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What
is CONTROL®?
CONTROL® is a cost effective, highly
scalable, one-stop tool for every aspect
of financial management — modeling, budgeting,
forecasting, analysis, consolidating and
reporting. Unlike other products that combine
various components or tools, CONTROL®
was developed from scratch, and architected
from the ground up, with comprehensive,
end-to-end financial management capabilities.
It is a holistic solution that provides:
• One standardized user interface
• One common meta data and data repository
• One consistent "real-time" calculation
engine
• One point of maintenance
...and the breadth and depth of functionality
for real time cross-functional integration
and granularity.
CONTROL® empowers you
to see the big picture, examine the finite
detail, continually plan, adjust and predict
with greater confidence and ease. |
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Who
in my organization will benefit from CONTROL®?
Your entire organization stands to benefit
from using CONTROL®, from finance to IT,
from the CEO to line managers.
Because CONTROL®
•Supports and integrates all financial management
processes—budgeting, planning forecasting,
modeling, consolidating, and reporting and
analysis—across your enterprise
• Automatically assimilates and handles very
large amounts of data from your operational
and financial systems
• Increases end-user participation and enterprise
collaboration yet reduces cycle times
• Enables core metrics for profitability and
performance to be tracked consistently and
accurately
• Delivers the perceptiveness and agility
needed for effective decision making
• Provides unlimited, dynamic "what if"
capabilities without any IT intervention
• Allows rapid model development and quick
and easy altering as the business evolves
...And more! |
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What
is CONTROL®'s format for planning, reporting
and analysis?
CONTROL® uses Microsoft Excel™ as its
main user interface (it also provides a
web-based interface). Having the power of
CONTROL® integrated with Excel allows
you to:
• Rapidly deploy CONTROL®
• Minimize the learning and acceptance curve
• Leverage existing spreadsheets to quickly
update CONTROL® plan or forecast data
• Maintain the look and feel of existing
output |
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How
will CONTROL® increase efficiency and
streamline my overall financial processes?
CONTROL® eliminates the constraints
and heartaches of spreadsheets and disparate
applications and systems. With CONTROL®
there is:
• No need for a many of tools and applications
• No need to reconcile and synchronize multiple,
incongruent applications
• No need to re-key data
• No need for manual links and consolidations
• No delays in retrieving urgent and critical
information
• No different versions of the "financial
truth"
It integrates all financial
management processes and functions and provides
a single authoritative source of information
for accelerated and improved decision-making. |
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How
does CONTROL® integrate data from my existing
enterprise and other legacy systems to give
me real-time, cross-functional data access?
CONTROL® does not rely on proprietary
database technology or interim reporting "cubes"
to generate data for reporting and analysis.
Instead, CONTROL® uses a "dynamic
mapping" concept to extract and integrate
financial and non-financial data from a broad
range of operational and financial sources
including general ledgers, ERPs, legacy systems,
data warehouses, and data stores etc.
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Which
database does CONTROL® support, and are
there other technical requirements?
CONTROL® is designed to leverage your
company's existing infrastructure and systems.
It stores its metadata (dimensions, levels,
hierarchies, attributes, and data measures)
and data in an industry-standard RDBMS, such
as Oracle, MS SQL Server, DB2/400, Informix,
Sybase, etc., features an n-tier client/server
architecture, full Internet support, and drill
through to transactional level detail. Hardware
requirements vary by deployment strategy and
the size and complexity of the application.
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Will
I still be able to use my existing spreadsheet
models?
Yes! CONTROL® enables you to leverage
the investment you made in Excel. As a matter
of fact, you can:
• Use your spreadsheets to automatically build
CONTROL® metadata (dimensions, levels,
hierarchies, etc.)
• Update plan or forecast data in a CONTROL®
model directly from your spreadsheets
• Add personal calculations
• Maintain the look and feel of your spreadsheet
reports
.... And
more.
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What
are the benefits of a native Microsoft Excel
environment?
We chose to implement CONTROL®'s primary
user interface in Excel because it is the
tool of choice for our user community. Wherever
possible, we designed CONTROL®'s functionality
to work consistently and similarly to Excel
features, both to leverage the incredible
power of Excel and minimize training time.
Since both CONTROL®'s
user interface and processing engine are
based on leading-edge Microsoft technology
(e.g., MS Office, COM, DCOM, IIS, etc.)
we can deliver new functionality quickly
and our users can take advantage of the
continuous advances in technology and reduced
cost of ownership provided by Microsoft.
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How
many users can CONTROL® handle?
CONTROL® is enormously scalable. It imposes
no inherent restriction on the number of users.
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What
about security?
CONTROL® provides robust user and data
security, including granular access CONTROL®s.
Users can be restricted or permitted access
to specifically authorized models—and restricted
within each model to designated scenarios,
organizational entities, and variables—on
a no-access, read-only access or read-write
access basis.
In addition, security privileges can be assigned
to individual users or to groups of users
for easy administration; and user passwords
can be set to expire periodically, after extended
periods of inactivity, or after a specified
number of invalid login attempts.
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Is
CONTROL® web-enabled?
Absolutely! CONTROL®'s intuitive web
interface supports:
• Budget and forecast data collection and
aggregation—in real time
• Distribution of up-to-the-minute performance
reports across the enterprise
• Real-time multidimensional analysis
• Data exploration including drill-through
• Dynamic anytime, anywhere access and collaboration
Best of all, data and comments
entered via the web interface are automatically
and instantly available via the Excel-based
interface, and vice versa. There is no process
to manage, no system administration and
no consolidation to run.
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Is
CONTROL® an industry-specific application?
On the contrary, CONTROL® is a cross-industry
application. Customers representing every
major industry—from banks, to manufacturers,
to defense contractors—and ranging from mid-sized
to large, diversified Fortune 100 companies,
benefit from CONTROL®.
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How
long does it take to implement CONTROL®?
Implementation times vary depending upon the
requirements, the number and quality of data
sources, number of users, etc. We've got CONTROL®
applications up and running in a few days;
other implementations have taken couple of
months.
Working on-site as required, our seasoned
consultants can handle the entire implementation
project, or just provide specialized help
at critical stages along the way.
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What
services will Summit provide to make sure
I get the most out of my investment in CONTROL®?
We provide a full range of services for all
phases of the product lifecycle, from startup
and initial implementation through ongoing
application management and enhancement:
• Application Consulting
• Technical Consulting
• Technical Support
• Software Customization
• Training
Whether it's consulting, training, technical
support, or custom development, we go the
extra mile to ensure you're getting the most
out of CONTROL® and an on-going return
on investment
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