deFacto Software Introduction

deFacto Performance Management is a completely unified, analysis and planning product that offers the full range of capabilities users need, including modeling, forecasting, drill-down, drill-through, what-if analysis, reporting, and more. It empowers business users who drive planning processes throughout an organization with the ability to perform real-time analysis by enabling Excel and even SharePoint with data submission capability to its centralized data store. deFacto also complements Microsoft SharePoint Monitoring and Analytics components with powerful capabilities such as cube building, user security, advanced logic, data entry and what-if – all of which can be managed by the business user.

Please use the menu on the right for additional information about deFacto software.

deFacto’s Features and Functions

deFacto is a completely unified, OLAP-based, analysis and planning product that offers the full range of capabilities users need, including modeling, forecasting, drill-down/through, what-if analysis, reporting, and more. It empowers users who drive planning processes throughout an organization with the ability to perform real-time analysis by enabling Excel with data write-back capability. It goes far beyond the usual slicing-and-dicing of data to allow nearly-instant flash reporting of user-specific financial and operational data.

• Excel Add-In:
• Input forms
• Reports
• Alternate hierarchies
• Properties/attributes query-ability
• Maintains native Excel formulas and formatting
• Book publication wizard
• Offline support
• Advanced zero-suppression
• Formula-based or matrix-based reporting
• Can work with any Analysis Services cube
• Drill-through to relational data
• Send and receive text comments

• Workflow:
• Simple out of the box approval structure for contributor, data entry, reviewer, approver
• Ability to completely customize the approval structure.
• Based on multiple time periods/entities/ categories/scenarios

• Enhanced Financial intelligence:
• Budgeting/planning/forecasting
• Consolidation
• Intercompany eliminations
• Reporting

• Script Logic:
• MDX Formulas
• Foreign currency conversion
• Customized logic for specialized business processes
• Inter-model logic

• Cube builder/optimizer:
• Create/maintain dimensions and attributes
• Create/maintain sets of cubes
• Create alternate hierarchies
• Make copies of cubes and sets of cubes

• Scorecard/Dashboard Integration:
• SharePoint. Monitoring & Analytics
• Other dashboard tools – standard MSAS
• Web-based data entry

deFacto’s Architecture

Built using Microsoft’s Excel, Analysis Services and SQL Server, deFacto is designed for mission-critical, system of record applications. It represents a critical component of any organization’s Microsoft-centric Business Intelligence or Performance Management strategy. It also perfectly complements products like SharePoint by providing a powerful financial analysis and planning capabilities to the existing scorecard and dashboard components.

FAQs:

• What is deFacto? deFacto is a unified performance management product that enables any business, regardless of size, to operate like the world’s top performers: By measuring and managing financial and operational performance accurately, simply, and quickly.



• What are the advantages of a unified product? Many performance management products are a collection of products (i.e. integrated, not unified), each designed to focus on a single function like budgeting or reporting or consolidation, etc. Since most businesses need all of these functions, it makes sense to purchase one product that does it all. deFacto is a unified product that offers significant cost savings, faster implementation times, higher data integrity (all applications use the same base of data; a single version of the truth) and higher utility.



• What type of applications can deFacto be used to support? deFacto is designed for organizations looking to support a wide-range of sophisticated planning and analysis capabilities for division-level and enterprise-wide applications, such as financial, human resource, supply chain, capital planning, sales, profitability, and many others.



• How does deFacto work with Excel? The deFacto end-user interface is an Excel add-in that utilizes 100% of the native capabilities of Excel. It is a true Excel interface. Additionally, the deFacto Excel add-in can be used to report off of and analyze any Microsoft® Analysis Services cube with the same exact experience to the end-user.



• Does deFacto have a web interface? Yes, deFacto can be used with tools like Microsoft SharePoint®, Decision Support Panel (DSPanel), or Information Builders WebFocus to provide both reporting and write-back capabilities via a Web interface. In fact, since deFacto produces a fully-secure Microsoft Analysis Services cube, any web-based dashboard interface can point to deFacto.



• What type of built-in financial intelligence does deFacto have? deFacto has the range of built-in financial intelligence you would expect from an enterprise-level planning tool. It supports foreign currency conversion, allocations, intercompany eliminations, and so forth. deFacto also allows the customization of any business rule or formula that needs to be applied to financial data to support your business needs.



• How scalable is deFacto and what level of performance can be expected? deFacto utilizes ‘intelligent caching’ to support very high processing speeds. Clients have realized reduction in processing times from hours to minutes using deFacto instead of other advanced Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools. In addition, deFacto can scale to support thousands of users with exceptional performance.



• How easy is it to migrate from PPS Planning to deFacto? Since deFacto was designed from the ground up as a replacement for PPS Planning, most of PPS Planning’s assets are directly reusable, so migration is quick and easy. deFacto easily supports transition of PPS models.



• What other products have customers replaced with deFacto? deFacto is designed to appeal to clients who are aligned with Microsoft’s technology strategy. We have found that many OutlookSoft/SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) customers are attracted to deFacto because of its superior performance, scalability, and affordability. Both products share a similar vision and heritage, so the migration is very straightforward, fast, and cost-effective. Other customers have transitioned from Hyperion and Cognos to get the benefits of a single, fully unified CPM product rather than just a collection of integrated products. These customers realize meaningful improvements in performance and significant cost savings. Clients have seen that the cost of a deFacto replacement is actually significantly lower than the cost of maintaining their existing BPC, Hyperion or Cognos implementation.



• Can deFacto leverage all security defined in Active Directory? Yes. Active Directory can interact with an Analysis Services database at the security level. It can be used like NT Groups to control user access within an Analysis Services database. deFacto preserves this security structure.



• Can deFacto be used with any Analysis Services cube? Yes, deFacto is designed with out-of-the-box capability to report or analyze from any Analysis Services cube. The benefit is that you can maintain one Excel interface with the end-user, regardless of how the cube was developed, thereby lowering training costs and making support much easier.



• Can deFacto store text comments, collection, historization, collaboration, and reporting, in addition to financial data? Yes, deFacto allows the end-user to enter comments as part of the Excel add-in, typically in a budget/forecast process. Users can also report on those comments either through the Excel add-in or via the web.



• Can the client leverage Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) versioning to keep track of modifications to deFacto reports, so they can roll back if necessary? Yes, SharePoint’s shared library of reports can be utilized. No change to deFacto is required.

Moving to deFacto:

deFacto is designed to appeal to clients who recognize the superior value of Microsoft technology. Customers find moving to deFacto is the best and easiest way to transition to a tool that offers critical, must-have functionality and performance, as well as an exciting future. Many SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC)/OutlookSoft and Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 Planning customers are attracted to deFacto because of its superior performance, scalability, support, and affordability. Since deFacto’s core technology is Microsoft-centric, it offers the added benefit of capitalizing on your investment in organization-specific assets such as models, dimensions, business rules, data structures, reports, templates, ETL, security, and others, all of which can be fully leveraged.

Other customers have transitioned from products like Hyperion and Cognos to get the additional benefit of a single, fully unified CPM product rather than just a collection of integrated products. Overall, deFacto customers realize meaningful improvements in performance and significant cost savings. In fact, they find that the total cost of a deFacto replacement is actually significantly lower than the cost of maintaining their existing applications for a single year.

Demos: