Board Features
Board's Intelligent Planning Platform offers a comprehensive set of features within a unified, user-friendly environment.
Everything explained below is available within the same platform, with no extra modules or license costs to pay.
Platform
Cloud or on-premise
On-premise, on-hosting or on-cloud: you can easily implement Board with the same reliability, security, and robustness.
With Board, you can choose the model that best fits your business at the point of roll-out, with the freedom to move to a different model if and when your needs change.
HBMP
At its core, the Board platform is based on a revolutionary proprietary in-memory technology called HBMP (Hybrid Bitwise Memory Pattern). The HBMP technology combines outstanding performance with full read and write capabilities, providing unmatched planning speed.
Granular security
Board’s multi-layer security model is built to meet the most severe security requirements of any organization. With Board, you can combine data access authorization with application privileges and action permissions to provide pervasive, granular, cell-level security that can be easily personalized for each individual, user role, and user group.
Server Clustering
Board’s advanced In-memory Server Cluster architecture allows Board server workloads to be shared on a virtually unlimited number of nodes. This functionality ensures full horizontal scalability with read and write support.
Multi-language
Board offers native multi-language support to planning applications by allowing users to see the same information in different languages based on their security profile.
HTML 5
Board’s native HTML5 web technology has been designed and developed for high-performing, gesture-based interaction. The powerful combination of HTML5 technology with the drag and drop approach allows users to build applications once, without any coding, and immediately use them from any device.
Single logical view of corporate data
Board unifies any data source into a single logical view.
Through its physical and logical Multidimensional Database, Board provides a single metadata gateway that allows any data to be used as if it was native to Board. Data is normalized and organized in Board data models, allowing end-users to read, write, and update them regardless of the data source.
Data Connectivity
From relational databases to cloud applications and from Big Data to cloud data stores, it does not matter which data you tap, nor where it is stored. Board offers a comprehensive set of pre-built dedicated data connectors that minimize the time and effort required to access and use your data.
Analysis
Drag and drop analysis
From simple reports to the most sophisticated performance management applications, any analysis can easily be built using drag and drop measures, dimensions, and graphical objects.
On-the-fly calculated metrics
In Board, any user can create on-the-fly calculated metrics through Excel-like formulas and immediately use them in any analysis, report, or dashboard.
Time awareness
Board offers a comprehensive set of time-based out-of-the-box functions (previous year, previous periods, cycles, time cumulated value, period moving total, period moving average, period offset), making it easy to deploy on-the-fly historical analysis, comparison, and data contextualization.
Drill anywhere
No more preconfigured drill-down paths, no need to create logical hierarchies.
Unlike other solutions, Board automatically proposes the possible drill down paths to users, allowing them to choose the one most suitable at any moment of their data exploration.
Drill back to source systems
Board’s data federation capabilities make it possible to manage aggregate data in Board and to directly access information within the source systems when drilling-down.
This capability ensures extreme speed in analyzing aggregate information. At the same time, Board provides the full capability to reach deeper levels of detail without having to retrieve large amount of data from the source systems.
Drill through
Board allows users to drill from one report to another, instantly providing various views and perspectives of analysis on the same set of data.
Analytical Functions
Board 10 offers users a set of out-of-the-box statistical functions, from the traditional min/max, average, and standard deviation to algorithms that specifically address business analyses such as frequency, recency, dormancy, and nascency.
With a few mouse clicks, business users can instantly use these functions to build and enrich any analysis, dashboard, or report.
Planning
Real-time Modeling
Board offers the unique ability to modify data models during a planning or forecasting process, without affecting users’ operations.
A new business unit, a new product, a new market or a different investment can be inserted in a controlled way during a planning cycle, simulating “on-the-fly” the potential effect of a new scenario on the existing business model.
Multi-user concurrent data entry
Board supports simultaneous, multi-user data-entry through a native logical function, which spreads changes to all levels of detail (e.g. if you enter the turnover of a product line, the turnover of each individual product will be automatically updated).
Board technology guarantees data integrity and consistency without the need to run batch processes for allocating and consolidating changes made by each individual user.
Advanced data entry
Board offers the most comprehensive set of data-entry capabilities available on the market today.
Validation rules, role-based security, cell freezing, handling of calculated fields, drivers/calculation based data spreading, ERP write-back, real-time multiple calculation (to insert data in one currency and have them immediately available in several different currency formats) and data spreading modeling (to freely define, adjust, and simulate data allocation patterns) all make Board the best fit for managing any kind of data collection process.
ERP database write-back
Board can automatically write back the outcomes of any budget/data-entry cycle directly into the ERP database, effectively integrating transactional and planning systems.
Simulation
Advanced what-if and what-for analysis capabilities are combined with the ability to create and manage scenarios, making it easy to compare different business assumptions and coherently simulate future outcomes.
Reverse Algorithm
The reverse algorithm extends the capability to propagate changes across dimensions and hierarchies to the calculated fields (e.g. If you change a percentage value, the change will be automatically reflected in the quantities from which the percentage has been generated, even if the percentage is a calculated value).
Commentary and file attachment
Board enables any type of file (e.g. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, RTF, image files) to be associated with an individual cell in order to qualify the numeric or textual information contained within it.
Business Modeling
Workflow
Board offers integrated workflow management, which includes conditional alerting and mailing, cell locking and triggered events, and data auditing and validation processes. Planning steps can easily be created and correlated to approval cycles according to the logic behind the process.
Business rules
Board’s procedures engine allows users to effectively model key business processes by easily configuring a set of pre-built rules. Such processes include driver-based allocations, eliminations, conversions, consolidations, initializations, top-down and bottom-up reconciliations, value calendarization, multidimensional calculations and, more generally, all the necessary operations to implement company-wide planning, forecasting, and simulation applications.
Scenarios and Versions
Board enables the generation of unlimited plan versions and scenarios, making it easy to track the evolution of forecasts and plans over time and compare them with results.
Excel Formula into reports
Board business users can include Excel-like formulas in any Board tabular report to replicate the logic implemented in Excel spreadsheets, but without renouncing the advantages of Board in terms of data consistency, validation, security, and multidimensional analyses.
Adaptive Aggregation
Board Data Models allow users to change or add dimensions on-the-fly to instantly re-aggregate all data across the new dimension. In this way Board offers a level of flexibility that is light years ahead of the competition.