This article is part 1 of an 8-part series on evaluating the best CPM tools for your business. Part 1 focuses on evaluating planning capabilities within the best budgeting and forecasting software applications. Planning software is used to streamline budgeting and forecasting processes and belongs to a software category typically referred to as Corporate Performance Management (CPM). Whether caused by economic uncertainty or a more competitive marketplace, this type of cloud software is rapidly increasing in popularity right now. After all, companies that can deliver accurate budgets to plan for their resource allocations, and that continuously update their forecasts to help predict results, get an edge over businesses that don’t have this capability. However, just implementing a CPM software to streamline the planning processes is not the entire solution for delivering an optimized system for budgeting and forecasting. While there are now dozens of software vendors that can deliver CPM software with planning features, you also need to make sure that the solution is RIGHT for your business. This means that the functionality must be right for your unique company and its budgeting and forecasting needs, and it also has to support industry-specific requirements. And of course, the
return on investment (ROI ) needs to be positive. When working through a software selection process to find the planning software for your organization, there are some features to look for that are more important than others.
Here are some of the top features to look for to find the best budgeting and forecasting app While most vendors can probably showcase more than 100 features in their product (something which can make software selection a virtual nightmare), there is a clear 80/20 rule that can be applied when you are ready to zoom in on critical success factors. Here is a list of five major functionality areas:
Note: Be aware of CPM vendors that have two template designers because that means twice as much training for power users. It can become messy in workflows, report packages, and other areas if templates are created with two different technologies. The reason for two tools is almost always that the functionality in the vendor’s proprietary designer was not enough for their customers, so they then added an Excel designer to handle complex customer models with a lot of formatting. Without a strong template designer in your new planning solution, you are at high risk of either significantly having to change your favorite budget input formats to fit the capability of the vendor’s tool or, in many cases, of keeping a portion of your planning models in manual spreadsheets. Having a flexible and user-friendly template designer also allows for the creation of budget reports that can be run throughout the budget process to see real-time budget updates and identify potential areas of concern. This helps you address issues quickly and early in the process – meaning you will have better visibility and more accurate projections.
Here is list of about 500 examples of reports, budgeting, and forecasting forms, as well as dashboards. It is a good idea to ask your vendor candidates if you can see examples from their template libraries. The more examples they provide, the more you can be assured that their solution has a good template designer.
Without line item detail, an end user may have to keep detailed build-ups in spreadsheets. Alternatively, they may simply enter higher level figures with no bottom-up calculation behind their numbers. Both of these approaches may result in more inaccurate budgets, as well as delays in the budget process as budget approvers and reviewers often have to ask department heads and other end users to provide explanations and additional detail to back up their numbers.
Without a good workflow module and checklists, chances are good that you are spending a lot more time reminding people of deadlines, asking if their numbers are final and ready for approval, and otherwise managing the process. Processes can get even more frustrating and complex to manage manually in companies that have multiple budget versions to keep track of.
- Flexible input form and report designer
Note: Be aware of CPM vendors that have two template designers because that means twice as much training for power users. It can become messy in workflows, report packages, and other areas if templates are created with two different technologies. The reason for two tools is almost always that the functionality in the vendor’s proprietary designer was not enough for their customers, so they then added an Excel designer to handle complex customer models with a lot of formatting. Without a strong template designer in your new planning solution, you are at high risk of either significantly having to change your favorite budget input formats to fit the capability of the vendor’s tool or, in many cases, of keeping a portion of your planning models in manual spreadsheets. Having a flexible and user-friendly template designer also allows for the creation of budget reports that can be run throughout the budget process to see real-time budget updates and identify potential areas of concern. This helps you address issues quickly and early in the process – meaning you will have better visibility and more accurate projections.
Here is list of about 500 examples of reports, budgeting, and forecasting forms, as well as dashboards. It is a good idea to ask your vendor candidates if you can see examples from their template libraries. The more examples they provide, the more you can be assured that their solution has a good template designer.
- Line item detail and comments
Input of expenses at the GL account level. Includes line item detail, spreading, etc.
- Workflow and checklists
- Deadlines
- Open and closed budgets
- Budget statuses (submitted, approved, rejected, etc.)
- Which input forms should be used by different departments
- And more
Planning and reporting process manager
- ERP and payroll integrations
- Built for cloud
- Does the annual subscription from each vendor contain the same user count and modules?
- If you are receiving a discount, how long until it resets to the list price?
- Does the vendor have a written policy for annual price increases?
- Are the implementation estimates from each vendor for exactly the same work?
- Painful distribution
- Troubles with collection and consolidation of spreadsheets
- Broken links
- Poor reporting
- Lack of user security
- Versioning issues
- Vendor Comparison Tool and ROI Calculator
- Solver Tour Central
- 500+ Budget and Report Examples
- Analyst reports and ratings: G2 and Dresner
- Software Selection Blog
- QuickStart - 1 day deployment with pre-built templates