Product category:
Project management software
News Release from: Microsoft | Subject: Microsoft Forecaster 7.0
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 08 March 2007
Enhanced usability for forecasting
software
Latest version of Microsoft Forecaster focuses on enhanced usability, adaptability and visibility, giving organisations confidence that their budgets are realistic and accurate
Microsoft subsidiary FRx Software has announced that Microsoft Forecaster 7.0, the latest release of the company's budgeting and planning software, will be released to manufacturing on March 28, 2007 This latest version of Microsoft Forecaster focuses on enhanced usability, adaptability and visibility, giving organisations confidence that their budgets are realistic and accurate, and enabling them to monitor business conditions and respond to new business opportunities and challenges to improve overall performance
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 13 Nov 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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"Our customers and partners have told us they want an affordable application that will make budgeting and forecasting less cumbersome, faster to implement and easier to use and that will offer greater adaptability to changing business conditions, all of which are addressed in Microsoft Forecaster 7.0," said Andy Kamlet, director of marketing and sales of Denver, Colo.-based FRx Software.
"We seem to have struck a chord with customers as they have reviewed this release, with survey results from our customer preview program showing that 95 percent of them are 'satisfied' to 'very satisfied' with what they've seen".
Microsoft Forecaster 7.0 includes many capabilities that support the release's overarching themes of usability, adaptability and visibility.
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Usability is of prime importance to customers because many business decision-makers who contribute to the budgeting process - especially those in manufacturing, supply-chain and service organisations - typically budget once a year, limiting their ability to become familiar with their applications.
Usability is enhanced in Microsoft Forecaster 7.0 with the introduction of a new user interface and streamlined navigation, among other features, reducing the time it takes to learn the application.
Also key to midmarket segment companies is adaptability in the face of changing business dynamics, both internal and external to the organisation.
Microsoft Forecaster 7.0 offers customers the ability to take advantage of up to 10 segments or dimensions for more precise budgeting, and the new Total Types functionality reduces the number of calculations or trees to be maintained by the user.
These capabilities shorten implementation time and streamline regular maintenance.
Microsoft Forecaster 7.0 still allows users of Microsoft FRx to integrate their general ledger and budget data from Microsoft Forecaster into reports generated by Microsoft FRx.
However, the release extends visibility by including new functionality related to what fields can be viewed, especially in the human resources area of the application, as well as a variety of new formatting options.
These include numeric, font and conditional formatting, which allow those responsible for creating templates and reports to meet the needs of their users, thus increasing user satisfaction.
Customers such as the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) say they believe Microsoft Forecaster 7.0 will help make their organisations more effective in the long run because of time savings and other efficiencies the new release makes possible.
"We'd like to be able to budget and do reforecasts more often, and we think Microsoft Forecaster 7.0 will make that possible," said MariAnne Woehrle, director of Information and Technology for CTAM, a nonprofit association for the cable industry based in Alexandria, Va.
"This version makes it easier to keep everything in one place".
"So if something unforeseen happens, such as an invoice being a lot higher or lower than expected, we can immediately identify the issue, recognise the impact, then re-forecast it into our quarter and reflect it in our financial statements, and have a better picture".
"We're hoping it will save time on budgeting, too".
"In the past, we used Excel spreadsheets and then tried to consolidate them and then find the backup".
"With Microsoft Forecaster, users can put in their line items - whether they're trips or hotels or whatever they're doing - and the program accumulates all of the data for them into the cost centres".
"Then the data all roll up into a sheet, so we can see automatically where we are to produce the budget".
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