Board Reviews

Our primary use case is corporate reporting. We are implementing it in phases. We did finance, then we did what we call our direct consumer group. Now, we are working on our production case goods (inventory).

For the most part, it is performing okay. I am having some performance problems with the data. We are going back to all the transactions by day. Therefore, we might need to have a little help from our consultants with this at some point. We have not yet spoken with technical support about this issue as it is a brand new problem.

Our data is now more structured. Between our data warehouse and BOARD, which are both brand new, we now have a more structured data view with more accurate, timely data.

We can also build reports super fast.

You can build reports pretty quickly. 

We do not use BOARD as our main data store. We have a data warehouse that BOARD consumes data from. Therefore, our data's fairly organized before it comes into BOARD. All of the dimensions and fact tables are all lined up already in the data warehouse. Thus, it is an easy task to get the data into BOARD.

If we build a ton of procedural stuff, it is not good at alerting us to what may have failed, like logging and job steps. It is our understanding from the jobs we continue to run, even though one step might have failed, that functionality is not what we would like to see. 

We would like to see it stop and report that there was an issue, and that we need to resolve it from that point moving forward. In general, we would like to see better logging in the procedural world as we currently find it deficient in procedural areas. 

I have not seen any stability issues.

We have not tried to scale it much as we do not have that many users. At the moment, we have around 10 maximum. However, this could change.

It is hard because we are not speaking on the phone. We are going back and forth with emails, and I think it is getting lost in transition on a couple of the issues that I have had because it is an email chain versus a phone call or a chat. Emails are hard for technical stuff. 

However, I have not used the technical support that much, because we are still engaged with the consultants, not yet switching completely to the technical support. We have weekly calls with the consultants. They are a type of technical support.

It was before my time at the company.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

We evaluated Tableau, Power BI, and BOARD, then chose BOARD. 

Try to use all the out-of-the-box functionality. Try to use BOARD for what it is good at doing and do not tread outside its capabilities, because then you start running into issues, such as writing procedures. When possible, do not write procedures. Procedures are necessary, but we are backing away from writing them. We are trying to use BOARD out-of-the-box.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: The consultants have always been helpful. They make sure that we are successful. I appreciate that.

We use it across our entire business. We use it for financial data, we use it for inventory data, we use it for sales data, we use it for inventory transaction data. We actually use it across all those platforms. 

It's performing very well.

The benefit is the ease of access to the data to generate reports. That results in faster decision making.

The simplicity of loading data into BOARD. I've used other solutions that take a more technical approach to getting the data in. I think the ease of being able to get the data into BOARD is what makes it nice for people with a semi-IT background. 

BOARD 11 looks like it's capturing a lot. I would compare the wishlist to things that are in Power BI.

The example today, here at the BOARDVille 2018 conference, of the implementation by the city of Fayetteville: She's actually hosting her BOARD application to the website and allowing all the citizens in her town to use it. That would be nice, to be able to host your site and actually have BOARD be the driver of your site. So you could have anybody in your organization go to www.myorg.com, for example, and then go through what you allow them to go through. So rather than having to go through the application, to be able to go to actually host it to a website.

We haven't had any real issues with the stability. We've had one issue where they had to come in and fix something that kept needing restarting while we're developing, but we've not had that issue in a while.

There are no issues with the scalability. We're a medium sized company. I have worked for larger companies and smaller companies. I think it BOARD is pretty fast as far as data loading and processing. We haven't had any scalability issues.

They're amazing, how quickly they respond and how well they partner with you.

I wasn't involved in the initial implementation. 

Our IT does the upgrades, they're pretty seamless. If there is an issue, they let me know, but we haven't had any. As far as expanding from the initial implementation, that's what I do and that's been pretty seamless.

I think the most important criterion when selecting is support. Once you create your relationship and implement, I think it's important to keep that relationship going.

I would give the solution an eight out of 10, because I think with BOARD 11 they're getting up to speed with a lot of the usability, the knowing how to use it without being taught how to use, making it more intuitive. But the reason I would say an eight and not a 10 is because - I do have a little bit of coding background - while it's nice that it's a user-interface development, could we speed it up if we could use code to actually develop faster, for people who would like that option?

My advice would be, know what you want before you purchase anything.

We use it for a few different things: 

• Our budget
• Sales reporting
• Performance tracking for some of our operations' groups. 

In the last year or two, we have seen a ramp up of usage. Other than some performance issues, we have been having some pretty good success with the product. 

It has definitely saved us time, especially in our budget and planning processes. A lot of time was previously spent manually manipulating information. Now, the information is there, so they can actually look at it and utilize it for forecasting and planning. 

The drill down is good for people who have that high level view, because they can do some analysis based on it. 

I also think the visuals are good; being able to get away from Excel and automate some things. Thus, people are not spending all their time manipulating manual data, and being able to pull from several data sources. Therefore, we have come up with some nice views. 

I would like to see more flexibility in terms of the visuals. Also, some more flexibility around the design and the formatting, because a lot of times the hard sell is to people who have a certain view in mind and we can't necessarily replicate it. In BOARD, even though it is better in terms of the process, they still want to change look and feel, e.g., colors, etc. 

It is pretty stable. The only issue that we seem to have is with the performance, which with version 11, it looks like they might have addressed it.

The more that we use it in our company, the more other departments are looking to use it. I think it has the ability to keep up with this growth. 

My analysts have used the technical support. Sometimes they have felt like they did not receive the answer that they needed, or you have to go and upgrade in order to address a problem. 

It was set up right as I started with the company. 

Make sure you know what you want before you start having someone work on building and designing something. A lot of times in the past (for us), people had what they thought was an idea of what they wanted, we would do all this work, then they would look at it and say, "No, that's not what we want." Then, we would have to start from scratch again. Definitely spend the time upfront to map everything out. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Availability
• Good communication
• Good technical knowledge, but also being able to speak to non-technical people. 

We use BOARD for financial statements. 

It is performing great. My managers love it. It is easy for them to look at their budget and review their expenses at budget time so they can know what to budget for the following year, but also to keep track of their expenses during the year and not go over their budgets. 

It has streamlined the organization.

It has benefited us by reducing time. 

Also, we are able to easily export data. When directors need financial information, we can go in the system and export the data, then send it out so they have it ready and available. If they are not in the office, we can email it to them. In addition, all the managers are now more on top of their expenses and their budget, so it is better streamlined. 

It makes it easier for me since a manager can actually look at their budget and account, then understand it. Also, where it used to take me three days at the beginning of the year to create the new financial statement, now it is a matter of minutes because all the data is in the system. 

If we could upload other data, e.g., pivot tables which can be done in BOARD already, that we have pre-existing and have that data distribute to more complex spreadsheets, I would like that going forward.

No stability issues. Everything has been good.

We did have some downtime because there are only two staff members in my division. My managers continuously use it, except we do not have the time to continuously update it.

No scalability issues.

The person that we worked with, Roberto, understood what we needed and helped us when we had questions. We felt at ease and that we could always go back to him, email or call him. He was always ready and available to help us out.

We have not used technical support.

We were just using spreadsheet.

The initial setup was very complex for us. 

I am looking forward to the upgrade for BOARD 11. We have to learn all the back-end of the setup. We do not have the company that comes in with everything already preset. We have to learn it and set it up ourselves. If we dedicate the time to it, we will get it.

We did look at a competitor.

If you want to streamline your business and reduce hourly time using the creation of spreadsheets or other financial reports that they should go for BOARD because it drastically reduces time. It will also make your financials ready and available for any type of financial planning or reporting. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: We needed somebody who would understand what we wanted and the output that we needed. 

We are a supply chain software provider. We have been using BOARD to create a collaborative platform for users to modify and make edits. This is the primary use case, along with our clients. Also, the flexibility has been great and the performance has been optimal. 

Our organization doesn't use a dynamic feed, but our clients have improved a lot in terms of coordination and communication. This has improved their internal performance. 

The reporting part has been very valuable as the capabilities of the tool do not have to change graphs, change how grids are displayed, and can create reports on the fly. These are things that our customers tend to like. 

It is snappy, and it is quick. 

• We are looking for ways to distinguish zeros versus nulls in BOARD. 
• We are looking at ways to improve how we deal with security in BOARD and other similar things. 

The stability has been fine. We have an additional challenge because we have to integrate it not only with where we are pulling the data, but with our own technology, as if we are implementing three systems. This has been challenging, but we are slowly improving on it. Hopefully, future implementations will be quick. This downtime is mainly due to our learning curve.

It is highly scalable.

BOARD has been very supportive, though we still have to find a way to extract as much knowledge from them as possible.

I personally do not develop in BOARD. We have been investing in our own resources, therefore we have a couple of people who can develop in BOARD (to provide support).

We have an internal solution. However, we think it is sub-optimal. This is why we work with the BOARD. We have other partners with some similar cookies, but not exactly.

We switched to BOARD because we felt the need to have flexibility, and BOARD had the performance that others did not. 

Implementation is rather complex.

BOARD has a lot of flexibility, but it is sort of a development tool. It is not an out-of-the-box kit where you can just feed it in. It needs to be constructed, and it needs an expert to learn it.

We have been very happy with what we have seen. We are pretty new to this. We have done three implementations so far. BOARD has been performing well and is very efficient, though we have to improve the implementation time on our end.

I would personally advise looking into BOARD (depending on your needs).

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

1. Product
2. Relationship with our clients/partners.

If we do not have a sustainable working relationship, then we can't move forward, even if the product is outstanding.

The feature that I have found most valuable is the concept that drives Board. That concept is that Board is entirely customizable. If we have a new process, or a new reporting function that we want to achieve, we can make it happen in Board. We are able to do it ourselves, and that is without any IT background or training.

This product has saved us countless hours in developing our budget each year. What used to require a number of employees working overtime each week consistently, has been cut down to one person working 10 hours of overtime once a year.

Our Budget is also more accurate, reliable, and is updated every morning with actuals from our accounting software.

 Board has also helped us with developing an initiative tracking system.

The issues that we have with Board are small. For instance, there is no spell check for text that is written.

I have used Board for 4 years.

No. The biggest part about deployment was getting employees trained on how to use the software. 

No, The software is extremely resilient, and problems are only encountered through user error, which are often easy to fix.

Customer Service and Technical Support have been great.We haven't had issues very often, but when we have, the fixes have been quick and easy.

We did all of our budget work in Excel before using Board. We switched because our Excel files would often be corrupted from one year to the next. This is not a problem with Board. Our algorithms always stay in place and we don't have to worry about corruption.

The setup is as straightforward or complex as you make it. You dictate what you want the software to do for you, and then the software is customized to your needs.

We implemented the software through Neubrain. Their level of expertise was very high, and they knew the Board software very well.

We are a municipal government, so we don't have ROI in the traditional sense, but we were able to save a lot of money in overtime costs, and personnel due to the ease of using Board.

Our primary use case for the solution is developed. We have worked on two insurance projects, one general insurance and one life insurance, and we are currently working on some manpower planning use cases with this solution.

The time functions feature is valuable. On the front end, the dynamic selections on the screen and details by function are also valuable for inside the data view.

There have been some glitches in the past two years. For example, we can't delete entities and cubes in Boards because it interrupts our whole data model once we are working on a project. Hence the stability of the product can be improved.

We have been using the solution for approximately two years.

The solution is not very stable. Sometimes we work on Board and automatically get logged off for all the clients and developers working on it. One type of error titled service unavailable consistently appears in the red error box. The error box appears frequently, but we don't know why it is happening. Sometimes in our data flow, many cubes vanish, and after some time, it shows an error that our database is corrupted. After some time, if we open the exact procedure, those cubes are there. Sometimes the client is running a procedure, but that process doesn't run, but when we check as developers, that time it is running.

The solution is scalable. We currently have seven people using it in our organization, and we intend to expand its usage.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. They helped us solve an issue that we had at the time.

We previously used Anaplan.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We implemented the solution in-house.

The licensing fee is charged on either a monthly or yearly basis.

I rate the solution a seven out of ten and recommend it to users considering it. The solution is good, but the stability can be improved, and more sparsity videos can be included in Board education academic tools to aid learning and better understand how to work out calculations.

Our primary use case is for forecasting and budgeting. We budget capital expenditures, the full P&L financial statement. We have our top-level VPs enter their driver rules and then Finance goes on the back-end and calculates the gross margin impact of that. We capture operational expenses down to the vendor level. We also do all of management reporting.

The performance has been great so far.

The benefits are 

• getting the data in one spot
• the ability to report dynamically
• version control.

I think it's flexible. I chose this solution because, even though it wasn't out-of-the-box, you can customize it, and the long-term growth potential of the software is where I see the value.

More export to Excel functionality. Right now, we're having to build within the cloud-based platform, as well as build within the Excel add-in, because the export to Excel is somewhat ugly. So we're doing both simultaneously.

So far so good.

I think it's very scalable. Again, that's why we chose it, because I think there are endless possibilities to do more. Right now, we're just using it for FP&A-type functions. But the BI functionality, which is the core business, I think is tremendous.

We were just using Excel, there were version control issues, mistakes on copy/paste. We needed a dynamic solution that would be accurate.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are 

• customer service and level of support
• the ability for a non-IT person to maintain the system 
• long-term growth in functionality - I don't want something that's going to be out-dated three years from now.

The setup was so-so (somewhere between straightforward and complex). I think if you are IT-savvy, I think you can get it good enough. It's definitely meant for an end-user to be able to be a power user in the system.

The final decision came down between Borg and Tagetik. We chose it because BOARD was a sandbox, instead of out-of-the-box. Tagetik is great, it's ready to go, but three years from now, that's all it is, that's all it's ever going to be, just financial reporting. I was looking for something that can change over time.

I think that from talking with other customers here at the BOARDVille 2018 user conference, your consultant, if you're using a BOARD consultant, I think that that person is very important. Also, just allow ample time, because it is a sandbox, the startup time is going to be more considerable than out-of-the-box solutions.