Industry Challenges

Technology organizations strive to deliver new product innovations within aggressive timeframes in order to remain competitive in the marketplace. From a strategic perspective, senior management must make the most optimal use of annual budgets - aligning commitments with strategic goals, while keeping a focus on research & development.

The complexities of new product development projects demand much of the organization’s resources and attention. Close tracking of project performance is necessary in order to avoid costly overruns and missed opportunities.

From a systems perspective, technology organizations often maintain project and financial data in different sources: schedules and progress are maintained in enterprise or desktop project management systems, hours worked are captured in timesheet systems, financial actuals are stored in ERPs or GLs, and spreadsheets are typically used for financial planning, forecasting, and reporting. There is often no link between strategic plans and project execution, leaving the organization unable to react quickly to issues and trends. The lack of true integration also limits auditability, drill-down, and accountability.

EcoSys Financial Manager addresses these complex issues with an easy to use web application that allows for the maintenance and integration of financial planning data at varying levels of detail, tying strategic planning to project delivery in one seamless solution.

Budgeting and Planning

FM provides robust features for annual budget planning, budget requests, and approvals. Budgets can be managed top-down, from funding organization lines of business, down to programs, projects and phases. Budget allocations can be based on the latest project forecast information, as well as from requests made by project managers.

Allocations can also be aligned to strategic goals and priorities, and various what-if scenarios can be modeled. Revisions to budgets can be made at any time, such as for mid-year budget re-planning efforts.

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Program and Project Forecasting

FM provides the ability to consolidate program, project, and operational forecasts from Project Management systems and ERPs and give project cost managers the ability to maintain financial forecasts by accounting periods and financial categories. Using a simple spreadsheet-like web interface, managers can view and update the latest forecast information, produce reports, and analyze trends.
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Strategic Alignment

Annual budgets typically must be allocated across multiple dimensions: by programs and projects, product lines, clients, strategic priority, and so on. EcoSys FM allows annual budgets to be distributed across as many hierarchical dimensions as required. In addition, at any time, top-down targets can be compared with bottom-up forecasts and actuals in order to monitor compliance with goals and identify where targets not being met.

Software Capitalization

FM supports the implementation of software capitalization according to the rules and standards established by the organization. Capitalization rules can be set to differentiate costs by type of project, expenditure category, type of resource, and phase. Expenses can be depreciated and viewed as both amortized and cash-out-the door cash flows.

Additional mandatory and optional documentation can also be associated with project financials for compliance with auditability standards. All historical data is locked-down and changes can only impact future periods, unless a formal adjustment is made.
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Resource Planning

For organizations that adopt a supply and demand model by which a fairly fixed supply of labor must be optimally deployed to fulfill the highest priority demand coming from the business lines, Financial Manager provides tools to automate this process. FM allows for the designation of top-down resource plans, as well as their alignment with forecasted bottom-up resource allocations to projects. Learn more

Data Integration and Performance Measurement

Flexible performance analysis and reporting are key requirements for finance managers and project cost controllers. FM provides the ability to consolidate, reconcile, and view actual expenditures from multiple sources (ERPs, GLs, Timesheets, and Project Management systems). Accruals can also be managed via FM.

Flexible multi-dimensional reports and graphs can be easily created in FM without the involvement of technical or administrative staff. Users can analyze top-down organizational budgets and strategy versus bottom-up forecasts and actuals and view variances and trends by period.
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Governance

Financial Manager provides a fully audited system of record for central management of all budget workflow transactions, regular snapshots of the latest project forecasts, and visibility into all project actuals. Through its extensive set of controls and integrated functions, FM facilitates support for Sarbanes-Oxley and SOP 98-1 compliance.

Organizations save the excessive hours spent monthly in manually compiling and integrating this data for strategic planning meetings, budget reviews, project selection meetings, and project status reviews.

Having an integrated source of top-down and bottom-up financial data provides one authoritative source of the latest departmental and project level information. Governance reports can be easily created in FM. These reports reference auditable data, rather than being based on subjective information entered into a spreadsheet or presentation slide for monthly status reports.