05/15/2008

Host Analytics announced Host Analytics Version 8.0, the latest release of its on-demand corporate performance management suite.

ebizQ received the following:

Host Analytics 8.0 features enhanced modeling, scorecarding, budgeting and planning, with upgrades designed to provide finance executives and department managers with improved visibility into business operations, greater short- and long-term financial-planning flexibility, and tighter integration between a company’s strategic plan and its operational budgets and forecasts.

Host Analytics 8.0 includes more than 50 new customer and partner-requested features. The improvements solve two key challenges in the planning, budgeting and forecasting processes:

Host Analytics 8.0 enables finance professionals and line-of-business managers to develop actionable “what if” budgeting and planning scenarios. Leveraging an enhanced simulation engine and improved scorecard graphics, company executives can “war game” alternate potential scenarios similar to the way the armed forces war-games potential alternatives on the battle field.

Host Analytics 8.0 links a company’s long-term plan to the tactical execution of that plan, in the form of budgets and re-forecasts. Many companies struggle with the transition from the strategic plan to the annual budget or re-forecast. Host Analytics 8.0 addresses this by providing support for discretionary initiatives, long-term capital projects, and multi-year/periodic budgeting.

“The demand for software that helps corporations enable performance management is growing significantly and is a top priority for finance and operations management,” said Mark Smith, CEO & EVP Research at Ventana Research. “Host Analytics in its on-demand or software as a service approach is meeting these needs. Their version 8 release brings together capabilities for supporting the strategic and operational needs of modeling, planning and score-carding in an integrated and easy to use approach.”

“Host Analytics 8.0 enhances our ability to communicate planning data, supports our balanced scorecard initiative, and instills accountability throughout the organization,” said Ben Page, Manager of Planning, Reporting and Consolidations for Elkay Manufacturing. “This new functionality will ultimately remove hours, if not days, of processing time out of our current forecast and budget process. Host Analytics 8.0 will allow us to be more responsive to our internal and external environment, ultimately leading to improved performance and profitability.”

“We think the discretionary initiatives capability of Host Analytics 8.0 is going to help us better align budgeting with our corporate strategy,” said Joel Feldman, Director of Budgeting and Planning for Otis Spunkmeyer. “We’re also excited about some of the usability enhancements that are available in this release. This is a significant step forward for Host Analytics.”

“Two trends are behind the growing critical need for corporate performance management software,” said Ric Ratkowski, Vice President of Product Management for Host Analytics. “First is the economy. Challenging conditions are forcing businesses to budget and plan for potentially seismic changes to their businesses. The second is Software as a Service. Businesses finally can afford enterprise-class solutions without investing and risking significant financial, IT and human resources. Host Analytics 8.0 is at the intersection of these trends, making it easier and more cost-effective to thoroughly understand business opportunities and challenges, and utilize this knowledge to achieve corporate objectives.”

Host Analytics on-demand solutions help companies streamline their financial reporting, consolidation, budgeting and forecasting processes. Host Analytics solutions enable businesses to align the planning process with their business strategies, and measure performance to manage change. Host Analytics demonstrates its commitment to customer success by providing solutions that make corporate performance management more flexible, cost-effective and easy to perform.