Host Analytics Launches Cloud-Based Financial Modeling System

Host Analytics, a provider of cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM) systems, has launched Host Analytics Modeling Cloud, a new module in Host Analytics Cloud EPM Suite. Modeling Cloud provides a bridge between operational and financial planning processes to help companies drive better organizational alignment and achieve greater business agility.

The company says that Modeling Cloud is designed to serve business users wherever they work: In Excel spreadsheets or via a web browser or mobile device with a “write once, run anywhere” architecture.

“Host Analytics Modeling Cloud is the essential ingredient in realizing the ‘Enterprise’ element of the Enterprise Performance Management vision,” said Dave Kellogg, CEO at Host Analytics. “With Modeling Cloud, we can give operational business users the freedom and flexibility to model, plan, and analyze their key metrics while connecting those metrics and models back to the Office of Finance and the master Corporate Plan.”

Modeling Cloud Announcement Highlights and Facts:

As modern businesses become more and more metrics-driven, departments are under increasing pressure to anticipate future business outcomes and show how those outcomes will impact critical company metrics and targets. Unfortunately, much of that modeling today happens in desktop spreadsheets that lack the needed data scalability, security, and flexibility required to be effective. Beyond that, they typically are not fully integrated into the monthly and quarterly financial plans, forcing corporate and financial stakeholders to cut and paste to get view of current operational plans, drivers and metrics and unable to quickly make business adjustments as a result.

Host Analytics Modeling Cloud addresses issues businesses are facing by providing:

o Self-service interactive Query and Analysis lets finance and business users analyze the data in any way that they like with speed-of-thought response times.

o Advanced modeling that lets users create new members, calculations, sub-models, and even business dimensions in models with no support from IT.

o Excel-based reporting so that organizations can harness the full power of Excel for information presentation while ensuring “one version of the truth” from a centralized, secure data store.

“We don’t want anything to get in between our users and the data they need to analyze,” said Dave Bybee, Associate Vice President of Financial Planning & Analysis at Service King Collision Repair. “We expect Host Analytics Modeling Cloud to let them interact with their data effortlessly through Excel, while making it easy for different users to work with tailored sub-models that reflect their view of the business in exactly the way that they need to see it.”

Modeling cloud empowers users within and beyond Finance by providing deeper insights, with the ability to anticipate business outcomes and inform financial plans. Users can collaborate securely across Excel, web and mobile interfaces with autonomy and ownership. And they can deploy new modeling applications quickly and securely via the cloud.

“Our recent research shows that most companies still use spreadsheets exclusively for budgeting and operational planning, and their plans end up less accurate as a results,” said Robert Kugel, Senior Vice President and Research Director at Ventana Research. “Despite their many shortcomings, users find spreadsheets easy to use, and software vendors have been historically challenged to deliver a modeling environment to match that ease-of-use. Host Analytics has gone a long way to addressing this challenge with its Modeling Cloud.”

Available now, Host Analytics Modeling Cloud incorporates a number of modern technologies to address business user modeling in a way that goes beyond traditional solutions. Modeling cloud uses HTML, NoSQL, and In-memory Computing technologies to deliver unprecedented business user flexibility and breakthrough performance along with the elastic scalability and lower overall costs of a natively multi-tenant cloud architecture. Analytical views and reports are saved in a common, cross-platform format to deliver a “write once, run anywhere” experience for business users. With Modeling Cloud, users can create a report in Excel and view it unchanged on a mobile device, or create a report in a web browser for a power user to analyze in Excel. Modeling Cloud integrates with the rest of the Host Analytics Cloud EPM Suite, enhancing the existing planning, close, reporting, and analytics modules for a complete EPM solution.