Are you looking for a budgeting and planning tool with the flexibility of Excel but the automation of an enterprise application? Do you tell yourself there’s got to be a budgeting tool like Excel but has more powerful workflow and controls? Well you’re right! Take BI360 as an example. It offers all of the benefits of an Excel-based budgeting/planning tool as well as all of the automation of an enterprise application. In my opinion, BI360 is a one of the best budgeting, planning and forecasting tools because of its features and functionality in these categories:
- Excel-based User Interface
- Automated Workflow
- Direct Integration to Dynamics AX, GP, NAV
- Support Of SAP ERP & Oracle e-Business Suite
- Budgeting Flexibility – PL Budgeting, Sales Forecasting, HR Planning, Etc
- Robust Security & Workflow
- Powerful Reporting & Dashboards
EXCEL-BASED USER INTERFACE
BI360 gives you the best of both worlds, all of the functionality of Microsoft Excel coupled with a powerful Microsoft SQL-based back-end. It offers functionality for; budgeting/planning, forecasting, reporting, ad-hoc queries, etc. Most notably, it is much more efficient to use than other Excel-based budgeting tools because of the powerful Budget Creation Wizard. BI360 can create a complete budget for all of your departments with just a few lines of logic. Let us schedule a demo for your team to witness this amazing capability yourself.
AUTOMATED WORKFLOW
For department managers (or whomever creates budgets in your organization) there is no learning curve. They use Excel to budget as they’ve done in the past however at the click of a button they can easily write back their budgets figures to the budget database. Since the budget figures are always being updated the visibility of the budget completion process is greatly improved. Everyone in the organization (budget manager, executives, department managers, etc) can see the completion percentage of the budget process all the time.
DIRECT INTEGRATION TO MICROSOFT DYNAMICS AX, GP, NAV
BI360 offers a direct “live” integration to popular ERP systems such as Microsoft Dynamics AX, Dynamics GP and Dynamics NAV. As a result BI360 users have direct read of financial data and direct write-back of budget data to the financial/ERP system.
BUDGETING & PLANNING FOR SAP ERP AND ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE
BI360 can be used for budgeting and planning for popular enterprise ERP systems such as SAP ERP as well as Oracle (EBS) E-Business Suite. Financial data from either SAP or Oracle is loaded into the BI360 data warehouse so that historical/actual data can be shown on the budget forms. Budgeting, planning and forecasting data will be directly written back to the BI360 data warehouse (a Microsoft SQL datamart) so that your team will have up-to-the-second updates on the budget process. Compared to other Excel-based budgeting tools for SAP and Oracle, BI360 is more efficient to use and can offer more accurate reporting because of it’s efficient Budget Creation Wizard.
BUDGETING FLEXIBILITY – P&L BUDGETING, SALES FORECASTING, HR PLANNING & MORE
Not only can you handle your P&L Planning but you can also plan your sales forecasts, budget expenses for headcount (employee salaries are well as planned hires), Rolling Forecasts, Etc.
You can even budget line item details (i.e. Marketing Expenses) that are below your GL account levels (i.e. trial balances).ROBUST SECURITY & WORKFLOW
If you have strict guidelines and tight security regarding the financial data that your budget users can view then BI360 is the budget tool for you. Push out budget templates to budget users for only their own departmental data and lock down the security so that they can only access the data that they are authorized to view.
In addition you can lock (or freeze) a budget so that no additional revisions to it can be made. Revisions can be reflected in a separate budget version (or via rolling Forecasts) instead. You can then report on the evolution of the budget or you can generate reports to compare different budget revisions.POWERFUL REPORTING & DASHBOARDS
In addition to offering a robust budgeting and planning tool BI360 also offers a “live” report writer so that you can create financial reports, operational reports, budget vs actual reports, etc. Furthermore, it offers a drag-and-drop query tool (Report Composer) which can easily create ad-hoc queries for researching data.
If your executives are looking for a Dashboard user interface then you can display the budget data, financial data, etc via the (Optional) Executive Dashboards as well.In summary, my rating for BI360: [displayRatingResult]
While it’s easy to make the case for BI360 using broader strokes, it’s much more helpful to compare these specific features to the needs of your daily operations. If you’re still wresting with the decision of which budgeting and planning tool to use, give Calsoft a call. Let us show you the exact ways in which BI360 is more efficient and more powerful than other budgeting and forecasting tools.
Call 1-888-838-8422 or Send us an email today.
