Tidemark Releases Fully Immersed Financial Planning and Analysis Experience in Microsoft Office 2013 and Office 365 Designed for the Modern Modeler
New App Offers Bi-Directional Unification So Users Can Strengthen Investments in Spreadsheets While Increasing Productivity in Their Performance Management Environment
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 7, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Tidemark, maker of modern cloud business planning and enterprise analytics apps, today announced the release of the Tidemark Excel App for Microsoft Office, one of the industry's first fully immersed financial planning and analysis (FP&A) experience designed for the modern modeler. New bi-directional unification improves the efficiency and workflow of FP&A professionals by allowing them to freely model in Office and Office 365 spreadsheets while bolstering data control, scalability and improved security through the Tidemark platform without additional costs. FP&A teams also improve their investments in Office 2013 and Office 365 while gaining the benefits that modern modelers expect from Tidemark such as collaboration, mobile delivery and visualization.
In the new Blue Hill Research report "Excel and Modern Financial Planning: Unifying Spreadsheets and Centralized Performance Management" research shows, "the modern modeler is looking for the best of both worlds to support both the individualized flexibility associated with spreadsheets while supporting the advanced visualization, storyboarding, and reporting capabilities increasingly associated with today's enterprise performance management expectations that include up-to-date financial analysis, strong data visualization and presentation capabilities, and the relevant, contextualized data appropriate for understanding specific business contexts."
"We are incredibly excited to be utilizing an EPM technology with a modern approach to connectivity between the cloud based performance management environment and Office 2013 instead of simply linking or airlifting Excel into their system's user interface," said Chris Garber, VP of FP&A of Acxiom. "The ability to automatically write-back into the Tidemark platform will eliminate countless hours of lost time and potential errors from exporting and uploading spreadsheet data. The seamless user experience is a great example of the compromise-free, transformative innovation we have come to expect from Tidemark."
The new unification between Tidemark and Office 2013 and Office 365 -- available immediately and at no extra cost to Tidemark customers -- was designed to help users model and analyze the way they're used to, but ensure their formulas are no longer trapped in disparate, static spreadsheets separated from their performance management environment. The modern modeler can:
- Combine the best of both worlds via a native integration to see the impact of their analyses in real-time in both environments, while enabling collaboration at the edges of their organization in a security-enhanced and scalable manner
- Enhance productivity by allowing FP&A teams to perform ad-hoc calculations in Excel spreadsheets quickly, as well as refine and capture them in repeatable planning processes within their EPM platform seamlessly for the benefit of the entire organization
- Bolster their investments made in Office 2013 and Office 365 by streamlining traditional time-consuming processes like importing information, reconciling data and exporting and uploading files
- Improve scale and performance within an EPM environment with sync and automatic write-back to free the analytical knowledge trapped in several spreadsheets on various desktops
- Maintain data integrity while unlocking restrictions on the amount or kind of data (structured or unstructured) in a single platform
- Add the ability to visualize the model as a business narrative via Storylines™ — consumer-like visual infographics to understand what's really happening in your business
"As more global enterprises move to Office 365 they seek the ability to integrate other well-adopted business solutions in their organization," said David Szabo, Global Business Development Manager at Microsoft. "Businesses can now natively run Tidemark in Office 2013 and Office 365, giving the modeler mobile delivery, automatic visualization features and collaboration while ensuring teams still have the ability to use their favorite Microsoft tools. This both adds to their investment in Office 2013 and to their productivity so they can share the insights developed on Excel spreadsheets with the business users at the edge of the organization."
"When we plan out our product development roadmap, we work very closely with our customers to ensure we're meeting their needs and offering up solutions that allow them to completely re-imagine outdated processes derived from older systems," said Christian Gheorghe, Founder and CEO of Tidemark. "We're thankful to work with Microsoft to provide the power of both companies as we help enterprises create a new way of operating in FP&A built on efficiency, productivity and choice. Our goal is to do for Excel what Evernote did for sticky notes."
For a complimentary copy of Blue Hill Research's "Excel and Modern Financial Planning: Unifying Spreadsheets and Centralized Performance Management"report click here. In addition, see our new video discussing the value of the Tidemark Excel App for Microsoft Office 2013.
About Tidemark
Tidemark is a new breed of enterprise performance management (EPM) software with its modern cloud and mobile-first design. Innovative brands like Netflix, Chiquita, BlackBerry, Brown University, and HubSpot rely on the Tidemark platform and advanced analytics cloud to sharpen decision-making, reduce risk and improve business performance. Using Tidemark's unique, intuitive apps, decision-makers across the organization gain access to valuable data, deep analytics capabilities, real-time collaboration, and actionable visualizations from any device. Tidemark has offices throughout North America and Europe and is funded by Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, Tenaya Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank. To learn more about Tidemark, please visit www.tidemark.com or follow us on Twitter @TidemarkEPM.
About Microsoft's Apps for Office
An App for Office is essentially a lightweight web application, built on web-standard technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. No code is installed or downloaded to the computer running the host Office client – just a simple XML manifest that specifies basic details about the app such as version, permissions, location in the cloud, etc. When the user launches the app, it executes right within a secure iframe in the browser. Currently the Office Store houses hundreds of apps that run atop Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project or Access. Add in Apps for SharePoint and Mail Apps, and the Store has more than 1,300 apps in all – offered in Free, Trial and Paid versions.
Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8f_s6KFkv8
Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150407/196948
SOURCE Tidemark
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