If you ask a room full of finance persons if it is time to drop Excel for budgeting and planning, you will probably get a resounding positive response due to their personal experience or shall I say struggles with budgeting and planning with Excel.
One of the heated debates today is not anymore whether or not it is time to drop Excel. Instead, it is about which route should one take – On-premise or cloud solution?
This shift from discussing whether or not it is time to move to a Budgeting software to becoming a discussion on which delivery route to take is an evidence of the strong willingness of the finance persons to streamlines business processes.
So let´s say, you have done your homework and you are already familiar with the basics of budgeting such as you have taken a closer look at your company´s products, growth plans and potentials, budgets, etc. then it is time to move a more budgeting software “hunt” specific question – What are the top 5 most useful feature for budgeting and planning?
- Predefined Workflow
This is an important feature to look for. You need to dig deeper to check if the software has budget administrator that will allow you to configure budget process and set up areas for responsibility. You also need to look at whether the tool is organization-based so you can configure validation rules. Then have a look at whether it has budget process (even though optional) so you can monitor the progress of your budget cycle.
- Easy Role-based menu
When looking for a budgeting and planning solution, look for a software that has no excel sheet folder navigation, contains full role based menu so that you see only what is relevant to the person´s line of work, and a tool that can allow you to trace tasks and assignments for easy monitoring.
- Create Custom Spreadsheet
This is a feature that saves you time by making sure you can apply the percentage across all the items in the sheet. While it may look so simple, it is a very time-saving and convenient feature to have.
- Support for Multiple books
When looking for a budgeting software, don’t settle. Look for a tool that is not limited in its scope of support. Several tools out there while they are also able cannot support multiple books which in the long run is not beneficial for any ambitiously growing company.
- Budget level security and user management
This is a good feature to look for since having this allows you to enable security for accessing and entering budgetary information. This budget level security can be set for each user, access rights granted to each user, and different access rights granted for transactions at different budgetary levels.
There are many other features that you should look for but ultimately it is down to what problems you wish to be addressed, how your prioritize, and what your non-negotiable features for a budgeting and planning tool are.
If you are at a crossroads in choosing a budgeting and planning software, whether it be what the perfect fit for you is or whether you should go with on premise vs cloud, etc. talk to us at DSPanel and maybe we can help.
At DSPanel, we work daily with questions about budgeting and planning that others might only face once or twice in his career. This gives us the experience and qualifications to work as advisers and pedagogical knowledge brokers.
DSPanel consultants have far more than 10 000 hours of practical training on how to deal with obstacles in their respective line of expertise. This experience allows us at DSPanel to transform obstacles to become sound and practical advice. If you are looking for a robust budgeting and planning software, check out Performance Canvas by DSPanel.
DSPanel offers cutting edge technology platform for business analytics, planning, and visualization. DSPanel designs, builds, and operates with the end users in mind. Performance Canvas was created by DSPanel to answer the unarticulated needs of the market not addressed by previous available solutions. With Performance Canvas, information is transformed into valuable business insights for the business executives to utilize in their decision-making process. DSPanel currently has over 2500 organizations deploying their solutions.
