Alight Planning.

• Position: BPM SOLUTIONS

Alight Planning has released a driver-based financial planning and analysis software application with a multitude of innovative features, including a units, rates and amounts architecture, automated sensitivity analysis, goal-seek operations and intuitive modeling with object-based linking. Aimed at mid-sized businesses through Fortune 1,000 divisions, Alight Planning automates complex business planning so users can move beyond the limitations of Microsoft Excel for more accurate strategic plans, revenue projections, budgets and rolling forecasts, the Placerville, Calif.-based company said in an announcement.

Alight Planning offers a set of collaborative budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting capabilities, with an architecture "created from the ground up," the company said, adding that "Alight Planning's flexible modeling interfaces, with object-based linking, let finance staff build more accurate and auditable driver-based financial plans than with today's spreadsheets."

Automated algorithms help finance staff and line managers analyze data with on-the-spot insights into the important factors driving business results. Alight Planning also allows for easy importing and modeling of actuals data from outside financial and operational databases, the company says. This enables planners to quickly identify trends and incorporate them into rolling forecasts for more enhanced real-time decision-making.

"Driver-based planning is now widely accepted as a best practice for developing any type of plan with financial projections, such as strategic plans, budgets and forecasts," said Robert Kugel, senior vice president and research director at Ventana Research. "By more closely relating planning processes and performance analysis to underlying operations, line managers and the finance organization can gain significantly more actionable insights into the business, which result in better decisions and allocation of resources."

Alight's architectures provide for:

* Intuitive...