Large, complex organizations face a common struggle: the unwieldy task of ensuring that day-to-day operations remain aligned with business strategy. Without a single platform to link operational activities to strategic pursuits, organizations will be unable to remedy the gaps that develop between what they want to achieve versus what their numerous departments and individuals are actually accomplishing on a daily basis.

Cartesis Planning integrates planning, modelling and analytic reporting capabilities in a single application that is easy to use and manage, enabling users to plan the way they think at a level that is appropriate to the way they run their businesses while ensuring that CFOs can align business operations with business strategy.

• Easy and flexible plan creation
• Single application for both data entry and financial analysis
• Powerful, user-driven, what-if modelling

Easy and flexible plan creation

Built on a highly scalable Web-based architecture, Cartesis Planning software ensures high user adoption and supports a culture of collaboration and accountability. Planners and analysts can spend less time with data input and more time analyzing information from across the organization to better support critical decisions.

Allocations and work-back to save time on financial planning
Allocations allow users to push high-level target values down to a detailed level. With work-back, users can rapidly develop plans based on previous-year actuals or prior plans or they can make adjustments to current plans. Allocations and work-back save planners significant time with no loss in predictive capacity, leaving more time for analysis.

Personalized financial planning to meet corporate needs
Cartesis Planning lets users enter data at a level of detail that is right for their business processes. Users can plan in terms that make sense to them: for example, they can plan the number of units sold or unit prices, leaving the calculation of total revenue to the system. Users have the flexibility to create plans with relevant drivers, assumptions and supporting detail, so they won't revert back to spreadsheets.

Compensation planning for expense management
Cartesis Planning fully integrates workforce planning, allowing corporations to plan and manage what is often their largest expense: staff salaries, benefits, taxes and other workforce costs. Users can model different staffing scenarios, including changes to cost drivers, transfers within departments, and variable compensation schemes.

Integrated workflow with calendar to reduce plan cycle times
Cartesis Planning comes with out-of-the-box workflow capabilities that reduce the time and effort required to manage the submission and approval process. Integrated e-mail alerts and a unique calendar view that tracks overall status facilitate collaboration, timeliness and communication. op

Single planning solution for both data entry and analysis

Cartesis Planning provides a single interface for planning, reporting and analysis. Reports and input templates are created and accessed in the same application. Users are not forced to learn two applications for analyzing and entering data, so training and implementation costs are reduced and adoption rates are high. With more users on the system, collaborative planning and buy-in regarding plan targets are achieved.

Powerful, in-plan analysis for reducing plan cycles
Users can drill by any dimension - and can change dimensions on the fly - to analyze their data and pinpoint notable variances, issues or impacts. A single interface allows changes or adjustments to be made in-cycle, reducing the overall time required to finalize a plan.

Live access to actuals and detailed operational data
Since Cartesis Planning shares the Cartesis 10 Integrated Data Model, all actual and financial data is directly available for reconciliation and comparative analysis. Cartesis Planning can also read the most up-to-date information from data warehouses, CRM, general-ledger or other ERP systems, thereby reducing system management effort, wait times and data errors.

Offline and Excel planning for mobility and flexibility
In addition to the standard Web interface, Cartesis Planning provides an Excel-based interface that accesses the same data and business rules as the Web version, and allows users to take planning templates off-line and upload results when they reconnect.

Powerful, user-driven, what-if modelling

With Cartesis Planning, business analysts can perform what-if analyses and business modelling to improve their planning accuracy, predictability and responsiveness to change.

Uncovering key opportunities
Analysts can manage what-if analyses to understand the impact of new initiatives, such as product launches, marketing campaigns or cost-cutting programs. Cartesis Planning lets users change entire business models and immediately view results without the need to duplicate any data. Analysts control the business simulation process, which mitigates risk and ensures accuracy and that key opportunities are not overlooked.

Quick updating of key business assumptions
Users can manage key business assumptions, drivers, economic conditions and exchange rates in a single place. Changes are reflected in real-time across all dimensions, input schedules and reports, again without any need to batch-load new data.

Baseline scenario and initiatives
Analysts can manage what-if analyses by keeping a baseline version and adding or removing different initiatives, such as marketing campaigns, cost-cutting programs, new product launches or refinancing schemes.