Cube vs. Prophix

1) The budget process. In QBO the budgeting capability is non-existant, unless you like manually typing in every scenario and not being able to budget by class. Cube houses my budget/forecast scenarios & lets me view and analyze by my company's preferred data points; department, GL account, vendor, & sales campaign. I'm able to run monthly budget variance reports and plan for the future with ease. 2) We've begun using Cube to help analyze profitablity by sales job. We've never had such easy access to this type of info in the past, so this is a benefit I can directly attribute to Cube. 3) We're beginning now to use an integration with our payroll software to work on headcount planning and payroll analysis.

Prophix is substantially out of the box product to be easy to use but flexible enough to allow for varied business modelling. No technical skills are required to deploy and maintain the solution. Owing to its out of the box nature, departing from Prophix sweet spot e.g. when leveraging transactional data, the solution is not as capable, however this is being addressed by the new Prophix release.

Incentivized

• Push/pull information across any Google Sheet or Excel workbook.
• Budget at a much more granular level (by month by account by the department by vendor).
• Custom mapping to allow for multiple cuts of the same data.
• Bulk range selection within a workbook.

• Reports are very customizable - once you learn how to create reports, it is really easy to design the final output you'd like.
• The tool is easy to use, especially for those that don't work in the finance function.
• It offers an excellent workflow capability to send out tasks to cost center owners all over the company.
• We love the ability to create and customize cubes.

• Limited to 8 top line dimensions. Although you can bring in as many attributes of data as you want, but I would really like Cube to increase top line dimensions to 10.
• The ability for cross level interaction within multiples cube would be a major plus once implemented.

• Version control; there are issues using the same budget version in multiple years if adding detail (line item detail). What Prophix has explained as a benefit is a huge detriment for us and we've been working with them for 6 months on a fix and it's yet to get resolved
• There are certain aspects that a messy; within our budgeting and forecasting detail, we have "unexplained balance" lines that show up that are distracting and add no value.
• Lack of a centralized location for content outside of tool; for example, training, help, support, intranet, etc are all separate websites and not easy to get to. I'm not sure why all of this isn't linked to the same account and accessible through the tool. Why should we need separate passwords for everything Prophix?!

Incentivized

The system works well for us, and meets all of our needs. All of our future plans can and will be achieved within Prophix, so there is no need to pursue another product. Prophix has continuously proven to improve their product over the years, which provides an even higher level of confidence in this tool, and future developments

The
data can be sliced and diced many ways, and each user is able to do it however
they like. It is easy to create or run existing reports. We have made many of
our processes more efficient, and Prophix has allowed us to save more time than
you can imagine. We
are able to use Prophix for Expense tracking, Expense and Capital planning, reforecasting,
Compensation planning, Project tracking, Expense allocation, GAAP PLOB
reporting, and still have several more tasks to implement through Prophix

The availability in Prophix is relatively good. We have occurred random outages in different versions that wipe out data, which can be brought back. Or we have ran into system wide slowness that impacts all users in the system, but we have been able to get more capacity to supply our performance.

Incentivized

Prophix has always performed consistently. We are using on-premise so many factors can contribute to slower than desired performance, most having nothing to do with Prophix itself. If we move to the web-client cloud based solution I believe performance will even be better.

Incentivized

The Prophix staff is very helpful and quick to respond. I like that they teach me instead of doing it for me when possible, so I don't have to contact them as often! Never talked to anyone at Prophix that I didn't respect or think highly of! Very professional, great customer service!

Incentivized

The initial integration consultant was very helpful in making sure we were set up with all the essential uses we required: reporting/budgeting/forecasting. There was a learning curve but our consultant made it very easy to understand and helped me be comfortable in my Global Admin role in the system. Even after integration, we were given support whenever I came up with an idea I would get in touch and I would be trained on how I can implement it.

Incentivized

We used our system and created a test cube to work with our own data. We ran through the different functions of Prophix and covered alot of material. We did two sessions a week, with homework tasks assigned. We were able to ask questions and cover any questions during the followup sessions.

Incentivized

Planning, planning, planning. Prophix will send you some Excel spreadsheets ahead of implementation. If those spreadsheets are complete, implementation will be smooth. Also, set aside some time during implementation to work with the Prophix staff and ask lots of questions. The knowledge they share is invaluable.

Cube was just a lot easier to use than Vena. We took some time to look at Vena as well and while their product was impressive, our organization was not yet there. We needed something we could implement quickly, and in today's day and age I think that is a very important quality to have. Start up and early stage companies do not have the luxury of implementation teams and massive IT resources so Cube was a huge help.

Incentivized

I have used other budgeting and forecasting tools at different companies, and Prophix is a much easier product to use and implement. I have received better user feedback from Prophix compared to other tools I have used at other companies. Other tools lacked dashboard capabilities and account reconciliations.

Incentivized

I gave Prophix a 10 on scalability because we currently deploy the solution to department heads across our entire organization and never have any issues with those individuals using or accessing the system to look at their financial information within premade templates . They currently enter budgets and review reports within the system currently. The only issue is they cannot typically use the ad hoc functionality because that would require higher level licenses that cost more and it is not worth it to give them more costly licenses since they really aren't working in the system quite like the robust finance users

Incentivized

• It has decreased the amount of time it takes to build reports by days
• I can rest easy knowing the knowledge is accurate and there is no human error
• I have been able to create more reports than I ever dreamed of with the new time and ease of use

Incentivized

• Prophix has made it possible to move away from some Excel reporting we were doing, which allows for 50% quicker reporting on a monthly basis.
• Although it has saved us time, an improved PowerPoint feature that automatically updates our decks would save an additional 75% on top of what we already do.
• Our Board Reporting has improved by 10 hours by moving our reports fully into Prophix.