Business intelligence software specialist iQ4bis has signed a deal with Sydney-based budgeting & planning technology specialist MaxiPlan to include its web based planning software as an extension of the iQ4bis solution suite.

“SMB’s want better capabilities to plan and forecast cash flows with greater accuracy. They don’t plan on staying SMB’s forever so we’re seeing increased demand for specific solutions to help in the budgeting & planning process,” says iQ4bis’ general manager, Asj Smith.

“Many businesses currently manage this using a mass of linked Excel spreadsheets or similar homegrown systems and struggle to handle the amount of information, rework and general limitations required to manage this successfully.”

“By integrating MaxiPlan’s technology with the iQ4bis suite, we have created a proper budgeting and planning workflow.”

“Many of our customers have been largely doing their planning and budgeting manually, creating a lot of work for company accountants. Integrating MaxiPlan into our suite means they can eliminate unnecessary re-entry of data, so when using the tool, you make one change and it flows through to all the other plans that are impacted.”

This automatic flow-through of data from different areas of the business allows for the creation of multiple different budget forecasts which can all be integrated into a sensible holistic view of the business – e.g. capital expenditure (capex), HR, P&L, cashflow, gross margin etc.

It also eliminates the shortcomings of two dimensional spreadsheets and the inherent risk in managing planning in a spreadsheet. Budgets are visible to everyone who needs them, actuals are updated automatically via iQ4bis, and the whole process of updates, versions, currency and consolidation is much better managed and controlled.

Easy ‘business rules’
“For example a company might have a new capex project and want to look at the depreciation on that, and this would need to link through to Profit & Loss and the impact on the Balance Sheet calculated. This can be done using business rules, says Smith.

“iQ4bis MaxiPlan can do this easily, because you get the whole suite from day one (not modularised components), so it’s flexible enough to allow users to set up the rules they want. This means a sales manager could set up a model to calculate price x volume for a particular product and then see how this would affect the budgeted P&L.”

“Multiple versions of a budget can be created this way, which allows different scenarios to be evaluated.

The planner can link from one business area to another, without having to do manual re-entry, as the data is updated automatically.”

“If, for example, a sales manager wanted to discount a certain product and create a new one, the historical information to help create this is there.

Usually, you have to re-enter all the data about different groups, and sales and logistics, but, with MaxiPlan’s integration with iQ4bis, all this is now taken care of.”

“This automatic filter-through of new information to other spreadsheets also makes monthly rolling budgets more straightforward.”

Quick to install
“Our customers are getting more sophisticated and need the tools to support their immediate needs.”

Faster implementation of the software also helps here. It’s faster to install as it’s delivered through a web browser, says Smith. This means the suite can be installed on just one server and then accessed by any number of PCs. Typically, it takes about half the normal time to implement iQ4bis MaxiPlan as it does other similar products, he says.

“In fact, short implementation time, affordable price and ease of use are three key benefits of iQ4bis that MaxiPlan shares.”

“Including MaxiPlan in iQ4bis will allow our customers to upgrade from planning in cumbersome spreadsheets to something that provides much more integrity and control. It means the budgeting process becomes shorter and you get more accurate forecasts, and more time to evaluate multiple scenarios, which makes for a much more thorough process.”

Smith adds that the two companies are technologically aligned, as they both leverage the Microsoft stack. Microsoft SQL Server has made it easy to integrate MaxiPlan with iQ4bis’ database server.

The partnership kicks off with an implementation at Old Fashioned Foods who are using MaxiPlan with the iQ4Bis suite in their sales & operational planning.





Asj Smith            
General Manager- APAC
iQ4bis Management Software Limited
+64 9 366 2635
Visit our website www.iQ4bis.com 







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