We use Business Objects Planning XI (Planning) to deliver enterprise-class budgeting and reporting solutions. Planning is a "best-of-breed" budgeting, forecasting and reporting tool that has recently been integrated into the BO suite.

The product is based on Microsoft Excel™ and inherits most of the flexibility and functionality of that software, but has additional functions designed to overcome the inherent limitations of Excel.

Excel Issues

For the purposes of budgeting for an organisation, Excel is a very useful tool but it has some fundamental problems:

1. Amalgamation of data: At the end of a budget cycle the manual process of collating all the spreadsheets and amalgamating the data is a time-consuming and error-prone task.
2. Protection of workbooks: A problem that many have with the process is that allowing users to edit workbooks to edit the data almost inevitably means they can change parts of the sheet that they are not supposed to, thus causing problems for embedded functions and potentially "breaking" reports.
3. Insecurity of Data: Within an Excel environment it is nearly impossible to control who sees what.

Planning combats these weaknesses by:

1. Adding a ROLAP database (either Microsoft SQL or Oracle) to the back-end of the software which the budgets write to directly. This allows for any and all data previously saved to be returned in a report immediately; no separate 'consolidation', 'refresh' or 'publishing' process is required.
2. Providing a controlled environment which both prevents users from changing embedded formulae and the layout of the worksheet, but still permits insertion of new information.
3. Including a security layer (incorporating a Process Control function) that works with Excel's worksheet controls that permit control down to the cell level in budgets. This security can be applied on both a group and user-level (in parallel) giving unparalleled control.

Functions

Fundamentally, Planning takes a standard ROLAP database and wraps Excel around it to provide the system interface. This interface provides the following functions:

• Robust and flexible budgeting system that can be as simple or as complex as determined by your business rules;
• Reporting tool that leverages off your existing Excel skill set to enable your Finance team to take on the role of report-writers with minimal training (one day is fairly typical). Drill-downs and report-pack creation are just some of the features of this part of the package;
• Process Control system with lock-down and e-mail notification capability. It enables the creation of (effectively) any number of stages that your budgets pass through during the budget cycle;
• Hierarchy and Chart management that allows for 'what-if' style reporting in minutes while maintaining existing structures;
• Scheduler service for the unattended execution of system processes and report batches at the server-side;
• Security providing virtually any level of control over what users or groups of users can view/modify within the system;
• Multiple deployment options and a system compatible with thin-client software providing maximum functionality for slow, external connections (see below).

The Planning database allows for simple integration into any of Business Objects' reporting or dashboarding solutions for additional reporting power and flexibility.