Centage Corporation has introduced the first complete BPM solution with Dashboards, specifically for the SMB market, that is affordable, easy to use, and compatible with virtually any existing Business Intelligence (BI) tool. The Budget Maestro Dashboard Kit gives Budget Maestro(R) users instant access to financial and operational key performance indicators (KPIs) on their desktops. Budget Maestro is the leading Business Performance Management (BPM) solution designed specifically to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) manage their budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting data.
“The popularity of dashboards is due to their ability to give CFOs and financial managers — not to mention CEOs — accurate and instant insight into the state of the business, which allows them to react faster to brewing issues. With this new dashboard capability, Budget Maestro now provides a complete Business Performance Management solution, allowing even the smallest companies to take advantage of this management trend,” said Centage Vice President of Sales and Marketing Jim Nauen.
The Budget Maestro Dashboard Kit is “very simple to use, and gives us clear, concise information on a monthly basis,” said Debbie Rapp, treasurer for Fleet Card Fuels.
The kit was tailored for the SMB market in several ways: 1. It leverages the ubiquitous Microsoft Excel(R) 2007 for dashboard creation, which contributes to its low license fee of $1,995. The kit comes with four Excel-based, Budget Maestro KPI templates, which users can customize. Users with Excel 2007 can also easily create additional dashboards if desired. 2. Users can leverage their own business intelligence (BI) software. Since the Dashboard Kit transforms the financial data in Budget Maestro into a “normalized” SQL database, the software is compatible with any BI tool that can read a SQL database, including PowerPlay(R) from Cognos, Crystal Xcelsius(R) from Business Objects, ProClarity(R)+ from Microsoft, and the soon to be released Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. 3. Set up time is minimal. Existing Budget Maestro users can be viewing KPIs on the desktop literally minutes after taking the Dashboard Kit out of the box.
The Excel 2007 dashboard templates come with pre-defined key performance metrics such as gross margin, net income, working capital, inventory turnover, and day sales outstanding. Users can create comparisons of actual performance to plan or forecast; on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis; and across any number of categories such as product lines, divisions, locations, or projects.
Users can set their own metrics and tolerance levels, and customize the dashboard type and style for consistency with other corporate materials. Dashboard visuals can be incorporated into Microsoft PowerPoint(R) presentations, and published to an intranet.
The Budget Maestro Dashboard Kit is compatible with the Desktop, Small Business and Enterprise editions of Budget Maestro 5.8. Even those with single-user licenses can share the Dashboard within the company with any user of Excel 2007.