Financial Planning and Budgeting

Planet exceeds the capabilities of other available Financial Planning and Budgeting packages because it is linked by the Planet Master Catalog to the Project Management module.  This means that budgets and plans reflect only the project elements that are approved and underway.  Its automated, customized template development and integration with other financial systems eliminates time-consuming and error-prone manual processes.

• Dynamically-Generated Template for Data Input - Planet dynamically generates a web-based forecasting template based on tasks in the approved plan in the Planet Project Planning and Management module.  This prevents people from budgeting for tasks that are unplanned.
• Roles-based Budgeting and Forecasting system - Users only see the data that pertain to them.

• Supports activity based costing - Activities are identified and costs are assigned according to the actual consumption by each so that the team can more precisely estimate the cost of individual tasks, the cost to achieve milestones, the overall costs and profitability of projects or even therapeutic areas in aggregate.    This helps support strategic decisions such as pricing, outsourcing, identification and measurement of process improvement initiatives.

  Integrates with underlying financial management system (e.g. Oracle, SAP, etc.) - All actuals and forecasts are presented along with plan data and can be synchronized multiple times daily.

  Quickly Identifies Available Moneys - If tasks in the project plan were contingent, those moneys are flagged for scrutiny and possible reallocation.

  "Point in Time Analysis" - Similar to its "roll back" capabilities, Planet allows analysts to go back in time to review the financial forecast and actuals at any point to better understand assumptions and changes that impacted outcomes.

  Supports Risk Analysis - by identifying budget, forecast, variability and activities within the development timeline that are committed or contingent, the R&D program management team can assess project risk.