Initially, Microsoft Excel might be enough. But if your needs are complex, you will need a more powerful tool. We recommend using Adaptive Planning (for Budgeting and Planning), STEM (for Business simulation, Capital Budgeting and Costing) or Prodacapo (for Product & Customer Costing, Profitability Analysis and Process Improvement). The following professional software solutions have proved invaluable on many customer assignments:
- Adaptive Planning, from Adaptive Insights, a Silicon-Valley company. Adaptive is a great tool when you need the power of a multi-dimensional database (products, customers, regions, cost centres, time periods etc) and multi-user access in a collaborative environment. It is also a fantastic tool when you need to combine your long-term business plan with your short-term budget, with month by month forecasting and variance analysis.
- STEM from ImpliedLogic Limited, a Cambridge (UK) company. It is a great business planning and business modelling tool for people who work in the telecom, media and IT industry. STEM understands telecom concepts (e.g. Erlangs, Busy Hour Traffic, QoS) so you don’t have to teach him what telecom is about. Also it has great cost allocation capability, so in addition to business planning, STEM can be used for service costing as well.
- For Product and Customer Costing, Profitability Analyses and Process Improvement, we use the Prodacapo software solutions. Prodacapo empowers its clients to understand real product, service and customer profitability; to improve business processes; to measure performance; and to develop and execute strategy using balanced scorecards.
