Centage Corporation - Best New Financial Services

Company: Centage Corporation, Natick, MA
Company Description: Centage Corporation develops automated, budgeting and planning software solutions for mid-market organizations. Its flagship product, Budget Maestro® is an easy-to-use, scalable, cloud-based budgeting and forecasting solution that eliminates the time-consuming and error-prone activities associated with using spreadsheets. Budget Maestro serves more than 9,000 users worldwide.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Financial Services

Nomination Title: Centage Corporation's Planning Maestro

Planning Maestro released April 2019

Planning Maestro, Centage’s cloud-based intelligent planning platform, was built from the ground up to take advantage of modern technologies and advances in cloud computing and security and is optimized for performance, scale, integration and automation. It offers:

Sophisticated Planning. Planning Maestro handles flexible driver-based financial models with ease, adapting to an organization’s business needs and goals. Unlimited scenario testing allows business managers to test the impact of a wide variety of internal and external factors on their P&L, cash flow and balance sheets, allowing them to make smarter decisions faster in response to positive and negative developments in the market.

Intuitive User Experience. Planning Maestro streamlines a host of workflows, enabling financial teams to get their jobs done faster and with less effort, so they can focus on what matters most. For instance, pre-loaded intelligent modules make quick work of common tasks, such as comparing actuals to plan. A seamless connection to the GL and other data sources provide an accurate line of sight into the business and eliminates countless hours of reconciliation.

Advanced Reporting. Planning Maestro delivers powerful self-serve analytics that deliver fast answers to important questions. Because the reports pull data directly from the GL and other systems, authorized users get accurate forecasts, quickly and easily, whenever they need them. The platform also offers sophisticated analysis and visualization of large data sets and multi-dimensional pivot reports, so users can look at trends from many angles, and drill down to understand the story behind the numbers.

A sophisticated, enterprise-class FP&A platform, Planning Maestro provides finance teams with the tools they need to confidently provide strategic recommendations to the executive team, propose action plans backed by solid data and insights, and accurately report on progress and results.

Planning Maestro was developed to redress the market need for a product that offers sophisticated, enterprise-level FP&A capabilities and automation at a price point that is accessible to all businesses and empowers today’s finance professionals to make faster, more confident decisions to steer their organizations towards a healthy future.

Planning Maestro has had a remarkable adoption rate, now surpassing 500 businesses and 3000 users who have turned to the intelligent planning solution to drive efficiency, reduce costs and boost performance within their organizations.

Subscription revenue in 2020 for Planning Maestro rose over 150% Y/Y driven by the rapid adoption of intelligent planning, monthly forecasting, scenario planning, and rolling budget processes.

Centage and Planning Maestro also received multiple industry accolades:

Overall Leader in both Customer Experience and Vendor Credibility in the Dresner Advisory Services Wisdom of Crowds® EPM Study and a Perfect Score for Likelihood to Recommend in 2020 and 2019.https://www.centage.com/press-releases/centage-named-an-overall-leader-in-customer-experience-and-vendor-credibility-in-2020-dresner-wisdom-of-crowds-enterprise-performance-management-market-study/

Dresner Advisory Service’s Overall Industry Excellence Award in 2020 and 2019.https://www.centage.com/press-releases/centage-honored-with-2020-overall-industry-excellence-award-from-dresner-advisory-services/

Outstanding budgeting and planning software in the BPM Partners Pulse of Performance Management survey.https://www.centage.com/press-releases/centage-scores-top-ratings-from-customers-in-the-2020-pulse-of-performance-management-research-published-by-bpm-partners/
Customer feedback has also been favorable - with 50% of existing customers upgrading to the solution:
"Our budget income statement development has been simplified greatly using Planning Maestro (versus using various spreadsheets and tying it together)." - Accounting Manager, WK& T
''We now have more accurate budgets than ever before and can easily see all the detail we need - giving us a direct line of sight into the health of our business so we can identify and react to trends immediately." - Operations Controller, Stuken
"The ease of navigation and user experience, the ability to open multiple tabs at the same time for different areas within the tool, and most of all - the SPEED! My budgeting process for 2020 probably took 25% less time than for 2019 for the mere fact that updating areas across the tool was much faster." - CFO, Cultural Vistas

Continuing on this momentum, in early 2021, Centage announced three new editions of Planning Maestro offering enhancements to security, collaboration, cash flow reporting and more.