New Integration with Box to Automate and Streamline Data Integration for Finance
Redwood City, CA, August 27, 2014 – Host Analytics, the leader in cloud-based Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), today announced its Summer 2014 Release packed with new features and enhancements to improve process automation, reporting, analytics, and strategic planning. The new release includes numerous Cloud EPM industry firsts, providing greater automation of EPM processes through integration with Box, enhanced reporting, and support for long-range strategic planning processes.
The new release provides deep integration with Box. Box and Host Analytics will enable organizations to streamline data processing by providing users the ability to automatically move and load financial information from flat files with the security advantages of Box and without the need for third-party integration platforms.
“Host Analytics Summer 2014 breaks new ground in automating financial processes, delivering deeper planning and analytics capabilities, and giving executives the tools and dashboards they need to make better, smarter and faster decisions, ” said Dave Kellogg, CEO of Host Analytics. “We’re committed to a rapid and continuous pace of innovation for our customers, with a cloud-based delivery model to ensure that they’re always taking advantage of new functionality without the upgrade headaches of legacy on-premises EPM software.”
Automation
Leveraging the new integration with Box, the new Cloud Scheduler allows customers to benefit from “lights-out” processing when integrating data from financial and accounting files. Users can quickly and easily schedule a data upload from Box and move flat file data into the Host Analytics Cloud Platform. They simply upload, email or sync files to the Box cloud environment, and Host Analytics automatically uses pre-configured rules to integrate the data.
Cloud Scheduler is a breakthrough in process automation for financial organizations. Future releases will further automate processes, such as consolidation, publishing of Board books and financial reports, and other maintenance, integration, and distribution tasks.
The Summer 2014 release also introduces a new capability that is a first for Cloud EPM. Report Collections offer finance and accounting a way to automate the generation and distribution of reports. For example, in larger organizations with many P&L managers, finance typically has to manually assemble monthly reports customized for each business unit manager. With Report Collections, finance can reduce what could take weeks of work to a matter of minutes so they can focus on providing the insights that their business partners value.
Reporting and Analytics
The Summer 2014 Release offers new dashboards for CFOs. This CFO dashboard provides an at-a-glance summary of key metrics, delivered via a combination of high-level charts, reports and narratives. Key features include self-service Business Intelligence, 24 pixel-perfect chart types and interactive drill-down. CFOs can get key information and analysis on mission critical areas like what-if scenarios, customer churn and recurring revenue. The CFO Dashboard also provides analysis capabilities on bookings, revenue, headcount, customers, operations, billing and more.
Significant enhancements have also been made to Host Analytics Business Analytics. The new release includes new trellis charts, making it easy to compare several smaller charts along with 24 existing chart types. Users can now leverage hierarchical views of data and have access to drag-and-drop report selections, new aggregation options and expanded drill-down capabilities.
Dynamic Reports, the only report generator in the EPM market to combine ad hoc and presentation-quality reporting, gained additional drill-down and drill-through options. Now, customers can drill on any combination of groupings like operational expenses by GL account and sub-account, roll-ups like total expenses and even drill through to transactions on time roll-ups like year to date. These options provide quick insights into the details that any enterprise require to manage performance.
Strategic Planning
Host Analytics’ new Time Sets feature makes it easier for organizations to conduct strategic planning over longer time horizons. Rather than inputting data like forecasted revenue or operational expenses in monthly time-spans, customers can input data in quarterly and yearly time frames as they look further into the future. Host Analytics customers can now create multi-year plans that utilize a monthly time set for the first year, quarterly for the next two years and annually for the remaining years. The new release also allows customers to re-use time sets across a variety of models.
“We are impressed with all the new features in the Summer 2014 release and looking forward to exploring the CFO Dashboard,” said Rick Odom, Senior Manager Financial Planning and Analysis at Welch Allyn. “Seeing revenue on a map of the world will help our business partners get quick answers. We’re also going to use the new Time Sets feature to input at the quarterly level for the out months of our 18 month rolling forecasts. Since we re-forecast quarterly, this will save us time.”
About Host Analytics
Host Analytics is the leader in cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM), offering a suite of financial applications for planning, consolidation, reporting, and analytics. Host Analytics customers benefit from improved business agility, faster execution of core financial processes, and lower overall cost compared to legacy on-premises alternatives. World-class companies like NEC, Burlington Coat Factory, and Sanmina trust Host Analytics to power their strategic financial systems. Host Analytics is a fast-growing, private company backed by leading venture capitalists and is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices around the globe.
