What is our primary use case?
We have brought the solution to be the "one" solution and are using it in all aspects of finance in terms of reporting, forecast budgeting, modeling, and score cards. We are also using it for analyticals and "what-if" scenarios/situations.
One of the things that we asked for it to do was provide ease of use and it has accomplished that. Also, it was an easy implementation, and it has been a huge success.
How has it helped my organization?
The low hanging fruit on the how it is performing now that we have built it into our integrity and trust in our numbers. Where in the past, there have been issues, now we have only one version of the truth. We have been able to provide seamless governance across the whole organization. Why we have done this is for the hard savings, my team is able to scale easily with the business along with the rapid growth that we have been seeing.
What is most valuable?
It is "one" solution. Keeping it simple: Allowing my team, my users, end users, and me only one application to plug into to get all of their financial data. This is key.
What needs improvement?
It would be huge in the future if BOARD offered a lot more graphs and presentations, and it was a lot easier to use.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability has been fantastic. We have not had any downtime. We are an on-premise user, so we are very dependent on our own systems and we have very reliable systems.
I am interested in the future of turning over to the cloud and the challenge of what that performance will be like. Right now, it is a future endeavor that we have. In the industry that I belonged to, the healthcare industry, there are a tremendous amount of safeguards that we have to add, therefore everything is on-premise versus out in the cloud.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We are still a small organization. From my organization, I am very excited about it. That is one of the reasons that I picked BOARD, it would scale.
How are customer service and support?
We have not used technical support, because we are dealing with a third-party vendor.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
BOARD goes by the motto of "Be Simple". I have used other platforms in the past: IBM and some Oracle products. The are very complex, data-ridden. BOARD is very non-IT friendly, which I am excited about.
I came from an IBM situation, then I moved to a company that did not have anything. I knew I did not want to go to the complexity of a system that was too big for us. BOARD was at the right size and right time for us. It is also something that we can grow into (scales).
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was very straightforward. It was a really good partnership that we had through interviews that we were conducted by BOARD, the third-party vendor, and us. Therefore, we knew where we were all the time. It was pretty seamless.
What about the implementation team?
BOARD implementation is done with the help of a third-party vendor.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We were looking at other vendors, like Sisense, and all your typical, major competitors.
BOARD stood out because it was the company with "one" solution. I liked the way that I felt as a user and administrator of it. There were a lot of clicks, drops, drags, etc. versus writing code.
What other advice do I have?
I have been totally thrilled with BOARD.
Just do it. I think about the way that BOARD is trying to continuously reinvent itself. Adding the community is huge. It gives us a source out of Google to find solutions. We are so used to that in our society. BOARD has actually done that. The customer service is huge, knowing that every time I make a new inquiry that I always feel like I am the number one customer, even though I know I am not. It has been huge; it has been fantastic.
There is a tremendous learning curve with it, because you are learning a whole new language at first. Once you understand the basic concepts of what a capsule, mask, and entity are, then it becomes pretty easy. Then, like with anything else, the more you use it, the easier it gets.
Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: The all-in-one solution was key thing for us. I did not want have the end users go day-to-day having to use multiple apps to manage one task. I did not want to do that. I wanted to have "one" solution to fit all of our financial means.
*Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
