MWH Global Leverages Business Performance Management Software-as-a-Service to Reduce Budget Cycles and Improve Financial Planning

Professional Services Firms Turn to Host Analytics Suite of On-Demand Software to Ease Budgeting and Forecasting

ST LOUIS, MO (PRWEB) September 27, 2006 -- Host Analytics, the price, performance leader in Business Performance Management software solutions, today announced that MWH Global, a billion dollar environmental engineering and consulting services firm, is using Host Analytics to reduce their budgeting and workforce planning cycles.

MWH provides water, wastewater, energy, natural resource, program management, consulting and construction services to industrial, municipal and government clients. The company manages projects in 36 countries and has over 200 participants in the budgeting process. MWH selected Host Analytics to help them solve their budgeting and forecasting issues which included:

Budgeting of Revenues and Direct Costs

-    Business generates revenues based on projects

-    Costing model in budget process to recognize all business rules and components of direct costs

-    Business rules are heavily “driver-based”

Compensation Budgets

-    Budgeting of staff costs

-    “Budgeted utilization” pattern of Human Resources is equally important

-    Resource decisions such as hiring, termination, borrowing of labor – all need to be linked to revenue budgets

Capital budgets

-    Budgeted acquisition of capital items globally

-    Indirect costs

-    Financial allocations

-    Complex allocation of shared service costs

-    Allocation drivers based on FTE, revenues, different currencies

-    Currency conversions based on Global Treasury Rates

-    Eliminate inter-company transactions during consolidation of budgets

Budget consolidations and workflow

-    Multi-level approval

-    Consolidation of budget data across different currencies

-    Ownership of budgets

The company required an integrated budgeting & planning platform for MWH operations globally. After evaluating several budgeting and planning solutions, MWH selected Host Analytics for their cost-effective budgeting and forecasting Software-as-a-Service offering which was complimented by the ease of implementation and maintenance.

“The SaaS model saved us thousands of dollars in upfront hardware and software installation costs along with the headaches that would have been added to our IT staff,” said Carl Lowman of MWH. “And, because we didn’t have to worry about installing new servers or software, we were able to get the software up and running in a short window. We have a lot of confidence in the reliability and support that Host Analytics offers in this application service.”

MWH is using HOST BUDGET, a Web-based budgeting and forecasting application which provides a single repository for budgeting and forecasting information. The Excel-like interface has made it easy for their users to get trained because of their familiarity with Excel. More than 250 users across the global organization can perform bottoms-up budgeting and top-down forecasting by accessing the system with their web browser. The company has reduced their budget process by over 50% while the ability to automatically upload the budget numbers into MWH’s ERP system has eliminated IT hassles.

Lowman went on to say “with HOST BUDGET, each division has time for more analysis versus compiling numbers in spreadsheets.”

About Host Analytics

Host Analytics is the price – performance leader in Business Intelligence and Business Performance Management software that helps companies improve their Budgeting, Forecasting, Financial Consolidations, Dashboarding, Scorecarding, and Reporting and Analysis. Founded in 1999, Host Analytics delivers a complete suite of Business Performance Management software offered as an installed solution or on-demand. Host Analytics serves small, medium and large size businesses around the world. For additional information, visit www.hostanalytics.com or call (314) 588-2121.

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