Management planning and control market growing in SA

The South African market for management planning and control (MPC) systems - which provide companies with timely, accurate information from virtually any business perspective - is burgeoning.

Dimension Data is growing the local Comshare MPC market at a rate of 98 percent per annum.

"Companies realise that in today`s hyper-linked business world where change occurs with the click of a mouse, they cannot afford to operate using plans and budgets that are both static and disparate," says Michael Botha, general manager - Business Intelligence at Dimension Data i-Commerce Software. "So they are turning to Dimension Data for web-based MPC solutions from Comshare, the leader in this market space.

"MPC solution-based planning is a far cry from traditional approaches to planning, where each element is typically handled in isolation. With the latter, after a couple of months the strategic plan becomes divorced from the financial plan, causing unexpected surprises to management and an air of crisis management with line managers," says Botha.

"With MPC, we prescribe a process that keeps the organisation focused on the future and drives the planning process to a daily routine, avoiding the periodic horrific effort that people dislike and therefore avoid," he says.

Comshare`s web-based solutions for MPC comprise planning, budgeting, financial data consolidation, reporting and analysis, and form part of Dimension Data`s business intelligence initiative, aimed at providing businesses with tools and information to operate effectively in the New Economy.

"We see Comshare as a strategic partner because they have been in business for nearly 35 years, they coined the phrase EIS and as such bring the expertise required to remain competitive in this market space," says Botha.

Comshare has further extended its reach into the business intelligence market by becoming a certified mySAP.com software partner. Comshare`s Decision software allows front-end access to multidimensional data structures warehoused in SAP solutions.

"Comshare`s Decision solution augments SAP customers` investments, extending the value and power of those systems," he explains. "The MPC web-based application is pre-built to complement SAP. It is a speedily-deployed and cost-effective way to empower all users within an organisation.

This is good news for potential Comshare customers, since many have a SAP solution on the backend.

Comshare offers SAP customers Comshare Decision, with a ready-to-use SAP-certified interface as an On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP) reporting application applied to the SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW).

Comshare Decision is a dynamic Web-architected or client/server business intelligence solution for the unique, specialised OLAP solutions required by analysts, managers, and executives - anyone whose strategic and tactical decisions affect the success of an organisation.

End users can easily access a variety of business information for ad hoc reporting, multidimensional analysis, visualisation of data across large hierarchies, and advanced exception alerting that proactively notifies users of problem areas.

"Comshare Decision accesses both internal and external sources of information, including the SAP R/3 solutions running with SAP BW, that can help decision-makers be more effective and reveal future opportunities," says Botha.

"Through Decision, this information can be viewed and analysed from multiple business perspectives-by strategic initiative, geography, line of business, market, and so on. End users of SAP and Comshare solutions can make sense of the business and be more effective by quickly accessing both ad hoc and formal reports," he says.

"So Comshare can extend the value and power of SAP systems as complete, technically verified, turnkey solutions for our mutual customers," concludes Botha.