Aberdeen Group Annual Financial Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting Survey Reflects Clarity Systems' Customer Experiences

TORONTO, March 17 /PRNewswire/ - In a recent report(1) co-sponsored by Clarity Systems, Aberdeen Group identified a trend to more dynamic budgeting and planning, reflecting the experience of Clarity customers who are on the leading-edge of this growing financial strategy. Free copies of the full report are available at the following link: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30411781&cid=6282

"Finance executives are using the aftermath of the financial crisis to get budgeting and planning in their companies better aligned with the new realities," said Nasreen Quibria, senior analyst at Aberdeen Group. "Companies are realizing the limitations of static annual plans and the shortcoming of limited horizons. To enable more agile processes, leading companies are moving beyond spreadsheets and leveraging financial planning and budgeting, and consolidation and reporting tools to perform scenario analysis and forecast performance more frequently - quarterly and even monthly - to ensure that financial planning is continuous and dynamic."

The end of static annual plans and budgets in favor of more agile scenario analysis and forecast performance activities and tools is being led by visionary finance departments in corporate America, such as that of American List Counsel (ALC).

"Nowadays, business conditions change too quickly for an annual budget to really hold up, so those companies still stuck in that annual budgeting process need to take a hard look at it and determine what value they're getting," said Howard Abrams, VP, Finance, ALC. "My firm's ability to react to deteriorating conditions and manage costs appropriately in the deepest months of the 2009 recession was in many ways directly attributable to the flexibility of the Clarity 6 corporate performance management (CPM) solution.

"Clarity Systems helped us achieve a real-time, dynamic budgeting environment. This significantly strengthens a firm's ability to make good decisions in the volatile economy facing today's businesses," said Abrams.

Clarity 6 Anticipated Trend to Agile Budgeting Solutions

"The Aberdeen research confirms what we are seeing in the marketplace and validates our product design," said Mark Nashman, President & CTO, Clarity Systems. "Clarity 6 enables our clients to see how different financial assumptions will affect their operations. That's why we programmed advanced business rules and modeling capabilities into Clarity 6, so that clients like ALC could quickly change their assumptions and calculate the financial impact of each," added Nashman.

Clarity 6 is a single, unified application that integrates financial budgeting, planning, consolidations, analytics, scorecards and dashboards within a web-based interface. Unlike other products that are merged versions of independently developed applications, Clarity 6 is built from the ground up as a unified solution - i.e., every component is designed to fit seamlessly into the next.

About Clarity Systems

Clarity Systems delivers software solutions to the Office of Finance. Our software helps large and mid-market organizations around the world improve their budgeting, planning, consolidations, scorecarding and management reporting processes, and also automates their external reporting processes to support the production of regulatory and statutory reports. Our unified applications help CFOs reduce risk while simultaneously improving operational efficiency. For more information, please visit our website at www.claritysystems.com or call us at 1-877-410-5070.

    (1) "Financial Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting: Will the Economy
        Emerge? Will you?" - March 9, 2010 - Published by Aberdeen Group, a
        Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS). Free copies available at
    http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30411781&cid =6282

SOURCE Clarity Systems Limited