Our Feature Differentiation
XLerant has studied how line managers want to budget and their need for flexible budgeting methods and responded by building the following ten capabilities. These capabilities address the top ten reasons why line managers try to change the spreadsheets that finance provides.
Our unique features include:
- Situational Budgeting Capability - We understand that every department in every organization has distinct needs that are situational in nature:
- Our market-leading and innovative ActionPaks allow each department to plan by their unique initiatives that apply only to them. (Marketing thinks in terms of campaigns; H/R thinks in terms of training; IT thinks about service contracts or IT projects). No programming or maintenance required.
- Users create their own line item detail for any account, specific to their budgeting needs. Each department has the flexibility to automatically include line item detail behind any account according to their needs, with zero maintenance, maximum control.
- Interactive Budget Map - What am I trying to achieve? What version am I in? What accounts have I budgeted? Am I close to my targets? Have I submitted? Have I been approved? ….Where am I? Each User has a dashboard which helps them through the budget process, orienting them to where they are in the process, which accounts still need to be addressed, and how they are doing against Finance guidelines—real-time.
- Embedded Calculations and Drivers - Administrator-defined, but User-controlled functionality to simplify complex budgeting –things that you can't do in Excel, and confuse Users or drive them crazy.
- Comprehensive and Flexible Spreading - Choose from a variety of powerful and practical real-world spreading methodologies, resulting in monthly integrity of your budget.
- Detailed Salary Planning - Seventy percent of most company expenses relate to people-costs, yet are done outside the budget. We provide a secure, step-by-step personnel-level salary planning tool controlled by finance, but with flexibility for the user to plan for increases, changes to headcount, and other personnel data.
- Documentation, Justification, Notes & Annotations - Allows the user to provide detailed documentation of assumptions, notes, and justification for any account which is stored in the application, therefore expediting the budget approval process.
- Asset Planning - Users choose from a catalog of pre-defined company assets. This powerful capability provides added integrity into the budget without added work.
- Guided What-If Analysis - Any system - even Excel - is essentially a what-if platform. What if I do this? What if I do that? Our entire solution is based on a "what-if" technology, because you can make pinpoint or sweeping changes, and see the results immediately. But as a convenience, the What-If feature collects together in one place the typical things a User does to a developed budget to change it up or down towards a target. Suppose the User was told to reduce expenses by 2% , they could explore questions such as, "What if I delay my new hires by three months?", or "What if I take down my discretionary spending by 3%?" and then apply those chances as necessary. On the spot. One click.
- Forecasting - A sophisticated tool that allows the ability to combine a few months of actuals with budget to facilitate the forecasting ability throughout year. It's just the right balance of power and flexibility.
- Automated Approval Workflow - As Users are going through the multiple versions of the budget , Finance and Senior Management have transparency into whose budget is completed, submitted, approved, or not even started, and can then take immediate action.
View a Webinar Demo of XLerant's BudgetPak »
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