Delighting FP&A Customers with Enhanced Breakback and More Powerful Analytics

Many FP&A teams are stuck on a treadmill of laborious number-crunching, and struggle to manage data across disconnected spreadsheets and aging financial applications. The end-result is a huge disconnect between finance organizations and top-level operations.

Fortunately for Planful customers, the latest Summer17 release introduces dramatic improvements across the board to help FP&A teams maximize corporate performance.

The new release has more than 50 enhancements including an improved version of breakback for added flexibility and accuracy; enhanced NetSuite integration to speed up analysis of financial results; a more intuitive and visually engaging user experience; and performance enhancements such as simulation engine optimization to accelerate the processing of “what-if” analyses and scenario management.

FP&A professionals will benefit from the streamlined workflows for both simple and complex EPM operations, and fewer clicks required to accomplish tasks.

“Planful has advanced its support for the office of finance through its optimized integration with NetSuite that brings the entire Planful EPM suite to its accounting and ERP customers,” said Mark Smith, CEO and chief research officer at Ventana Research, “Through its commitment to NetSuite’s business and finance customers, Planful continues its long tradition for delivering best in class planning and performance management for every organization.”

The new breakback feature is a major game-changer, according to Planful customers, partners, and industry analysts that caught a sneak peak of the Summer17 release.

Simply put, the Planful breakback feature introduced in the Spring17 release, is a powerful analytics tool that enables users to effectively reverse inputs and outputs within a model, allowing them to take a given output variable, override it, and then break the values of its inputs in a consistent way. Summer17 enhances this feature by introducing multi-dimensional holds, which can exclude dimensions from the breakback process. It also includes an audit trail that enables users to track the lineage of numbers within the models. Together, these features give finance professionals the ability to quickly backsolve calculations that no other cloud-based EPM system can handle.

Here’s what our partner BPM Partners shared about the enhancements to breakback:

“The new breakback feature in Planful Modeling is a big differentiator and a big advantage for customers,” said Craig Schiff, CEO of BPM Partners.  “This is a powerful feature that will save them a lot of time when making top-down changes to models and forecasts.”

After previewing the new and enhanced features in Summer17, here’s what Greystar and Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences had to say:

“Global Search is a new feature I did not realize we should have demanded all along,” said Brandt Getz, senior application developer at Greystar.  “What a great enhancement that will change the way our team members interact with the product.”

“The introduction of Bookmarks and Global Search functionality within Planful will certainly aid in a better overall experience for our end users,” said Melissa Osika, senior accountant at Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences.  “This will allow them to easily find what they need when they access Planful and perform their required tasks in a much more efficient manner.”

Learn More

If you are an existing customer and want more information, you can read the full press release on our website.  You can also view the Summer17 new feature release training webcast.

If you are considering a new EPM solution and reading this blog post, you’ve already taken a big step towards transforming your financial and operational performance. The most important thing in selecting the right EPM solution is to have a plan. Sound planning will help you set clear goals, get buy-in across the organization, select the best solution, and ensure a smooth transition. This whitepaper will guide you all the way through the buying process, from assessing your current state to selecting EPM the right EPM using key evaluation. Click the link below to read the Planful Buyer’s Guide to EPM.