Provides an overview of the problems Finance professionals face, the solution Host Analytics provides, and why the cloud provides the best delivery model and support for future growth.
Pre built functionalityDashboards / variance analysis / trackingBudgeting and financial reporting
We have talked about the functionality coverage – lets look at what Host Analytics brings over and above other CPM applications
SaaS DeliveryHost analytics functionality is provided via a SaaS delivery model. The SaaS delivery model will significantly reduce your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), reduce your time to implement, increase your ROI and provide easier access to the application across your remote and often diverse sets of users. With our SaaS solution there is no need for additional hardware and software investment, data center space and most importantly costly personnel to run and maintain your solution. The costs to run an on premise CPM suite are often grossly under estimated. For example, many of these solutions are very challenging and costly to upgrade and require additional hardware investments to keep pace with your growing customization and data volume needs. With our solution, upgrades to both the application software and hardware are the responsibility of Host Analytics. Our solution is implemented in a 6-8 week time period versus 6-12 months for an on premise CPM solution. Our fast low cost implementations decrease your deployment costs and significantly reduce your time to benefit from the solution providing a much stronger ROI.
ModelingHost Analytics provides the most robust and flexible modeling capabilities for CPM solutions. The modeling functionality provided by Host Analytics means all decision makers have the ability to plan their business, model initiatives, develop multiple what if scenarios at an operational level with all the financial facts at their fingertips and compare actuals to multiple plans. Building on this once an optimal plan is decided on, it can then be seamlessly integrated into the overall company budget to assess effect on overall company performance. This ability to do “offline” scenario modeling at the operational level integrated to the overall financial plan is unique to Host Analytics. These scenarios can be created in a matter of minutes and compared with other scenarios without involving IT or without the need for any programming. Users can analyze the effect of moving to a different production facility, opening a new regional office; decide whether to acquire a company or model different economic conditions or changes to the inputs of the business.
Ease of useHost Analytics leverages Excel like capabilities and formulas to provide a familiar user interface for our customers. Our Excel like browser UI is backed up by a central database to eliminate the difficulties in budgeting in native Excel and a multi dimensional data cube to provide extensive modeling and reporting capabilities. All of these pieces are hosted and maintained by Host Analytics.
ReportingHost Analytics provides robust and flexible reporting options. Our users can access the same data using the tool that best suits their needs – ad hoc analysis, financial reporting, report books, managing both internal and external data in the same reports via our Enterprise Reporting Module (ERM) and excel reporting via an excel add-in. Additionally Host Analytics provides XBRL capabilities for publically traded organizations. Integrated business processes and single data modelHost Analytics provides a full integrated CPM suite. The integrated suite provides budgeting, sales forecasting, revenue planning and financial reporting and consolidation functionality from a single data model. The integrated approach provides the same look and feel across all modules, easier and more robust reporting, and scenario modeling and planning. Our integrated suite also makes it easy carry out variance analysis and to implement a more frequent and accurate planning process across your enterprise. The full suite functionality results in all business users accessing the same data regardless of the business process they are involved with: planning, reporting, modeling etc. There is no latency in the timing of data updates during a finance cycle. Our customers can implement the suite in a phased approach without having to go through a full implementation as the application expands – either in functionality used or numbers of users. This dramatically reduces the costs to implement consolidations on top of our budgeting solution (only an extra 55 hours) versus a new project implementation.