In the past, forecast analysts relied heavily on tools such as MS Excel to do forecasting, planning, and reporting. Although Excel is a mature tool that most (all?) finance folk know well, it can become overly labor-intensive when dealing with large amounts of data and is usually difficult to maintain for versioning of a forecast.

At some point, most organizations have addressed this by installing and maintaining some sort of software system that specializes in the ability to store data, maintain versions, and also allow for slicing and dicing data into professional styled reports.

The advent of such a tool which provides these features as well as others will, most definitely, drive financial management efficiency, deliver stronger business foresight, and steer business performance effectively.