Maybe you are one of the many organizations still using standalone spreadsheets to do your planning, budgeting, forecasting, and financial consolidations. If that's the case, you're also one of the many organizations that is likely dealing with long, error-prone budget and close cycles.

The SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application can help free up your time for more strategic, value-added activities that can grow your business. The software combines planning, budgeting, and forecasting capabilities with management and legal consolidation functionality in a single application, so you can shorten budget cycle time, close the books faster and ensure compliance with regulatory and financial standards.

Key features and functions include:

• Familiar interfaces – Leverage Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word interfaces, plus the Web
• Business process flows – Drive process consistency and visibility
• Business planning – Streamline sales, revenue, CAPEx, cash flow, and other planning processes
• Top-down and bottom-up budgeting – Conduct top-down and bottom-up budgeting for more aligned and supported budgets
• What-if analysis and scenario planning – Model different scenarios and assess potential future outcomes to determine a preferred course of action
• Support for driver-based planning and other budgeting methodologies
• Variance reporting – Perform plan versus actual comparisons and quickly determine root causes of variances
• Financial close – Shave days and weeks off closing the books – and get a full view of your financial landscape – with functionality for currency conversions, intercompany eliminations, multi-tier allocations, journal entries, and various reports
• Compliance and statutory reporting – Ensure Sarbanes-Oxley and standards compliance, including IFRS and GAAP; integrate with SAP BusinessObjects governance, risk, and compliance solutions

Designed for business users, the SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application unifies and streamlines the planning, budgeting, and forecasting process and can enable a faster, more compliant close.

Business benefits include:

• Improved agility with the ability to quickly model new business scenarios and decide on a course of action that maximizes value creation
• Reduced training time and increased productivity with familiar, intuitive interfaces that help workers make the most of their time
• Reduced cycle time through collaboration in a unified landscape, streamlining the process of creating and approving plans, budgets, and forecasts.
• More accurate plans aligned with strategic goals via top-down and bottom up budgeting capabilities
• Fast, accurate close thanks to an automated consolidation process that helps you meet all statutory and management reporting requirements with a complete audit trail
• Minimized business and compliance risk with fast, accurate management and statutory reporting
• Reduced maintenance, simplified deployment, and improved data with unified planning and consolidation capabilities in a single application