Moving Closer To Real-Time Financial PlanningMoving Closer To Real-Time Financial Planning

Earlier this year, Ford Motor Co. was forced to write off $1 billion of the value of its inventory of palladium and other precious metals used to manufacture auto-emissions parts. The problem? While new engineering designs were decreasing the need for palladium, Ford's purchasing department continued to stock up on the pricey metal. Then the price of palladium dropped, leaving the carmaker with a huge inventory.

Such are the dangers of poor collaboration and lack of access to real-time information for financial planning. This week, Adaytum Inc. and Comshare Inc. will unveil financial planning applications they say will bring users closer to the holy grail of real-time financial planning.

Most companies use slow, manual methods for developing and communicating financial plans or plan changes, says Bruce Richardson, an AMR Research analyst. The problem is that financial planners often do their work with little or no collaboration with sales, marketing, purchasing, manufacturing, and human-resource managers, Richardson says, citing the Ford example.

"Planning is too important to leave just to the finance department," Richardson says. And the lack of up-to-date information makes it difficult to set and execute corporate strategies. "You can't make changes to your organization's direction unless you have a snapshot of where you are."

This week, at its user conference in Orlando, Fla., Adaytum Inc. will unveil Adaytum e.Planning 3.0, which will provide new collaboration capabilities for increasing the workforce's involvement in the planning process and integration features for cross-functional planning within large companies. The software includes modules that let financial analysts, line managers, executives, and administrators participate in enterprise planning. It combines top-down planning and financial modeling with bottom-up data-collection, sales-forecasting, budgeting, and workflow capabilities. Adaytum e.Planning 3.0 is in beta testing and will be available in the second half of the year. Pricing has not been set.

Comshare will unveil Comshare MPC 4.5 for corporate performance management--the vendor's phrase for integrating financial-planning, budgeting, forecasting, and analysis applications into a single collaborative system. Features in the new release include automated statistical forecasting, support for the analysis services built into Microsoft SQL Server, E-mail alert capabilities, and improved chart graphics. The application is also accessible to more people through support for Pocket PC mobile devices and Microsoft Excel via .Net communications. The software is available now with the price of an average system around $100,000.