23 January 2012

Imagine There is No Excel

A recent CFO.com headline asked us to Imagine there is No Excel. The article goes on to discuss how companies are dealing with analytics and the rise of big data.The beauty of Excel is not just it’s power and ease of use but it’s ubiquity. You can’t throw a rock in a Finance or Accounting department without hitting an Excel spreadsheet so it’s not going to go quietly into the night.
The CFO.com article touches on analysis products for big companies (Hyperion, Cognos) and for startups (QuickBooks users) but curiously leave out mid-sized companies.
I’ve been spending time lately with deFacto Performance Management and frankly, it does a great job of tackling many of the items discussed in the article for mid-sized firms.
deFacto is integrated corporate reporting, budgeting, forecasting and planning including consolidations and eliminations. The interface isn’t “Excel-Like” the interface IS Excel tied to SQL analytics for nice mix of power and simplicity. deFacto compares very nicely to the Hyperions and Cognoses of the world without the budget blowing price tag and ridiculously long project times. Plus it integrates well with Dynamics GP and Dynamics AX.
We like it so much that we’re using it in house at I.B.I.S. I expect that you’ll hear more from me about this subject soon but if you’re looking for serious Corporate Performance Management for GP or AX you need to look at deFacto.
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