A food manufacturer, a client of Rina Accountancy, an accounting firm based in Walnut Creek, Calif., was struggling with what to do to improve cash flow and deal with major debt commitments. The client had spent time manipulating the numbers in his profit-and-loss statement. But Tim Tikalsky, head of Rina's consulting department, says that what the client really needed was a study of his company's balance sheet. While the client had been juggling the numbers in Excel, the standard for much budgeting and analysis, Tikalsky used ProfitDriver, a data analysis tool marketed by Riverwoods, Ill.-based CCH.
"I spent 10 minutes plugging the numbers in ProfitDriver into its sensitivity analysis, and the first thing that came up was 'Increase your prices,'" says Tikalsky. "He said, 'I can do that.'" The change was possible only "a couple of pennies" on each product and because the pricing fit nicely into price breaks in the competitive landscape.
"He did it and the rest is history," says Tikalsky, who continues to use ProfitDriver at the client's board meetings to make presentations to analyze results.
Advertisement
|
eAnalytics eAnalyzes Financial Data Sometimes, users just don't understand business intelligence tools. Consider one prospect that objected to the price tag for eAnalytics, an application that integrates with a variety of Sage accounting packages "She said, 'I'm not paying $6,000 to $8,000 for a report writer when I can get Crystal [Reports] for $300,'" relates Peter Kaufman, the Miami businessman who owns Accpac reseller Dynamics Software Solutions International, and a sister company that markets the eAnalytics Portal. Kaufman says that eAnalytics is not a static reporting tool like Crystal. Instead, it produces a data warehouse. "It's designed for crunching massive volumes of data," he says. That can make it a suitable tool for companies such as distributors that can have up to 50GB of data. The system will perform calculations such as realization analysis, profit analysis, and compare budget to actual figures. The tools it features include performance dashboards, balanced scorecard views, statistical and sales data maps, pivot tables, and charts. Kaufman's organization markets editions for Sage Accpac ERP and Pro ERP, as well as for MAS 90/200/500, and the Abra human resource application. There are two versions, one for the reseller channel to market. The other is designed for CPA firms. "Every CPA firm has some custom computation that we end up adding. Different firms have different thresholds of what they expect to bill. Some people have multiple levels of billing codes," he says. The system has different pricing for different applications. For Accpac and MAS 90, the price is $10,000 for the portal, including unlimited users, for the basic analysis. Modules for inventory, payables, receivables, and manufacturing are priced at $2,500 each. AdvertisementRelated ArticlesAdvertisementSpecial Offers
Editors' Picks
AdvertisementQuick PollSponsored By: 
About Us | Contact Us | Advertise with us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Site Map |
