workforce planning - reporting is not as smooth, it feels like an add-on and doesn't integrate with the rest of Planful as well as it could. While it has a lot of detail it is hard to review that detail in some instances.
- Import/upload function - while this is available in templates for budgeting to allow you to add Excel files, it is not necessarily available in just budgeting. Data load rules can help but we feel like they are not really as flexible as just an import/upload feature.
- Process of the cube after every change and modification during budgeting as well as processing the employees in Workforce planning is also not a smooth or easy as it could be.
- Reduced our budgeting cycle by 6 weeks
- Provided quick and easy analysis during the financial review process
- Provides for drill throughs for investigation of variances
- Provides managers an easy way to compare actual to budget/forecast results on a monthly basis
During the monthly close we can manually update Planful with our ERP data as an "On-demand" data load, which allows us to quickly see the impact of various last minute accruals and adjustments. We don't have to wait for overnight processing which is great. This has been a time saver during monthly close.
Reporting is very easy to do. We were acquired two years ago by a larger international organization. As a result all of the hierarchy, reporting and analysis changed from the family owned business that we had previously been. We were able to restructure our hierarchy and modify our reports to accommodate the required new reporting requirements. It's also easy to do a quick report for ad hoc reporting which is very convenient.
We do not currently utilized dashboard.
We do not currently utilized dashboard.
Again, I think this is something that Planful does very well. It's flexible, easy and quick to learn for all areas.
I was not part of the team that selected Planful. It was in place when I came onboard.
Do you think Planful delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Planful's feature set?
Yes
Did Planful live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Planful go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Planful again?
Yes