Board Reviews

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.

I have been using BOARD for the last four years to create financial reports, create budget scenarios, perform budget cycle, run consolidations, create dashboards and visualizations. BOARD provides in-depth insight to enable users in their decision-making process. Taking data and making it easily readable/ready-to-use.

• BOARD helps by providing access to all sources and data. 
• Changes can be made easily by the users themselves. 
• The reports are easy to play around with. 
• Management can customise the filters as per their requirement.

• Easy to install
• User-friendly
• Data presentation is great
• Many features and tools to choose from
• Information is easily accessible and clear.

• More visualization could be brought in
• More customization of data in regards to specific user requirements.

Three to five years.

We started using BOARD as part of a solution. We're developing using BOARD to go into implementation for our customers.

In terms of performance, it's still pretty new to us. It's good. We know BOARD is very powerful, but there is a big learning curve that we still have to get through.

There are definitely a lot of benefits we're still discovering. We have our own software but our reporting functionality and different workflows are not as flexible and mature as what BOARD can do. That's why we have it.

It's very powerful. BOARD is a good platform. Without actually programming, you can develop a workflow and solutions for a lot of things.

Again, it's very powerful, but there is also a big learning curve. It should be a little more intuitive.

In development we have issues for which we have had to open tickets. It's part of the learning process. We don't know where exactly it's going wrong. It's not quite intuitive sometimes.

We're starting with two projects; we expect many more new projects that we're going to partner on with BOARD.

We were doing more home-grown development. Our collaboration piece, again, is not as powerful, as flexible, nor can it expand in the future, as much as BOARD can.

BOARD is a very good solution to compared to other reporting/BI tools out there. Also, because we are based in Boston and BOARD's headquarters is in Boston, I think helped make it an easy choice. And within our company, on the European side - it's an Italian company - they already have a relationship with BOARD.

When selecting a vendor the most important criteria are the 

• software features
• support
• education they provide to help the internal resources get up to speed.

Personally, I think the setup and the concept is intuitive, but once when you get into detail, try to get to a solution, that's where the challenge is.

I would tell a colleague the same thing we're experiencing. BOARD is very powerful, flexible, but it takes an initial learning curve.

Ease of use and completeness of the offering.

This platform has help our organization streamline our budget process and give us insight into our customers, products & services.

Product is excellent, no areas of improvement that are not currently in the product or on its roadmap.

3 Years

Very high level of customer service.

Excellent

Yes - Paris software POLAP and Business Objects from SAP.

Easy installation and minimal SQL skills to get it up and running quickly.

In-house

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.

Our primary use for BOARD was initially to report income statements and other P&Ls to our executive team, which was our phase one of implementing BOARD. Our phase two would be uploading from external data, then analyzing the external data with the internal data.

It has been going great, but there is still a lot to learn (a lot of training) that we can get from BOARD because our company is pretty small. We do not have a team dedicated to BOARD because it is a full time job if you are deciding to develop it from the ground up. We would need to allocate more time into something like that. 

Right now, we are not using the product to its fullest potential.

I do not think it has that great of an impact on our company yet. We have not yet been able to dedicate the time and training towards it. 

For me, it is useful! We are a finance team, though not in finance, but it is working out well for our team.

The aesthetics of it are really nice. That is what attracted us to BOARD: the ease and functionality of it. Once you start using it, you can't go back to the old Excel.

I would like an eLearning platform for BOARD. I heard it was in development, and it is on the way. 

It is pretty stable. 

The product should fit our needs in several years.

The support from the BOARD team and their consultants is great. Whenever I use technical support, they are good.

Before BOARD, we were just using Excel.

We switched to BOARD because our goal is customer probability. I think its our executive manager's solution to consolidate all the data from different data points from all the different departments like marketing, operations, finance, and sales, then gather them all in one place and effectively distribute the information without developing a new solution.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

BOARD was the only company that came onsite to do a demo. Their demonstration blew us away. The dashboard looked amazing.

Before you implement. look at what you want to achieve before you start working on building a database, then starting an implementation. Make decisions on what you want to do for your company.

Looking at BOARD 11, it looks impressive. I like the new design, user interface, and everything is on the cloud.

What do you appreciate most in a vendor?

• All the different, little plugins that they have for Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint. It makes it very easy to use.
• The cloud and desktop client are very easy to use. 
• At first, the product was not very intuitive, but now if you get it, it is customizable.

The primary use case is developing a demand planning/collaboration platform. It's performing well.

The collaboration part. That is the tool that our client is really using.

I would like to see a better Web client, where the controls work the same way as in the Windows client. I do think that the focus is now on the Web, so it should be improved upon.

I think the stability can be improved upon, but overall it is stable.

We've seen downtime from our side, that we did not design it the way that it was going to be used. But I also see that we have had to take away features because it was not supported in the way that we wanted it. We're using it in the client versus Web; in the client it works and in the Web it doesn't. So we had to pull certain controls off the screen.

I think it's very scalable. We hardly see the impact on the tool, the CPU, the memory, when the users are connecting through it, through the Web. The Windows client is a different story. It's not scalable at all, so we decided to go with the Web.

There is room for improvement. In the beginning there was a struggle reaching the right person, especially in the same time zone. That has been resolved. I think it's getting better over the months, but it can still be improved upon.

The company that I work for is based in Italy, so all the support was coming through Italy. Now, the support now is U.S.-based, which is better for us.

When selecting a vendor, in general, the most important factors are their

• being responsive
• being truthful.

If I have an issue, I don't care if they say, "We cannot fix it," or, "We'll fix it in a later version." Communicate that.

My advice would be, you should seriously consider this solution.

• Drill down
• Split & Splat

• Budget & forecast process

• Supply chain

I have used it for six years.

We have not encountered any deployment issues.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

Customer service is 10/10.

Technical support is 10/10.

We previously used Excel and OLAP cubes. We switched because BOARD is easier to use.

Initial setup was complex because my company has its own fiscal calendar that was difficult to set up.

A vendor team implemented it. I rate it 8/10.

The ROI is great.

• Great cost\benefit ratio

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated IBM Cognos and QliqView.

I hope to improve BOARD in all business areas.