We used it to consolidate our actual and budget all in 1 tools, build out your basic reporting. (P&l, BS & Cash flow) so that our leadership could make data based decisions.
Pros
Connecting to Netsuite
Report building
Consolidating financial results
Cons
Dashboards
Some big like where you have to click to write a formula
Likelihood to Recommend
For anyone that uses Netsuite I would strongly recommend the tool. It was perfect for my start up that had nothing in the past. Some one that want a shorter learning curve, the tool was easy to learn.
VU
Verified User
Director in Finance and Accounting (Telecommunications company, 201-500 employees)
Used the opex planning, reporting, dashboard, monthly forecast and yearly budgeting, mutliple scenarios, topline data load, etc. It streamlined the process and made it sure fast and accurate so saved lots of times for our deliverable, enabled us to have monthly forecast instead of quarterly.
Pros
structured planning which is the opex and headcount planning
dynamic reporting which has reports that can run each circle without changing any of the report itself but updating the substitution variable to make it dynamic
BS template which makes forecast BS automated
Cons
Topline complicated model still not working well in Planful but more based on excel
AL and ML function is not that much of a use
dashboard and restore or redo function can be expanded
Likelihood to Recommend
Scenario 1: our opex and workforce planning only needs to enter the front end data and Planful will process and automate the process itself. Scenario 2: our reporting and BS forecast process now is all automated which user just need to change the @curmth@ to the latest month and update a few items on invoice and collection, then all the end result will be populated automate.
Planful is used in both reporting and planning functions. Integrations have helped addressed long standing issues of pulling int data from multiple sources. With a live integration we are able to see actuals and plan in a single place. The flexibility of reporting allows quick comparisons between version and manage these scenarios. In addition, dynamic planning allows you to easily bring in inputs and load outputs from complex financial directly in excel
Pros
Flexible Reporting
Data Integrations
Office Integration
Cons
Customer Support
Concise Documentation
Easy to get started, difficult to become a true power user
Likelihood to Recommend
Plan is great for organizations who are looking to bring in their modelling into a unified platform without sacrificing the ease of use of traditional spreadsheets. Depending on how many of the features your organization wants to use, you'll need team members who can really dedicate their time to understanding how the platform works so you can continuously build and improve on functionality built.
Smaller companies who do not have the capacity to spare the resource may find it difficult to spare the time to fully immerse themselves and learn how to use the full capabilities of Planful
VU
Verified User
Employee in Finance and Accounting (Online Media company, 1001-5000 employees)
We use Planful [(formerly Host Analytics)] to report our financial results to our managers, Advisory Board, creditors, and employees. We are able to forecast to better understand how the year is evolving and plan/adjust for the future. Provide a reporting package quickly with Spotlight. Am working on updating our revenue forecasting with Spotlight/modeling which will help us understand our revenue components easier and help our managers forecast easier. The software helps us adapt quickly to many changes in our product offering, department reorganizations and expense allocation methodology. We are able to proforma changes before we implement them to better understand their impact.
Pros
Dynamic organization - able to have multiple reporting hierarchies - can go back in time to display how it was and see how it is today.
Forecasting - able to create templates to mirror your revenue recognition processes/splits
Able to schedule jobs in the evening to sync data with your general ledger system and process expense or other allocations
Professional reports are easily updated to publish current results timely
Cons
With Intacct not being set up with a separate net income account needed to get creative with consolidation module to enable retained earnings to roll
Would like to be able to drill down on actuals in forecast reports too not just actual reports only
Sometimes headers take up too much real estate on certain reports - wish there was a way to update the font size
Likelihood to Recommend
Planful [(formerly Host Analytics)] works in most scenarios for me. We needed to be able to forecast to blend actual with projections and then easily budget/forecast into next year. We needed a tool that was cloud based that enabled the managers to get data daily to give them information on their business and a way to predict/merge with Salesforce their customer future revenue.
Today Host Analytics is being used just by the finance team -- it helps us scale our financial planning from zero to one. Huge boost for team productivity.
Pros
Excel integration via Modeling Cloud
Robust out-of-the-box feature set, particularly in terms of payroll
Easy connection to your Accounting ERP via boomi connection
No size limitations (# of scenarios, model complexity size)
Cons
User interface could be more attractive and approachable
Better visualization tools within the application (e.g. charts, tables, etc)
Overall system speed -- particularly in terms of switching between templates
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited: investment planning, compensation planning, excel integration, planning for organizations < 10k employees, planning at startups
Less appropriate: revenue modeling, planning for organizations > 10k employees, planning for organizations with > 20 Finance team members actively using the system
VU
Verified User
Director in Finance and Accounting (Internet company, 501-1000 employees)
It is used by my organization for financial planning & forecasting as well as management reporting. It is used to not only host financial data but non financial metrics to create dynamic reports and budgets that can be utilized for a variety of cases. The cloud based platform makes collaboration between the teams effective and efficient.
Pros
Cloud based platform enhances collaboration
Dynamic models increase efficiency
user friendly
Cons
can always be more user friendly
ability to calculate without creating custom report template
Likelihood to Recommend
Host Analytics Cloud EPM Suite is well suited for financial planning and management reporting. The dynamic cloud based capabilities make it very useful in those instances. A scenario when it may be less appropriate is for financial reporting done by the accounting team as that requires linkage to invoicing and purchasing system.
It's being used by the Finance department to track and model spending across the whole organization. We do all of our planning, forecasting, and BvA reporting using Host.
Pros
Intuitive and simple (easy to understand and learn) user experience
Fast processing time for inputs and reports
Excel based system in a Windows environment
Cons
Modeling cloud does not support Excel based formulas
Likelihood to Recommend
Easy to implement before the company is very large scale. It works well with integrations from other business systems.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Finance and Accounting (Internet company, 501-1000 employees)
Host is solely used by the Finance team. Currently, we are utilizing Host for planning, budgeting, reporting, and consolidation. We selected a Host as having the right mix of flexibility and not on-premises solution to support our needs for planning system and error reduction. We built an out of the box solution to fit our unique needs.
Pros
Does not require on premesis resourse (Dev) support.
Can be accessed via any browser.
Easy to use
Ease of customization that can be replicated across the entire organization.
Cons
Processing speed and lag time
Shortcuts
Further evolution of Excel support is needed
Likelihood to Recommend
Nimble and flexible teams that are dependent on Excel workloads.
VU
Verified User
Director in Finance and Accounting (Internet company, 501-1000 employees)
Our corporate finance team is the primary user of the interface although reports are circulated company wide. Host Analytics solves the business problem of having a consolidated cloud based planning tool. We got overwhelmed as a team with offline Excel files and having inconsistent numbers, that we needed a single consolidated source of truth and dynamic model.
Pros
Dynamic Modeling - Our team relies heavily on the planning model as it is dynamic to make various scenarios so we can update our forecasts in real-time.
Reporting is a major pro in Host - We use it as our single source of truth for all actuals related to OPEX, CAPEX and headcount.
User Interface - While it takes a while to get a feel for the system, it is really flexible and easy to update templates as business needs change.
Cons
Formatting has been a major pain in Host. It is very limited and does not match the type of formatting that we use to produce board quality reports and charts.
Usage on Google Chrome browser is limited - Some modules are not accessible within Chrome and must be used through Internet Explorer.
Likelihood to Recommend
Host is very flexible and it's great for building planning models. We have found it to be a lot easier to manage than models housed within Excel as you need to do less upkeep (linking across files, updating mapping multiple times etc). Overall we are very happy with Host as a product although no cloud solution is perfect. We are excited by the new releases every month as the features continue to improve!
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Finance and Accounting (Internet company, 501-1000 employees)
