Dilbert on Preparing the Annual Budget

I love Dilbert and I especially love Dilbert on anything related to budgeting, reporting, analytics or business intelligence.

Source: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2013-10-21/

In many organizations, a certain aura of 'mystery' surrounds how the annual budget is prepared in Excel. In some cases, those preparing it cannot even articulate it very well.  This 'mystery' is another risk for those organizations that do not invest in a CPM platform and 'de-mystefying' the planning process.

When will Management Reporter do budgeting and forecasting?

This post is nothing but my own thoughts, as Microsoft unfortunately does not have an update on when Management Reporter will incorporate budgeting and forecasting functionality.

That being said, I wonder if the following two recent developments in MR 2012 RU3 might hint that budgeting is just around the corner:

• Extension of the data mart for Dynamics GP
• MR Web Report Viewer

What could these developments hint at you ask? 

Well, the data mart would be a good backbone for housing the budget and forecast version data in a uniform way across all Dynamics ERPs.  Since MR will eventually be the full Dynamcis ERP CPM solution, the budgets will not necessarily need to be brought back into the respective Dynamics ERP, unless other aspects of the ERP require it (i.e. encumbrance management).

To a lesser degree, a web-based interface simplifies access to Management Reporter and could be leveraged for future remote budget entry similar, but much better than, Forecaster's webclient.

Click here for more or my ramblings about budgeting in Management Reporter.

Budgeting in Management Reporter

It has been over two years now since Management Reporter 2 was released and available for Microsoft Dynamics GP - its hard to believe!  Click here to see my first blog post on the subject.

Microsoft's original road map showed budgeting and forecasting built into Management Reporter in two stages:

• Simple budgeting in 2012
• Complex budgeting in 2014

Obviously a roadmap is highly subject to change and at this point in the game, Microsoft is still in the planning stages.  While this may cause uncertainty for users who are holding out for this functionality to be added to MR, lets hope that our wait is worth it in as far as the future functionality delivered in MR.

According to my Linked In poll here, the majority of MR users want to see budgeting as the next feature, followed up by integration with sub-ledgers rather than just the GL.

Since all the Dynamics ERP solutions have basic budgeting features, perhaps Microsoft's strategy has changed to hold-off and just deliver features that surpass Microsoft Forecaster rather than introduce basic budgeting and forecasting.

Either way, if you or your organization is looking for a unified CPM solution that handles all budgeting, forecasting, reporting and analysis in one place today, look no further than Prophix CPM.  Click here for more information on its advanced capabilities.  Your budget contributors, financial analysts and their spouses or significant others will thank you!

Keeping your Planning Focus

Do you or your organization suffer from a lack of focus during your planning, budgeting, forecasting and reporting exercises?

The other day, while I was watching my five year old son's indoor soccer game I noticed that I was following the action in the wrong game?  Why?  The reason is simple enough, my son was playing a field over and the spectator stands are only available on one side of the field, which meant that I had to keep my focus on the second field instead of the game being played right in front of me!

I believe that our planning and reporting can suffer the same 'lack of focus'.  It can occur for a few reasons, including:

• Spending more time collecting and organizing data than analysing the data
• Budgeting/forecasting at an inappropriate level of detail, effectively drawing our focus from key business drivers that should receive more relative focus and giving equal weight to administrative expenses
• Routinely generating, reviewing and analyzing a standard set of reports, as opposed to interacting with the data and performing 'ad-hoc analysis' on key areas and variances

New Features in MR 2012!

Management Reporter (MR) 2012 is chaulk full of new features, many of which in line with the 'distribution theme' of this release.

Here is a partial listing:

• MR 2012 now integrates with all Dynamics ERPs (i.e. NAV has been added)
• Drill-back to Dynamics ERP
• Comments
• Multiple-destination distribution flexibility
• SharePoint integration
• Scheduling
• Missing Account Analysis

What I find spectacular is that Microsoft has delivered on all the enhancements it promised last year that I blogged about here.

For more information, please visit the official Microsoft Dynamics CPM blog where they are show casing new features each week.  In many cases, MS has included a link to a YouTube MR 2012 demo! 

How to Build Financial Budgets with Operational Models

This is part 2 of a 3 part series on combining financial & operational models to link key business drivers to budgets & forecasts.  Click here to review part 1.

So, how should you go about building financial budgets with live linkage to operational models?

• Shed disconnected, error prone and broken-linked spreadsheet models popularly referred to as 'Excel hell'
• Leverage technology to:
• Eliminate manual processes used to 'link' operational data
• Enable variance analysis at both the financial and operational model level
• Leverage manager and professional/analyst resources by having them focus on higher-value work (i.e. rather than compiling data)

Please browse this  autodemo for an overview of Prophix CPM, a solution that can facilitate sophisticated operational modelling.

Why Financial Budgets Need Operational Models

This is part 1 of a 3 part series on combining financial & operational models to link key business drivers to budgets & forecasts.

So, why do financial budgets need operational models?

• Increase ability to anticipate and react to change in today’s uncertain environment where past ≠ future
• Traditional budgeting’s focus is often misplaced (i.e. focused on salaries & wages vs attracting/retaining customers and human resources)
• Key drivers link operational tactics to the expected financial results of executing on strategy, giving insight behind the budgeted numbers and facilitating variance analysis

Please browse this autodemo for an overview of Prophix CPM, a solution that can facilitate sophisticated operational modelling.

Looking for an FRx, MR, or Forecaster alternative or replacement?

For the record, I am a huge supporter of Microsoft's CPM solutions, which currently include FRx, MR and Forecaster.  While these solutions generally serve most CPM needs, there are certain CPM requirements that cannot be addressed well by these solutions.

Prophix CPM is a scalable enterprise level CPM solution that can handle 7 of these more challenging requirements:

1. Combine financial & operational models to link key business drivers to budgets & forecasts
2. Facilitate complex planning and forecasting scenarios
3. Improve reporting speed
4. Facilitate a robust workflow to help manage the budgeting cycle
5. Automate the dissemination of reports and budgeting templates
6. Fully automate and schedule administrative functions (i.e. loading of data, etc)
7. Reduce administration to facilitate more frequent forecasting and timely intervention

If you're looking for a replacement for any or all of these solutions, Prophix CPM should make the short-list. Contact me or view the autodemo for more information.

Prophix CPM

Prophix CPM is a fully integrated performance management solution that empowers organizations with budgeting, planning, forecasting, reporting, consolidations and personnel planning capabilities.  
 

Prophix CPM’s robust analysis functionality empowers end-user investigation with ad-hoc ‘drag and drop’ capabilities, automatic variance calculations and full drill-down to details on measures within the business model.

Prophix CPM has the ability to combine financial and operational business models, meaning that you can leverage Prophix to manage performance across your entire organization and roll these operation budgets into your financial model.  An example would be to create a project/job costing model that facilitates budgeting project costs at the operational level.  This model would then facilitate budget to actual reporting for projects and automatically update the financial budget/forecast when changes are made to any project’s budget/forecast.

Prophix CPM facilitates the automation and scheduling of administrative functions, from importing actual data to distributing Excel templates for end user contribution to distributing financial reports via email or Microsoft SharePoint.

Prophix CPM is ERP agnostic meaning that it can be used with any ERP system including any Microsoft Dynamics ERP.  It also fully integrates with TARGIT BI.

For more information contact me and/or view the Prophix CPM Product Tour.

Forecaster 'Missing Link' Found!

With Microsoft's recent release of the Forecaster Data Transfer Tool, a 'missing link' in the Microsoft CPM solution has been delivered.  

This is excellent news and means that we no longer have to rely on a manual Excel based method to feed Forecaster data into Dynamics GP.  Instead, this process can now be automated. 

It also allows Management Reporter to report on Forecaster data via Dynamics GP versus directly as can be done in FRx.

Best of all, this tool is free! 

For more information, visit the Microsoft Dynamics CPM blog or CustomerSource.

Note: The tool is compliant with GP2010.

Management Reporter: 7 Reasons to Upgrade

This blog is the condensed material to be presented in a webinar tomorrow:

• Familiar User Interface (MR is both like MS Office and FRx)
• Simplified Reporting Tools (i.e. Undo, Associations, Hide/Unhide, Exporting/Importing Selected Building Blocks, etc..)
• Powerful Analysis & Personalization Capabilities (Logos, Custom Page Numbering, Custom Page Breaks, Complex Filtering, etc...)
• Superior Performance & Security (SQL based solution, Enhanced Security, Server-side processing, Supports 64 bit, Windows Authentication, etc...)
• Migrating from FRx to MR is Easy! (Well.. for the most part!)
• MR is the Future! (MS has made a significant investment in MR as the CPM platform for Dynamics GP)
• You Want to! (MR is only compatible with GP2010 and higher.  FRx SP11 is also compatible with GP2010.)

Migrating to Management Reporter (MR) from FRx when Upgrading to GP2010

Most of FRx’s core functionality is already built into Management Reporter (MR), including multi-company consolidation, multi-currency and AA integration. As such, many organizations using FRx could migrate to MR today along with GP2010 upgrade. 

Note:  Organizations do not have to migrate to MR with a GP2010 upgrade; however, an upgrade to GP2010 is required to use MR.

Having said that, a review of FRx functionality currently being used to ensure there are no surprise functionality gaps that may pose an issue upon migration is a good idea!

While this information is constantly changing, a current snap-shot of functionality gaps is outlined below:



'Not Yet' in MR:

Feature Pack 1 (FP/SP1), which is scheduled for fall 2010, is expected to have the following functionality:


• Translations (based off GP translations enhancement which is not yet in GP2010)


• Forecaster integration that will be more advanced that FRx’s

Feature Pack 2 (FP/SP2) which has a 'distribution' theme, scheduled for spring/summer 2011, is expected to have the following functionality:


• Sharepoint integration


• Email


• Drill down to GP (inquiry screen and possibly SRS reports)

'Not Currently Planned' for MR:

I believe the only ‘real’ deal breaker here is ‘row linking’ which is used in a small percentage of advanced FRx design environments.  However, a few other items, such as 'report manager' and 'effective dates' are also currently not planned to be incorporated into MR.  That may be somewhat misleading though, as MR may incorporate different more advanced functionality that would handle the same type of situations and much more.

 'Different' or 'Improved' in MR:



Many features in MR are improved or different.  A few of these items are listed below:


• Translations (SP1)


• Forecaster integration (SP1)


• No Webport – Report Library (Current) or Sharepoint (SP2)


This is not a complete list.  I hope to blog about these features in the future, so stay tuned!

Introducing Management Reporter

Management Reporter (MR) is Microsoft's Corporate Performance Management (CPM) platform for its Dynamics ERP solutions. It has been available for Dynamics GP2010 for about a month (See Microsoft's official Press Release).

CPM is a Business Intelligence (BI) capability area covering:

• financial reporting,
• consolidations,
• planning,
• budgeting and
• forecasting

In short, MR is FRx on steroids! In fact, MR is much more than that. It is more than a new graphical user interface, the entire product has been rebuilt from the back end (how it accesses data) to the front end (the user interface). It is the foundation upon which the future of Microsoft's CPM solutions will be built and that is very exciting!
MR effectively replaces FRx for users on Dynamics GP2010 and above. However, some advanced FRx reporting design capabilities are slated to be delivered in the fall of 2010, so not every FRx installation can migrate to MR today. Remember, patience is a virtue!
If you're worried about migrating from FRx to MR, don't be, because Microsoft has built a migration path/tool. Of course, each situation is unique and some manual updating of reports may be requried in some circumstances.
In case you are wondering, MR is currently slated to encompass the planning, budgeting and forecasting capabilties of Microsoft Forecaster by 2011, thus effectively replacing that product as well. As with FRx, a migration path will be available. So, your current investment is safe!
A final word of praise for FRx... FRx has been the industry leading financial reporting package for nearly 20 years. I think we all agree that it is a great product, but it is based on old technology and I think we can also agree that it needs more than just a facelift to carry it into the future. That, together with Microsoft's vision to build the industry leading CPM solution on a common platform, is essentially the raison d'être for Management Reporter.
Warning: Management Reporter may cause financial report designers to renew their excitement for creating financial reports.