Fast, accurate Sage budgets & forecasts

Phocas is a Business Intelligence plus Financial Planning and Analysis platform and Sage ERP systems are designed to manage various aspects of business operations. When integrated, Phocas enables companies to manage their operations more effectively in a various ways, such as:

• Powerful business intelligence - Phocas collects and consolidates huge amounts of data from multiple business sources, empowering Sage ERP users with fast, easy access to real-time data within one platform. 
• Fast, accurate budgets - Budgets and forecast meet specific business needs and built-in workflows make them collaborative. Automated data flow means people can compare actuals with budgets and be proactive with meeting targets.
• High performance - By integrating your Sage ERP with Phocas, you'll achieve lightening fast loading times, regardless of the volume of transactional data stored. 
• Companywide adoption - a user-friendly interface enables users across all departments to access and analyze their own data, not just IT experts or data analysts. Enhancing collaboration and fast decision-making. 
• All-in-one platform - Along with a BI Analytics foundation, Phocas offers comprehensive financial planning (FP&A) products that work together smoothly, including Budgets and Forecasts, Financial Statements and Rebates.

The all-in-one platform for business intelligence plus financial planning and analysis helps connect everyone with the information they need, when they need it. ​​

The Phocas BI and FPA platform integrates and automates data flow so you can analyze data, build budgets and forecasts, and create dynamic custom financial reports without going in and out of different systems. The products work together smoothly to make it easier for you to better plan your financial future and run your business day-to-day.​

For many companies, creating the budget can be an extremely time-consuming process as finance  teams often work with multiple spreadsheets, consolidate input from various departments, deal with version control issues and broken formulas. Incorporating sales and operational data into your budget is often quite complex and requires a lot of collaboration, which is difficult when everyone is working on static spreadsheets.

Phocas Budgets and Forecasts software dramatically simplifies this because the process is automated. Phocas easily extracts data from your ERP and multiple other sources enabling you to quickly build your budget. Plus, gaining input from finance, operations, sales and purchasing is an easy process because everyone is working from the same data source, changes are updated in real-time, and built-in security means you can only access and action what you have been assigned.

When collaborating on the budget is made easy, people contribute to the process so finance team is not constantly chasing feedback and more valuable insights are included in your budget from the get go. 

With Phocas making budget building easy and collaborative, this paves the way for more accurate, frequent forecasting that's powered by real-time data. Ultimately, Phocas turns budgeting and forecasting into a well-oiled machine helping you make fast and more informed business decisions.

When it comes to budgeting and forecasting software, it pays to shop around.

One of the first things to identify is whether the software company can provide a robust and efficient data analytics platform that will enable you to consolidate your financial, sales and operational data. This will provide the gateway to real-time, collaborative budgeting and forecasting.

Cloud-based budgeting and forecasting solutions like Phocas can be integrated with over 200 ERPs, plus multiple other data sources. This enables you to consolidate your data into a single, trusted source of truth. Building the annual budget can then become an automated process, saving the finance team countless hours gathering and consolidating data. Forecasting is also simplified as data automatically feeds into the system, keeping the forecast live. Plus, now that sales, operations and finance are all working on the same file, version control issues and broken formulas will become a thing of the past. The whole process becomes more streamlined and collaborative.

Secondly, the software needs to be easy to use. There’s no point investing in a solution that is not user-friendly to your wider business. If only finance or IT experts know how to navigate and get the most out of the software, other departments will eventually stop using it. The Phocas Budgeting and Forecasting worksheet is designed using a format similar to spreadsheets, so users feel an immediate familiarity with the software. Sales and operations as well as finance can intuitively navigate the system and analyze the budget against actual performance to create better forecasting. This also makes it easy to drill down to transactional-level data, helping you identify potential risks before they become a major issue.

Once you've established these key elements, the best way to get a real feel for the software is to talk with a sales advisor and work through the following:

• Discuss your individual business requirements - including the needs of financial and non-financial users
• Ask for a demo of how the software works
• Establish whether your ERP or other data sources can be integrated with their software
• Ask about their rate of user adoption - this will determine just how easy the software is to use
• Ask about how successfully other companies (in a similar industry to yours) have transitioned into using their software - if possible, arrange to speak to those companies
• Ask about customer support during the initial set up phase as well as ongoing.
  
  

If you’d like to learn more about Phocas Budgeting and Forecasting, talk to a sales advisor and book a demo here.