Adaytum Software launches e.Planning Reporter

SINGAPORE, 14 March 2000 -- Aiming to solve the inefficient and ineffective traditional corporate business planning process, Adaytum Software, a supplier of business planning applications, today launched Adaytum e.Planning, a high-participation solution combining top-down planning and modeling with bottom-up budget collection, sales forecasting, and workflow based on a single, common data repository.

At the same time Adaytum unveiled
Adaytum e.Planning Reporter, which provides sophisticated management reporting and analysis capabilities to Web-based users of Adaytum e.Planning.

As e-business and Web strategies compress business and product cycles from years into months - or even weeks - companies require a software foundation that stays in step with the business by supporting rapid, accurate planning.

Based on Web and Microsoft® standards, Adaytum e.Planning provides that foundation through high-participation business planning that provides more predictability and accuracy in budgets and plans, which translates into increased market confidence and shareholder value.

Reshaping The Business Planning Paradigm
"For many companies, the business planning process is broken," said Mark Stimpson, senior vice president, Adaytum International. "Too often, it's a centralised, annual exercise that requires literally hundreds of thousands of man-hours and that limits time for analysis."

"As a result, many plans are inflexible and inaccurate - often out of date the day they're published. With Adaytum e.Planning, we are reshaping the business planning paradigm to reconcile bottom-up and top-down business planning, involve hundreds or thousands of stakeholders, and integrate a single business-wide system for planning, reporting, and measurement based on common data and models."

e.Planning Application Modules
The Adaytum e.Planning solution includes
a set of four primary modules:
* e.Planning Analyst - This provides financial analysts with the rich analysis, flexibility, and power they need to develop and refine new business models and evaluate opportunities and plans.
* e.Planning Contributor - For the large masses of non-financial users, this browser client provides a workflow-driven, zero- training, and zero-administration environment for budget and forecast collection.
* e.Planning Administrator - Planning administrators can leverage centralized management using standard Microsoft® technologies.
* e.Planning Reporter - Provides sophisticated management reporting and analysis capabilities, encompassing a complete suite of features, including charting and polished auto-formatting, common business report templates, advanced business statistics and data mining.

Expanding the Value Proposition
"Companies today are held with even greater accountability to their shareholders and stakeholders, and there is an increasing need to reduce administrative costs while maintaining transparency of process. Our solution offers companies the possibility to do just that. I am confident that the market will reward our first-mover advantage with significant market share across regions," said Vibeke Ulmann, international marketing director, Adaytum Software.

Greg Parsons, CEO of Business Planning Solutions said, "We're extremely pleased and honoured to be Adaytum's partner for the Asia Pacific Region. By providing companies with powerful management reporting and analysis capabilities, e.Planning will revolutionalise the way companies do business, increasing efficiencies and reducing time-to-market. Backed by our heritage in systems integration and management, customers can enjoy a one-stop service from assessment to installation and maintenance."

A Range of Features and Benefits
Adaytum e.Planning provides unique budget entry, sales forecasting, and other business planning functions for financial and non-financial professionals. Key benefits include:
* Zero Training - Designed around zero-based training concepts, Adaytum e.Planning supports thousands of end users entering data simultaneously without increased training or support requirements.
* Greater Accuracy - Bottom-up planning has largely been restricted to a few managers who input large volumes of data into labour-intensive, unreliable, and inaccurate spreadsheets. Adaytum e.Planning introduces a new category of budget user - the e.contributor - who frequently enters small amounts of data for approval by a budget manager. This collaboration increases forecast accuracy.
* Unlimited User Scalability - Adaytum e.Planning scales to accommodate thousands or tens of thousands of users without performance penalty.
* Unlimited Data Scalability - Planners have complete access to detailed and accurate cost and revenue budgets and forecasts - at the actual item level for every cost center.
* Planning Model Integrity - Adaytum e.Planning ensures the integrity of planning drivers across the enterprise. Top-down targets set by financial analysts are accurately reflected in all cost-center budgets.

The new e.Planning Reporter module further adds:
* Rich Reporting - Users can perform what-if analysis, rank-on-rank reporting, data mining, market basket analysis and more. The module includes facilities for advanced business statistics as well as templates for common business reporting.
* Powerful Analysis - Adaytum e.Planning Reporter provides world-class analytic functionality. users can quickly and easily issue business queries, flip dimensions, and drill down for further details and insight - all on-screen in real-time.
* Professional Presentation - Annotate and format reports for simple answers or sophisticated presentations.
* Easy, Fast User Adoption - Adaytum e.Planning Reporter uses simple wizards and dialog boxes to create and distribute reports and it is fully integrated will Microsoft Office for export into standard office desktop applications.

Reshaping The Business Planning Paradigm
"Centrally controlled and dictated business plans that take months to prepare simply will not prepare enterprises to use fiscal predictability as a competitive weapon," said Bob Moran, vice president of DSS research with Aberdeen Group.

"And it is to Adaytum's credit that it has figured out that enterprise business planning must be performed in a realistic window and must include the participation of managers throughout the enterprise. Adaytum e.Planning is a strong and well-thought response to bringing contemporary business planning to the Web," he added.

"Adaytum's e.Planning will provide customers with a software solution that greatly improves their planning and budgeting processes," said Andrew Hoover, industry marketing manager for business intelligence/data warehousing at Microsoft Corp.

"Through use of Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, Adaytum Software's new e.Planning application, will add significant value to the enterprise and prepare users to respond to the rapid dynamics of an Internet business environment."

Requirements and Availability
Adaytum e.Planning is available immediately through its Asia Pacific master distributor, Business Planning Solutions. Adaytum e.Planning Reporter will ship late Q2 2000. Both require a standard ActiveX-compliant HTTP Web browser, Microsoft Internet Information Server, and a server that can support Microsoft SQL Server 7.0.

About Adaytum Software
Founded in 1990, Adaytum Software develops and markets "best-of-class" budgeting, planning, and performance analysis software for medium- and large-sized corporations whose requirements have grown beyond the scope of the spreadsheet environment.

Adaytum Software is an international, privately held company with offices in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Denmark, and Australia. The company's technologies are used by more than 22,000 users in a broad spectrum of business planning applications, including budgeting, planning, forecasting, consolidation, management reporting, product profitability analysis, and activity-based costing.