Planful vs. Quantrix

Reporting and Spotlight have changed the game for us. Spotlight has brought dynamic reporting to our team and the rest of the office as well. With dynamic planning, we've spent more time doing analysis instead of running and creating the reports. Recently, we've spent less time analyzing and more time formatting, and Spotlight has brought the analysis back to FP&A.

Incentivized

Quantrix Modeler is one of the most appropriate software tools for developing dynamic financial planning models in small teams composed by skilled power users. There is an also Enterprise version supporting larger user bases and stronger integration with company backend systems. It's not advisable to put Quantrix desktop application in the hands of non-skilled staff since the learning curve is much steeper than what's the typical experience with spreadsheets. Adding a table with ad hoc simple calculations can be done by anyone in a spreadsheet, but requires knowledgeable design in a Quantrix model. On the positive side, experience with students in our classes shows that with focused training an user can be become productive in a relatively short time. There is a web version of Quantrix Modeler, Qloud, that is aimed to end users that only modify input data and consume model results, without the possibility of changing the model logic (structure and formulas)

Incentivized

• Creating forecasts for the month, quarter, and year
• Creating new variables by using variables pre-defined and that are new in the system
• Having a very simple setup in the reports section - not straying away from the old Excel model which most people are used to. I can speak for a lot of people when I say that tools that look new can easily be frightening! 😅

Incentivized

• Quantrix gathers info from numerous sources in a single click. Thereby making structure to process sustainable and scale-able. Once the logic is written the data refreshes and you are good to go with furture analysis and planning. There is no need for rework, copying down formulas, etc. In our latest product wheel build process we reduced our time from 3 weeks of time to 2 days to build out product wheels. There was a sharp contrast between Excel ( previous method) and Quantrix.
• Quantrix links perfectly to SQL Server which allows us to get actual data quickly, push out forecasts or other data for other systems to consume.
• Quantrix range based formula writing and common term formulas are a HUGE time saver. Debugging formulas is a breeze in Quantrix using what is called the dependency inspector. There is no need to copy down formulas; make sure cell ranges are locked etc. It is one formula controlling a multitude of cells that scales as the data set shrinks or grows. Also if there is an error in the formula you have 1 formula to fix not hundreds or even thousands. Common terms in your formulas helps immensely and reduces the amount of headache of debugging your formulas.
• Quantrix Scales with ease. Adding additional data or shrinking the data does not require (manual) structure updates to Quantrix. It accordions according to the data imported. Pivoting data and looking at it as well as filtering it and then building off of those filters and pivots is a joy to do in Quantrix!
• Complexity - Excel does not have it! Where the vlookup ends in Excel the Quantrix Select statement is just warming up. Functions like: Select, Selects, SelectList, SelectGreaterThan, SelectBetween, SelectLessThan, and one of my new favorites SelectLike in addition to CASE and Switch Logic make Quantrix a dominating force when it comes to writing complex logic in your business model. Quantrix does is beautifully.

• Dashboarding could be more flexible and easier to use.
• Dynamic Reporting has room for flexibility with nesting, dimension names showing up instead of “All,” and overall flexibility.
• Make Analyze view in Spotlight more intuitive.
• A high-level onboarding guide to understanding the different components of Planful, data flows, and tips & tricks.

Incentivized

• Quantrix was able to free the definition of calculation rules from cells. It would be interesting to be able to separate the default template structure from changes when importing data.
• Just to be clear to prevent the import (example from a CSV or DB) the creation of new items in addition to those already existing.
• An import navigation by level would be interesting. Or to obtain a split of the number on a tree structure (I bring as an example that of Corporate Planning (https://www.corporate-planning.com/de/).
• As a further enhancement of the above, it would be interesting to be able to define reports like an explosion of a tree structure.

Our new Comptroller understands the value of Planful, and we plan to utilize it further in the organization to enhance external reporting. Strangely enough, Planful had not previously been embraced by the former CFO, who argued that we were running two sets of books (of course, we were not). Fortunately, the before mentioned reconciliation of EBITDA to Net Income demonstrated that to the banks.

Incentivized

The tool is extremely adaptable, and it enables very quick querying to give us opportunity to gain live insights into the business. Given its adaptability, we are also able to create scenario analyses very quickly in rapidly changing environments. The formatting also enables us to provide this information in a very consumable manner.

Incentivized

For a newbie it can be difficult until you get the hang of the system. Quantrix is a very logical system, once you understand its underlying ideas.

I only give a 9 rating rather than a 10 rating because it seems that every day around 2pm we see a slowdown in the use of Planful. I have requested our internal IT department verify that it is not an internal issue and have been assured it is the tool. We have not yet reached out to Planful to do extensive research to solve this issue.

Again, the system is very reliable and, for the most part, runs very quick and smooth. When running larger queries, it does take some time, and during budgeting season our users experienced slower loading times, but nothing that raises concerns outside of normal network issues. Occasionally, as with any software we use, it will crash and you have to restart, but that does not happen very often.

Sometimes we get great help when using Planful's support team and other times we don't. In particular, there is one person that often responds to our support tickets who is less than helpful, hence the reason for the 5 out of 10 rating. As a result, most of the time we reach out to our Planful consulting group as they provide faster and better support

We got little training on the tool after implementation. Did a lot of "trial by fire" learning about Planful. I don't think RSM really provided us all the details we needed to understand the tool and to know what we needed to train on. I don't know we knew enough about the tool to even ask the right questions and then they left and we used Planful support a lot.

Incentivized

This training is much more robust now than it was when we first implemented our Planful environment. Many times we can do a little research in the "help" portal and do not even need to reach out to support. They are continuously improving the training and information available to users.

Incentivized

Most of the issues in the implementation were self inflicted, the team at Top Down was great and did a good job managing hours and teaching our team how to best handle the system. The implementation went longer than expected as they always do but the GL and erp link was up and running quickly so we could build reporting

Incentivized

Personally I have only used essbase in my work. Planful has a much easier platform to use both to put together results and to load data compared to the financial reporting platforms that I have used. Planful also has better dedicated tools to create reports and build in a dedicated software that is built to report on rather than building from scratch in an excel environment

Incentivized

Microsoft Excel, Infor, Tagetik, Palantir Quantrix is not ready to use budgeting and planning tool, it is basically data modeling tool. That makes Quantrix different. You yourself or with help of consultant create model according to your specific business needs. You will get cost-effective, tailored solution. It is a modeling tool that allows the easy and quick creation of multiple scenarios, conducting “what-if” analysis to accommodate uncertainty associated with forecasts.

From our experience, Planful is only used in 2 overhead departments in our organization. We easily added another overhead department, but they decided against using Planful for their workforce and financial planning. Removing them from our environment was extremely easy.

Incentivized

• Has allowed users to view a real-time P&L in a way they weren't able to do with Qlik.
• Budget to Actual analysis has become much more streamlined and actionable
• Long-range plan process has been significantly streamlined and a lot of time has been cut out of the process.

Incentivized

• Quantrix has boosted profitability and has proven its worth time and again. The platform has put us on the radar doing things even our biggest competitors could only dream of. We are still early in the development and deployment of our Quantrix Qloud based system to clients, but we already have early adopters coming over from competitor systems that cost exponentially more and do significantly less than what we provide. We feel it is only a matter of time for our Qloud driven analytics to become more mainstream in our space.