The Requirement for a Database System

As businesses grow they need to attract finance which brings with it the need for detailed monthly forecasting and reporting and detailed 5 year plan figures identifying sales volumes pricing and profits. This is extemely difficult to achieve using spreadsheets especially if the group consists of more than one company or division. Overseas operations make the task even more difficult without specialised software. Utilising a product like 4Cast Pro also brings another benefit. It can provide a data warehouse of the businesses sales volumes pricing and profitability over time by product and by customer

Why replace your Spreadsheet Model and use a Database System?

Spreadsheets are flexible but

• Model easily broken – Links and rules easily broken when distributed and consolidated
• Limited reporting capability
• Does’nt cope well with structural changes eg new division, new company, change of hierachy
• Not easy for more than one Manager to contribute to a single consolidated plan
• Unauthorised changes
• Lack of Control, Key Person Dependent
• No single data warehouse of results and sales/margin over time
• No process control management of budget, forecasting and reporting cycle
• Poor versioning management  

The Benefits of using 4CastPro:

• An online, real time, accessible but secure database.
• Quickly and easily prepare a detailed forecast, budget or plan for a single company or multiple CC’s and companies using pre-setup templates and reports
• Monthly consolidation of results and reporting via importing TB’s from Accounting Systems to produce the group reporting pack including a full year forecast.
• Speed up your monthly process - This could consist of updating your forecasts of sales volumes/ prices/ probabilities and of overheads, employment and capital expenditure. Each Manager could contribute to their part of the plan according to a defined timescale. You would import the nominal ledger 'actuals' from each accounting system in the group. You could then produce your management accounts pack and other reports (eg A month by month balance sheet and cashflow forecast showing the likely effect on your overdraft requirement
• Analyse your key sales and margin trends over time
• Gain flexibility of spreadsheet but control/data validation over input via spreadsheet-like tables of input cells
• Gain database reporting/versioning capabilities
• Fully integrated model where a change in one CC immediately feeds through to group results (No Links)
• 4CastPro has web components and offline forecasting spreadsheets so lets all managers easily contribute to the plan and share reports from anywhere in the world via a web browser or by emailing spreadsheets
• Drill down on your high level forecast/plan to a detailed level
• Use spreadsheet offline reporting tool gaining benefits of both spreadsheet and database worlds
• Expand/Tailor the system to meet all your MIS requirements
• The product is extremely competitively priced compared with competing products with similar capability
• The product is supported by full consultancy services so you won't be left alone to handle the complicated technical issues