Host Analytics Integrates Finance and Sales With the Launch

REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwired - Jul 22, 2014) - Host Analytics , the leader in cloud-based Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), today announced the launch of Host Analytics Sales Planning for finance and sales leaders looking to better align and collaborate. The new application also gives sales professionals the tools they need to more efficiently and accurately deal with sales forecasting, commission planning and more. The new application seamlessly integrates with Salesforce.com, the market-leading CRM platform.

To learn more about Host Analytics Sales Planning, please visit: http://www.hostanalytics.com/products/sales-planning

Host Analytics, the established leader in the $4B EPM market, is helping sales teams transition from cumbersome spreadsheets to a modern, automated system that streamlines critical processes such as sales forecasting and trend reporting to territory, quota, and commission planning. The new application ensures that regular updates to the sales forecast are incorporated in finance and accounting processes so that organizations can make mid-quarter adjustments to the business, stay agile, and achieve predictability in their revenue and spending.

Finance professionals can use Host Analytics Sales Planning to manage:

• Corporate planning -- Closes the loop between finance and sales by tying the sales plan to the corporate plan in one seamless system
• Executive reporting -- Automates the creation of weekly sales forecast reports in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and makes updates with a push of a button
• Early warning -- Alerts executives and updates corporate level "what-if" models to aid in faster responses to changing business conditions
• Predicable revenue -- Analyze how sales orders will actually convert into revenue with built-in financial intelligence

The new application meets a critical need that sales managers have today by helping them more effectively manage:

• Sales Forecasting -- Automatic weekly snapshots and updates to sales stages with flow-through, discount modeling, and waterline forecasting
• Quota and Commission Planning -- Top-down, bottom-up, or middle-out modeling capabilities that can analyze sales performance by individual and team, with overlay analysis, as well as comprehensive modeling of spot-bonuses and other compensation exceptions
• Trend Reporting -- Powerful week-by-week comparisons and waterfall reports allow analysis across representatives, managers, sales stages, forecast categories and more
• Territory Planning - - Integrated analysis of sales and marketing information including leads, opportunities, pipeline, and territory modeling and support for multiple direct and indirect channels
• Salesforce.com Integration -- Deep, seamless financial analytics for Salesforce.com users

"Aligning Sales and Finance is critical for any company selling in a dynamic and competitive market," said James Perry, Finance Manager at iCIMS. "By integrating CRM and General Ledger data in Host Analytics Sales Planning, we're able to understand and optimize the productivity of our Sales team and make sure that any changes to the sales forecast are immediately accounted for by Finance in the corporate plan."

The application also helps sales professionals move off of Excel as their primary planning tool. Even large organizations with modern CRM systems frequently find themselves dependent on Excel for creating sales forecasts, modeling territories, analyzing performance and estimating commissions, and more. Host Analytics Sales Planning does away with the reliance on Excel and improves collaboration between sales and finance to drive better business outcomes.

Host Analytics Sales Planning also includes patent-pending AirliftXL. This is a data integration tool that allows organizations to reuse the best of what they already have. Many organizations have forecasting methodologies and key sales performance metrics defined in Microsoft Excel. With Host Analytics, Sales can recycle their existing models and move them to a centralized, secure cloud environment. That includes formulas, formatting, metadata, and more.

"In the absence of accurate data on sales to revenue conversions and future revenue potential, enterprises cannot allocate the right resources to the sales processes that matter the most," said Surya Mukherjee, Senior Analyst, Ovum.

"In today's business environment, it is absolutely critical that sales and finance departments partner and effectively communicate to achieve revenue predictability," said Lance Walter, CMO at Host Analytics. "Host Analytics Sales Planning gives business leaders the ability to align and stay agile and synchronized in a very dynamic selling environment."

The process of pulling data out of CRM systems into Excel is not only painful and error-prone, but it leaves sensitive company information exposed in scattered spreadsheets. Using Excel also means that there's no automation of the process, no centralized controls over the data, and no audit trail after-the-fact. Host Analytics Sales Planning automatically captures and retains sales history and provides powerful multi-dimensional analysis and modeling capabilities that help link sales activity to business outcomes.

"Today's outdated mixing and matching of CRM and ERP data in Excel has made it far too difficult for sales and finance to collaborate and answer questions around revenue, forecasting, staffing, and territories that are paramount to the success of the organization," said Dave Kellogg, CEO at Host Analytics. "With the launch of Host Analytics Sales Planning, we are eliminating the sales and finance siloes, and giving an integrated view of revenue and sales performance that ties back to the corporate plan. We can get your finance and sales teams out of wrangling data so that they can use analytics and advanced modeling to drive better enterprise performance."

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About Host Analytics Host Analytics is the leader in cloud-based financial applications for planning, consolidation, reporting and analytics. Host Analytics enterprise performance management (EPM) customers benefit from improved business agility, improved security, and lower overall cost compared to legacy on-premises alternatives. World-class companies like NEC, Burlington Coat Factory, and Crocs trust Host Analytics to power their strategic financial processes. Host Analytics is a fast-growing, private company backed by leading venture capitalists and is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices around the globe.

For more information about Host Analytics, please visit www.hostanalytics.com Become a fan of Host Analytics on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HostAnalyticsInc Follow Host Analytics on LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/company/host-analytics-inc. Follow @host_analytics on Twitter