CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

09 May 2005

Product News

Geac MPC 7 Eases Broad Adoption of Performance Management in Large Enterprises

Geac® a global provider of software solutions to the CFO, launched a major new release of Geac MPC, its flagship integrated performance management software suite. Geac MPC 7 lets large enterprises easily put powerful performance management capabilities - including strategy, planning, budgeting, forecasting, consolidation and reporting - in the hands of finance and business professionals across an organization, while preserving centralized control of critical information.

As the first fully integrated, "closed loop" performance management system designed for enterprise-wide adoption, Geac MPC 7 offers Global 2000 companies multiple benefits, including vastly improved enterprise-wide planning and alignment, streamlined reporting, and simplified compliance. According to a recent Aberdeen Group industry benchmark study, best-in-class companies deploying "closed loop" corporate performance management (CPM) systems realize on average eight percent higher gross margins than the industry norm, and have about seven points greater market share in their most profitable segments.

Geac MPC recently received the highest ratings among all competitive offerings in Ventana Research's 2005 Performance Management Vendor and Product Scorecard. MPC 7 provides functionality designed to help organizations transform their strategic and operational planning processes into a collaborative platform that links strategy to actions and facilitates enterprise-wide communication of that information.

"New pressures require businesses to adopt holistic approaches to CPM," Lee Geishecker, vice president at IT research firm Gartner, Inc., said. "Many executives treat strategy formulation as a one-off exercise by defining a strategy and then single-mindedly following that strategy regardless of changes in the business environment. Scenario analysis should encourage - and CPM systems should enable - strategic planners to create and maintain a portfolio of alternative strategies. These can be considered when sudden, significant shifts occur in business circumstances, environmental factors or economic conditions and when data from the operations feedback loop indicates that the strategy is not achieving its objectives."

Geac MPC 7 advances how enterprise-wide strategic and operational business planning is done. Rather than just periodically updating a scorecard with operational results, Geac MPC 7 helps organizations transform and communicate their strategic plans into quantifiable objectives, tactics, and supporting activities with assigned ownership at the correct responsibility level throughout the enterprise. The result is a collaborative environment for planning, tracking, and predicting progress toward key management objectives.

"Many companies have tried without success to use standalone scorecards or dashboards to track corporate performance," Brian Hartlen, Vice President of Global Marketing at Geac, said. "Geac MPC 7 enables an integrated approach in which companies can define and monitor progress towards the successful implementation of strategies, as well as the resource allocations and activities that support them. This provides a deep level of context in addition to the measures and financial results, which truly allows management to drive their business and course correct as necessary."

New Geac Planning module

Geac Planning is a sophisticated planning application that is geared toward making the planning process easier, from a single planner creating "what if" operational plans to multiple teams of collaborative planners around the world. The Geac Planning application is driven through an easy-to-use Excel interface. A planner may set a high-level target needed to achieve a desired profitability percentage, for example, and then let the system adjust ("spread") the values of the chosen plan variables to achieve the goal. Planners may also add, delete, or change business assumptions and structures at will and in real time, leveraging Excel's strong and flexible data gathering, reporting, and formatting capabilities. This creates a much more nimble planning environment that also drives changes in operational plans and budgets for the enterprise. As a result, alignment throughout the organization occurs quickly and efficiently, and communication is dramatically enhanced.

Because the application is built on the Geac MPC financial application foundation with centralized controls, business users can collaborate on the same plan without having to keep track of how the changes made through the planning process will be driven into the "system of record." Geac Planning organizes and manages the sharing of structures and data across the planning environment, allowing the information to be used to seed the budget, measure operational plans, or build long-range strategic planning models.

Easier, more flexible reporting

Meeting the need for sophisticated formalized reporting, Geac MPC 7 offers a new management reporting capability featuring a creation wizard, which streamlines initial report design and shortens the time to create and deliver critical enterprise reporting.

Excel power users often want to do highly personalized analysis and reporting from their performance management systems. MPC 7 extends the current Excel Services functionality to deliver Excel cell-based reporting capabilities. Users can leverage the data in the centralized application without giving up any of the flexibility they need to create virtually any layout they choose without the need for pre-built views, templates, or formatting requirements.

In addition, Geac offers a production reporting module that integrates Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, broadening the range of reporting options available to Geac MPC customers.

Simplified ERP integration

Geac MPC OpenLink is a Web-based mapping tool that simplifies the process of accurately moving data from multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other source systems to the Geac MPC application. OpenLink helps to quickly define the mapping profile using either a basic or advanced pattern-matching syntax for one or more data sources; processes the mapping profile, loads the information into the application, and provides an audit trail of the mapping process. OpenLink is designed to work with the most popular and widely deployed ERP and general ledgers on the market.

Geac MPC Fast-Track is a set of packaged application integrations between the Geac MPC performance management software and several Geac ERP offerings. Fast-Track integrations available with the Geac MPC 7 release include: Geac E Series, Geac M Series, Geac SmartStream, and Geac System21.

Geac MPC 7 has been delivered to early adopter customers and will be generally available worldwide this summer. Pricing varies based on system configuration. Additional product information is available at http://www.performance.geac.com/mpc/mpc.cfm .

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